Performance of the Controlled Randomness Protocol on .NET Compact Framework Embedded Systems

The Controlled Randomness Protocol (CRP) for management of cryptographic keys is a method to improve the security level of secure communication protocols. We assess the performance of the CRP when implemented on embedded systems running the .NET Compact Framework. We present our findings from two different platforms: one smartphone running .NET Compact Framework 3.5 and one smartphone running .NET Compact Framework 4.0. Our assessment verifies that when implemented in the .NET Compact Framework, the controlled randomness protocol imposes a configurable and tolerable amount of overhead computation while it offers a significant security improvement compared to a conventional implementation of a key management protocol.