jai-singhal / iot-ecc

ECC IOT Project

Introduction

We had a general idea about how cryptography works and why it is used. We also knew some of its applications and the kind of techniques/ algorithms used in the same applications. When we were learning about cryptography we were told that the different methods and techniques used to handle different scenarios were well tested and known to not have security threats that would lead to compromise of information within a reasonable time using a reasonably large number of resources. That’s one of the main reasons why different organizations using these different techniques try not to use another alternative from what they are currently using unless the ones that they are using have some reported security threats i.e. they abide by the saying “if it ain’t broke, dont fix it”. This made us think about the existence of a fairly new technique, elliptic curve cryptography and it’s gaining popularity. So we wanted to explore/ experiment and know for ourselves, the advantages of using it.

In the first project ecc vs rsa, we have tried to compare RSA with ECIES - to see if there were any performance benefits.

In the second project attestation, we have built any application to mimic attestation functionality - to check the feasibility of ECC in a slightly more realistic scenario.

How to run the program

Installation

1. Clone the repository from here

2. Install python > 3.5.

   For Windows, you can get python from here

   Also note that if you are working on LINUX/MAC, use python3 instead of python.

3. Set up the python on your system

4. Install virtualenv

   pip install virtualenv

5. Change the directory to the iot-ecc-master

6. Create Virtualenv in project directory

   For Windows:

    ```shell
    virtualenv .
    ```
   

   For linux/mac:

    ```shell
    virtualenv -p python3 .
    ```
   

7. Activate the virtualenv

   .\Scripts\activate

   For linux/mac:

    ```shell
    source bin/activate
    ```
   

8. Install python dependencies

   pip install -r requirements.txt

Running the projects

There are two mini-projects attestation, and ecc vs rsa, you can find them in src.

Running ECC vs RSA

1. Change the directory to the project

   cd src/ecc_vs_rsa

2. Run the server on port 8080 on terminal A

   uvicorn server:app --reload --port 8080

   Let the server run on Terminal A.

3. Run the client on other terminal

   1. To run the clientECC

      python clientECC.py

   2. To run the clientRSA

      python clientRSA.py

Running Attestation

1. Change the directory to the project

   cd src/attestation

2. Run the prover server on port 8080 on terminal A

   uvicorn prover:app --reload --port 8080

Let the server run on Terminal A.

3. Run the verifier client on other terminal

   python verifer.py

Exploring ECIES VS RSA

High level design

ECIES

Key generation time was ~555ms for key size 256 bits of curve brainpoolP256r1. And the encryption and decryption time taken is with respect to AES256.

RSA

Key generation time was ~10.5ms for a key size of 2048bits. (we have compared 2048bits of RSA to 256 bits of ECC since the research paper was summarizing that these configurations of bits provide equivalent security). The massive difference in encryption and decryption times of ECIES and RSA are present because we have tested native RSA algorithm against ECIES, a hybrid approach in which the key exchange is done natively and then a symmetric encryption algorithm is used (AES). If we were to use a similar approach for RSA the difference in time between the algorithms would be seen in the key generation time i.e. (~555 ms vs ~ 10.5 s), while the difference in key storage space is apparent, 256 bits vs 2048 bits.

Exploring Attesation

High level design

Directory Structure

├── config
│   └── config.json
├── data
│   ├── conll_100kB.txt
│   ├── conll_10kB.txt
│   ├── conll_1kB.txt
│   ├── conll_200kB.txt
│   ├── conll_20kB.txt
│   ├── conll_2kB.txt
│   ├── conll_400kB.txt
│   ├── conll_500kB.txt
│   ├── conll_50kB.txt
│   └── conll_5kB.txt
├── db
│   ├── serverdbECC.json
│   └── serverdbRSA.json
├── graphs
│   ├── ECC.png
│   └── RSA.png
├── logs
│   ├── verifer-0.5KB-SHA.log
│   ├── verifer-0.5KB.log
│   ├── verifer-100KB-SHA.log
│   ├── verifer-100KB.log
│   ├── verifer-1KB-SHA.log
│   ├── verifer-1KB.log
│   ├── verifer-32KB-SHA.log
│   └── verifer-32KB.log
├── memory
│   ├── memoryFile_prover.txt
│   └── memoryFile_verifier.txt
│── src
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── attestation
│   │   ├── README.md
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── prover.py
│   │   ├── test.py
│   │   ├── utils
│   │   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   │   ├── curve_registry.py
│   │   │   ├── ecc.py
│   │   │   ├── generatefiles.py
│   │   │   └── graph.py
│   │   ├── verifer.log
│   │   └── verifier.py
│   │   └── visualize.py
│   └── ecc_vs_rsa
│	  ├── README.md
│	  ├── __init__.py
│	  ├── clientECC.py
│	  ├── clientRSA.py
│	  ├── server.py
│	  ├── utils
│	  │   ├── __init__.py
│	  │   ├── curve_registry.py
│	  │   ├── ecc.py
│	  │   ├── generatefiles.py
│	  │   └── graph.py
│	  └── visualize.py
├── LICENSE.md
├── requirements.txt
├── README.md