Software implementation of the data encryption module on the BeagleBone platform for data transmission systems with increased cryptoresistance

Abstract

In today's digital world, where the exchange of information is an integral part of our daily lives, ensuring information security becomes a critical task. This work aims to develop an information protection module for data encryption on the BeagleBone platform for data transmission systems with increased crypto resistance. It is a hardware system based on a BeagleBone AI 64 microcomputer with antennas for transmitting/receiving data. Since the information is transmitted over a physically unprotected channel, developing a module that will encrypt the data is necessary. The information protection module ensures the confidentiality of the transmitted data in the system using the AES symmetric encryption algorithm with a variable key length (128/192/256 bits). Regardless of the hardware platform, it is characterized by universality, as it can be run on the Linux kernel adapted for use on embedded systems. Provides options for configuring protocols and encryption algorithms. In the process of developing the security module, modern encryption methods and algorithms were used (AES 128/192/256 – for data encryption, RSA – for the distribution of secret keys), in addition, a lightweight protocol for secure data transmission Scplight was implemented as an alternative to OpenSSL, which improves transfer speed on low-power hardware platforms. The developed information protection module has undergone thorough testing on a real system. The development of the information protection module is based on the need for a universal component that provides high-quality data protection in wireless communication systems. This module will accelerate the development of relatively affordable physical means of secure communication, a critical part of such projects. The module is implemented as a library written in the C language, which implements an API for establishing a secure connection and further forwarding information over an unprotected transmission channel. In addition, a configurator program allows you to change the module settings even in real-time when client applications use it. This ensures continuous, seamless, and secure data exchange and convenient configuration of the module. Many supporting libraries were used in the development process, including Crypton, Libgcrypt, Openssl, Ncurses and Sqlite3.