Saeid Marjani - Utilization Department Khorasan Regional Electrical Company Mashhad, Iran
Hamid Mousavi - Utilization Department Khorasan Regional Electrical Company Mashhad, Iran
Mahmoud Kamel - Utilization Department Khorasan Regional Electrical Company Mashhad, Iran

In this paper, the security performance of PICCOLO lightweight block ciphers are investigated by using round order randomization concept for SCADA system. In this way, in order to randomize the round order of key schedules, a pseudo-random number generator is used in lightweight block ciphers. A comparison is made between the round order randomization based lightweight block ciphers and conventional lightweight block ciphers. In this way, there is a slight deviations in the execution time and energy consumption. The simulation results of round order randomization based lightweight block ciphers show significant improvement in security performance with minor and negligible changes in energy-throughput performances. To summarize, the round order randomization has minimal effect on the performance of lightweight block ciphers but it increases security that significantly decreases an attacker’s ability to guess keys.

Security performance, SCADA system, Lightweight block ciphers, , PICCOLO ciphers, Round order randomization