# An Energy-Efficient Reconfigurable DTLS Cryptographic Engine for Securing Internet-of-Things Applications

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.04455 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.04455/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 9 Jul 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Leaky Nets: Recovering Embedded Neural Network Models and Inputs through Simple Power and Timing Side-Channels -- Attacks and Defenses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14739/) (2021)
- [Obsidian: Cooperative State-Space Exploration for Performant Inference on Secure ML Accelerators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.02817/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper presents the first hardware implementation of the Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) protocol to enable end-to-end security for the Internet of Things (IoT). A key component of this design is a reconfigurable prime field elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) accelerator, which is 238x and 9x more energy-efficient compared to software and state-of-the-art hardware respectively. Our full hardware implementation of the DTLS 1.3 protocol provides 438x improvement in energy-efficiency over software, along with code size and data memory usage as low as 8 KB and 3 KB respectively. The cryptographic accelerators are coupled with an on-chip low-power RISC-V processor to benchmark applications beyond DTLS with up to two orders of magnitude energy savings. The test chip, fabricated in 65 nm CMOS, demonstrates hardware-accelerated DTLS sessions while consuming 44.08 uJ per handshake, and 0.89 nJ per byte of encrypted data at 16 MHz and 0.8 V.