ChaosForge: a lightweight stream cipher fusion of chaotic dynamics and NLFSRs for secure IoT communication

Today, the Internet of Things (IoT) and its devices can be found everywhere and send massive quantities of data, and scientists expect that people will increasingly rely on linked devices. As more data is transferred, the need for security will grow. Protecting large amounts of data is challenging since IoT has limitations such as low hardware resources, electricity, and storage capacity. Given that limited resources make ordinary encryption ineffective, we created a cipher that provides strong security despite resource limitations, considering the challenges posed by the IoT. The proposed study includes three Nonlinear Feedback Shift Registers (NLFSR) and a logistic chaos function. The logistic chaos function initializes the first two NLFSRs with 40-bit keys, and 40-bit initialization vector (IV) initializes the third NLFSR. The non-linearity of the proposed work increases three times, which generates a random keystream that will be difficult to predict. Compared to innovative methods like Trivium, Grain, and Grain128, our suggested work outperforms them regarding encryption/decryption time and throughput. The technique has a strong avalanche effect and is combined with successful compliance with all NIST tests. As a result, potential attackers have a significant challenge deciphering the encryption key.