@inproceedings{233943e96d88496f982dd4bfac4e6d0c,
title = "Kyber-KEM-Ascon: benchmarking a lightweight post-quantum KEM on IoT devices",
abstract = "CRYSTALS-Kyber, officially standardized by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in August 2024 as ML-KEM FIPS, is the only post quantum secure key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) standard. Due to its inherent computationally intensive nature, mapping it on lightweight IoT devices is often a struggle. This study examines the replacement of the Keccak hashing function in Kyber-KEM with the NIST LWC competition winner called Ascon hash function. We compare speed/ memory improvement by executing Kyber-KEM-Ascon on an ARM Cortex M4 device and present novel benchmarking results; Kyber-KEM-Ascon shows about 25\% reduction in clock cycles, along with lower memory usage requirements (about 8\%). These results suggest that Kyber-KEM-Ascon is more suited for lightweight platforms, offering benefits for IoT security applications. ",
keywords = "Kyber-KEM-Ascon, benchmarking, lightweight post-quantum KEM, IoT devices",
author = "Sahar Shehzadi and Nathan Whaley and Ayesha Khalid and Abdul Ghafoor and Sadiqa Arshad and \{Ul Islam\}, Faiz and M{\'a}ire O'Neill",
year = "2025",
month = jun,
day = "27",
doi = "10.1109/ISCAS56072.2025.11043792",
language = "English",
isbn = "9798350356847",
series = "IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS): Proceedings",
publisher = "Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.",
booktitle = "IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS 2025): Proceedings",
address = "United States",
note = "IEEE ISCAS International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) 2025 ; Conference date: 25-05-2025 Through 28-05-2025",
}