Elliptic curve based zero knowledge proofs and their applicability on resource constrained devices

As the Internet of Things (IOT) arises, the use of low-end devices on a daily basis increases. The wireless nature of communication that these devices provide raises security and privacy issues. For protecting a user's privacy, cryptography offers the tool of zero knowledge proofs (ZKP). In this paper, we study well-established ZKP protocols based on the discrete logarithm problem and we adapt them to the Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) setting, which consists an ideal candidate for embedded implementations. Then, we implement the proposed protocols on Wiselib, a generic and open source algorithmic library. For the first time, we present a thorough evaluation of the protocols on two popular hardware platforms equipped with low end microcontrollers (Jennic JN5139, TI MSP430) and 802.15.4 RF transceivers, in terms of code size, execution time, message size and energy requirements. This work's results can be used from developers who wish to achieve certain levels of privacy in their applications. © 2011 IEEE.