Explain why highsecurity cryptographic algorithms should be

Explain why high-security cryptographic algorithms should be implemented in hardware (that is, wired into circuits) rather than in software.

Solution

Embedded Cryptography(Hardware implemented Cryptography) offers following advantages over Software Cryptography:

1) As, the amount of sensitive data is increasing, need for high -security encryption is increasing day by day. Software-based encryption systems come with certain risks.For example, consider an algorithm executing in an environment with other applications running concurrently, then information leakage from timing measures or timing variations or from cached data can allow those other applications to retrieve information on handled secret keys.(See this paper \"Side Channel Attacks on Cryptographic Software\" IEEE Computer SocietyDec2009). This is mitigated in Hardware based systems.

2) When large volume data need to be processed securely, it can be done fastly and efficiently in microcontrollers/processors that process data faster than external software implementation. In addition to it processing data simultaneously while the application is executing offers better real-time system performance.The advent of IOT & heterogeneous computing has also made the requirement of embedded cryptography a must.

3)For a particular application to not even know that encryption/decryption mechanism is in use, this can only be achieved by hardware

4)The random number generation which is integral to cryptography also favours hardware implementation because the quality of random number produced by hardware is very good.

Hardware thus have many advantages over software-based cryptography, thus high-security cryptographic algorithms should be implemented in hardware.