Contributions in the field of information security ; Error-detection architectures

Abstract

This thesis, entitled “Novel Means of Achieving Information Security. ErrorDetection Architectures” encompasses the research of 3 years as part of the PhD program, but also represents the continuation of the work started during the university and masters programs regarding the IDEA NXT crypto-algorithm. The thesis starts by presenting the state-of-the art in cryptography, concepts and challenges as well as the current trends. It then presents the asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic algorithms as the main techniques used to secure important information, with a focus on the IDEA NXT algorithm, the newest trend in encryption, and the work carried on as part of this research to improve the speed of the algorithm. A major part of the current research is from the testability domain. An introduction in this field is made, followed by the presentation of the various strategies used (both online and offline) and the different fault models which generally affect the well-functioning of a system. Also, the need for fault tolerant designs and reliable systems is highlated and details about how to achieve this goal are presented as well. Bringing together the need for data security and system availability and reliability, a couple of testing architectures were proposed and implemented for IDEA NXT and the obtained experimental results regarding the performance are presented in detail, in comparison with similar experiments conducted for other crypto-algorithms, especially AES. The efficiency of the errordetection mechanisms is demonstrated by injecting faults into the designs and verfying the testing architectures’ outputs. Finally, future work and directions are briefly discussed.