Secure Communications in Embedded Systems

In an increasing number of distributed embedded applications the individual nodes must communicate with each other over insecure channels like e.g. the public Internet or via wireless communication links. In order to withstand malevolent attacks, the end-to-end communication channels must be secured using cryptographically strong encryption and authentication algorithms. Fortunately, powerful secure communication protocols exist today and most of them are readily available as OpenSource software implementations. The biggest obstacle to their widespread use in distributed embedded systems is the limited memory and the restricted processing power available from today’s low-cost and mostly low-power micro controller platforms. In this chapter we are going to show some promising approaches how security can be brought to embedded systems running time-critical applications.