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ASCON is a Light-weight Champion

Since 2016, NIST has been assessing light-weight encryption methods, and, in 2022, NIST published the final 10: ASCON, Elephant, GIFT-COFB, Grain128-AEAD, ISAP, Photon-Beetle, Romulus, Sparkle, TinyJambu, and Xoodyak (Table 1). A particular focus is on the security of the methods, along with their performance on low-cost FPGAs/embedded processes and their robustness against side-channel attacks.

Table 1: Specifications of the NIST LWC finalist algorithms [3]

ASCON

Today, NIST has finally announced a winner for its Lightweight champion: ASCON [here]. Generally, it does well in most tests and is a good all-rounder. ASCON [4] was designed by Christoph Dobraunig, Maria Eichlseder, Florian Mendel and Martin Schläffer from Graz University of Technology, Infineon Technologies, and Radboud University. It is both a lightweight hashing and encryption method.

ASCON uses a single lightweight permutation with Sponge-based modes of operation and an SPN (substitution–permutation network) permutation. Overall it has an easy method of implementing within hardware (2.6 gate equivalents) and software. A 5-bit S-box (as used in Keccak’s S-box core) is used to enable a light-weight approach and it has no known side-channel attacks. It can also…