A Hybrid ChaCha20-Based Lightweight Cryptographic Framework for Latency and Diffusion Optimization in IoT Systems

Marisamy, Nishanth (2025) A Hybrid ChaCha20-Based Lightweight Cryptographic Framework for Latency and Diffusion Optimization in IoT Systems. Masters thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.

Preview	PDF (Master of Science) Download (961kB) | Preview
Preview	PDF (Configuration Manual) Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

The rapid expansion of IoT ecosystems has increased the need for secure yet low-latency cryptographic solutions capable of operating on constrained devices. There are some existing studies which attempts to optimize AES or ChaCha20 for lightweight environments fail to fully address the combined challenges of high latency, weak diffusion and limited scalability in cloud-integrated IoT systems. This study was undertaken to solve this gap by developing a hybrid cryptographic architecture that leverages lightweight ciphers (SPECK, SIMON) for fast edge-level processing and robust ciphers (AES or ChaCha20) for strong diffusion and enhanced security. A clear threat model has also defined to evaluate the system under some realistic IoT security conditions which includes active network adversaries, replay attempts and chosen-plaintext attacks. The proposed system contains parallel processing, block-level optimization and a layered encryption pipeline to achieve powerful balance between performance and protection. Experimental evaluation shows some important improvements with diffusion scores reaching up to 97% and noticeable reductions in encryption and decryption latency compared to standalone AES and ChaCha20 systems. These results show that the hybrid model advances the state of the art by integrating multi-layer encryption with IoT-oriented performance giving stronger unpredictability and lower computational overhead. This study investigates whether a hybrid lightweight cryptographic model combining SPECK, SIMON and ChaCha20 can improve latency and diffusion as compared to individual ChaCha20 in IoT environment.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Supervisors:	Name Email McLaughlin, Eugene UNSPECIFIED
Uncontrolled Keywords:	IoT Cybersecurity; Lightweight Cryptography; ChaCha20; Hybrid Encryption
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > Computer software > Computer Security T Technology > T Technology (General) > Information Technology > Computer software > Computer Security T Technology > TK Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering > Telecommunications > Computer networks > Internet of things
Divisions:	School of Computing > Master of Science in Cyber Security
Depositing User:	Ciara O'Brien
Date Deposited:	03 Sep 2026 11:31
Last Modified:	03 Sep 2026 11:31
URI:	https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/9804

Actions (login required)

View Item