Encryption in Delocalized Access Systems

Abstract: The recent increase in performance of embedded processors has enabled the use of computationally heavy asymmetric cryptography in small and power efficient embedded systems. The goal of this thesis is to analyze whether it is possible to use this type of cryptography to enhance the security in access systems. This report contains a literature study of the complications related to access systems and their functionality. Also a basic introduction to cryptography is included. Several cryptographic algorithms were implemented using the public library LibTomCrypt and benchmarked on an ARM7-processor platform. The asymmetric coding schemes were ECC and RSA. The tested symmetric algorithms included AES, 3DES and Twofish among others. The benchmark considered both codesize and speed of the algorithms. The two asymmetric algorithms, ECC and RSA, are possible to be used in an ARM7 based access system. Although, both technologies can be configured to finish the calculations within a reasonable time-frame of 10 Sec, ECC archives a higher security level for the same execution time. Therefore, an implementation of ECC would be preferable since it is faster and requires less resources. Some further suggestions of improvements to the implementation is discussed in the final chapters.