A New Lightweight AES for IoT

Internet of Things (IoT) introduces new security algorithms requirements and trends since the algorithms should be lightweight to adapt with IoT devices capabilities. In this paper, we explored the results of security and performance of the AES algorithm by changing AES core parameters and functions including MixColumns operation and number of rounds. In the case of changing MixColumns, the results showed that the security has been adversely affected. While changing the number of rounds provides a promising result to improve the algorithm performance while keeping an acceptable security level which makes it more adaptable to IoT devices. In general, the results showed that running three rounds of standard AES maintains the same level of security practically under specific criteria with a 386% improvement in performance indicators. Accordingly, we proposed a New Lightweight AES (NLW-AES) which maintains the standard AES-MixColumns with three rounds of AES. Finally, we tested both the Standard AES and the New Lightweight AES on Raspberry Pi as an IoT model, and we obtained compatible results with the explored scenarios.