Abstract
As more IoT devices are used to gather data and automate devices throughout the world, more security solutions are needed to keep these devices and the data they transmit secure. Many of these devices use the MQTT protocol, which does not encrypt the transferred data by default. The TLS/SSL protocols are the standard proposed solution for encrypting this traffic, but many resource constrained IoT devices do not have enough resources to run these protocols efficiently. Because of this, many other encryption algorithms have been proposed or designed for resource constrained IoT devices running the MQTT protocol, but very limited research has been done to compare the efficiency and security of all the proposed encryption algorithms. This research selected algorithms to evaluate by searching the current research to find encryption algorithms that had been proposed to help secure the MQTT protocol. The algorithms were then narrowed down further by selecting those algorithms that were available in public repositories and those that could run on the small ESP8266 D1 Mini devices, resulting in a total of thirteen test algorithms. Each encryption algorithm was evaluated by measuring the time to encrypt and decrypt transmitted data, the round-trip time of the encrypted data, the security features of the algorithms, and the memory and power consumption of each algorithm. These results were compared with two baseline tests which included a test with no encryption and a test using the TLS/SSL protocols. This process eliminated eight algorithms from consideration, leaving five remaining algorithms. These algorithms include the Ascon, Speck, TinyJAMBU, Xoodyak, and XXTEA algorithms. Out of these algorithms, the TinyJAMBU algorithm performed best in the most categories. Because of this, the TinyJAMBU algorithm is recommended as the best overall algorithm to use for encrypting the MQTT protocol on resource constrained IoT devices.
Degree
MS
College and Department
Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering; Electrical and Computer Engineering
Rights
https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Keenan, John Joseph, "An Analysis Of The Encryption Algorithms Proposed For The MQTT Protocol On Resource Constrained IoT Devices" (2025). Theses and Dissertations. 10742.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/10742
Date Submitted
2025-04-14
Document Type
Thesis
Handle
http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd13578
Keywords
encryption algorithms, MQTT protocol, IoT, memory usage, power consumption
Language
english