Network Security for Embedded Systems

It is widely recognised that security is a concern in the design of a wide range of embedded systems. However, security for embedded systems remains an unsolved problem, which could create greater challenges in the future than security for mainstream computers today. The promise of universal connectivity for embedded systems creates increased possibilities for malicious users to gain unauthorised access to sensitive information. All modern security protocols use private-key and public-key algorithms. This book investigates three important cryptography algorithms (RC4, AES, and RSA) and their relevance to networked embedded systems. Limitations in processing power, battery life, communication bandwidth, memory and costs constrain the applicability of existing cryptography standards for small embedded devices. The aim of this book is to find feasible security solutions for networked embedded system applications. The above mentioned cryptography algorithms have been ported to three hardware platforms (Rabbit RCM 3000, Xilinx Virtex 4 FPGA with MicroBlaze softcore, and a Linux desktop machine) in order to simulate several real world scenarios.