An improved co-designed AES-ECC cryptosystem for secure data transmission

Asymmetric cryptography is inherently slow because of its associated complex computing, while symmetric cryptography is speedy. However, the latter is suffering from a serious gap which is secure key exchange. To deal with this problem, we suggest an efficient hybrid AES-ECC cryptosystem combining the benefits of the symmetric advanced encryption standard (AES) to speed-up data encryption and the asymmetric elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) to secure the symmetric key session interchange. The proposed hybrid AES-ECC cryptosystem uses a co-design approach and relies on AES-ECC optimisations. We fundamentally mix the matrix multiplication of the AES MixColumns with the S-box allowing for very fast software implementation (on NIOS-II processor). Then, we propose an optimised ECC hardware architecture based on López-Dahab scalar multiplication (on Cyclone IV.E). The implementation results of the proposed cryptosystem afford an interesting trade-off between area, speed, and power and can be used for information and computer security.