Pairing-Based Cryptography on the Internet of Things: A Feasibility Study

Pairing-based cryptography (PBC) has recently received much attention, since the mathematical building block of pairings paved the ground for devising efficient cryptographic protocols exploiting an old inspiration, i.e., to produce the public key of an entity based on its identity. The so-called Identity-Based Cryptography (IBC) simplifies key management procedures, since it does not require certificate-based infrastructures. Moreover, it is an elliptic curve cryptosystem which entails that it offers the same security levels as other public key systems with much smaller key lengths. The above characteristics make it an attractive solution for resource-constrained environments such as the Internet of Things (IoT), where strong confidentiality and signature schemes are necessary. In this article, we conducted feasibility tests of pairing-based cryptography for middle-class IoT devices, such as the Raspberry Pi 3 platform.