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    On wireless channel parameters for key generation in industrial environments
    (New York, NY : IEEE, 2017) Kreiser, Dan; Dyka, Zoya; Kornemann, Stephan; Wittke, Christian; Kabin, Ievgen; Stecklina, Oliver; Langendoerfer, Peter
    The advent of industry 4.0 with its idea of individualized mass production will significantly increase the demand for more flexibility on the production floor. Wireless communication provides this type of flexibility but puts the automation system at risk as potential attackers now can eavesdrop or even manipulate the messages exchanged even without getting access to the premises of the victim. Cryptographic means can prevent such attacks if applied properly. One of their core components is the distribution of keys. The generation of keys from channel parameters seems to be a promising approach in comparison to classical approaches based on public key cryptography as it avoids computing intense operations for exchanging keys. In this paper we investigated key generation approaches using channel parameters recorded in a real industrial environment. Our key results are that the key generation may take unpredictable long and that the resulting keys are of low quality with respect to the test for randomness we applied.
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    An embedded sensor node microcontroller with crypto-processors
    (Basel : MDPI, 2016) Pani´c, Goran; Stecklina, Oliver; Stamenkovi´c, Zoran
    Wireless sensor network applications range from industrial automation and control, agricultural and environmental protection, to surveillance and medicine. In most applications, data are highly sensitive and must be protected from any type of attack and abuse. Security challenges in wireless sensor networks are mainly defined by the power and computing resources of sensor devices, memory size, quality of radio channels and susceptibility to physical capture. In this article, an embedded sensor node microcontroller designed to support sensor network applications with severe security demands is presented. It features a low power 16-bitprocessor core supported by a number of hardware accelerators designed to perform complex operations required by advanced crypto algorithms. The microcontroller integrates an embedded Flash and an 8-channel 12-bit analog-to-digital converter making it a good solution for low-power sensor nodes. The article discusses the most important security topics in wireless sensor networks and presents the architecture of the proposed hardware solution. Furthermore, it gives details on the chip implementation, verification and hardware evaluation. Finally, the chip power dissipation and performance figures are estimated and analyzed.