Halka: A Lightweight, Software Friendly Block Cipher Using Ultra-lightweight 8-bit S-box.

Abstract

Abstract. This paper presents the design of a lightweight, yet software friendly, block cipher. Most of the lightweight block ciphers are nibble-oriented as the implementation of a 4-bit S-box is much more compact than an 8-bit S-box. This paper uses a novel implementation of multi-plicative inverse for 8-bit S-boxes using LFSR requiring only 138 gate-equivalent. With this powerful scheme, we design a lightweight block cipher competitive with existing standards in terms of hardware gate equivalent first time using an 8-bit S-box.