Towards algorithm agility for wireless sensor networks: Comparison of the portability of selected Hash functions

Abstract

Cryptographic hash functions are an important building block used in many cryptosystems. The flexibility and ability of a system designer to choose the most fitting function for a given system enables fast, efficient and secure designs. In this position paper we give preliminary results of porting three selected hash algorithms to Iris and MicaZ Sensor nodes in terms of achieved performance, memory requirements and the influence of different compiler optimizations on these measurements. Our main goal is to provide a sort of baseline approximation of how much effort is needed to port reference code of these algorithms to a new platform without trying to optimize it, leaving all this work to the compiler; enabling designers to not having to stick to already ported algorithms, when they might be suboptimally suited for a given environment.