Security News > 2023 > February > US NIST unveils winning encryption algorithm for IoT data protection
The National Institute of Standards and Technology announced that ASCON is the winning bid for the "Lightweight cryptography" program to find the best algorithm to protect small IoT devices with limited hardware resources.
The weak chips inside these devices call for an algorithm that can deliver robust encryption at very little computational power.
NIST also considered that the algorithm had withstood the test of time, having been developed in 2014 by a team of cryptographers from Graz University of Technology, Infineon Technologies, Lamarr Security Research, and Radboud University, and winning the CAESAR cryptographic competition's "Lightweight encryption" category in 2019.
NIST still recommends the AES technique for AEAD and SHA-256 for hashing; however, these are unsuitable for smaller, weaker devices.
Despite ASCON's lightweight nature, NIST says the scheme is powerful enough to offer some resistance to attacks from powerful quantum computers at its standard 128-bit nonce.
For more details on ASCON, check the algorithm's website, or read the technical paper submitted to NIST in May 2021.