Testing and selecting lightweight pseudo-random number generators for IoT devices

The Internet of things (IoT) is the network of physical objects embedded with software, sensors, and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet. The estimation is that they will be about 75% of the 42 Billion devices connected to the internet by 2025, and this growth brings a huge amount of sensitive network traffic. The design and implementation of secure IoT devices is an error-prone task, and statistical flaws in their random number generator can lead to catastrophic security vulnerabilities easily exploited by a malicious agent. This paper presents our effort to raise awareness on identifying and evaluating cryptographically secure lightweight PRNGs. We selected some random number generators and presented a simple description of how to run them against well-known statistical test suites TestU01 and PractRand. The results obtained indicate a set of generators with the potential to be used for cryptographic purposes.