<story><title>Long-range communication with devices that consume almost no power</title><url>http://www.washington.edu/news/2017/09/13/uw-team-shatters-long-range-communication-barrier-for-devices-that-consume-almost-no-power/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andrepd</author><text>Encryption is a easy. I doubt this will be a problem.</text></item><item><author>andrewflnr</author><text>We need to talk about the security implications of low-power devices broadcasting data. I cringed when the article talked about broadcasting &amp;quot;medically relevant data&amp;quot; for kilometers, in the clear. That&amp;#x27;s not OK. Everyone needs to be clear on the fact that that&amp;#x27;s not OK.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m ecstatic at the possibilities this has for reducing the power cost of communication[0]. Please use the savings on some (at least half-decent) crypto.&lt;p&gt;[0] Seriously, can this work for a consumer handset communication network?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>andrewflnr</author><text>Encryption is easy on platforms with plenty of power and transistors and well-established libraries, which are the exact opposite of what we&amp;#x27;re talking about here. Encryption on very low-powered systems is a well-known problem.</text></comment>
<story><title>Long-range communication with devices that consume almost no power</title><url>http://www.washington.edu/news/2017/09/13/uw-team-shatters-long-range-communication-barrier-for-devices-that-consume-almost-no-power/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andrepd</author><text>Encryption is a easy. I doubt this will be a problem.</text></item><item><author>andrewflnr</author><text>We need to talk about the security implications of low-power devices broadcasting data. I cringed when the article talked about broadcasting &amp;quot;medically relevant data&amp;quot; for kilometers, in the clear. That&amp;#x27;s not OK. Everyone needs to be clear on the fact that that&amp;#x27;s not OK.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m ecstatic at the possibilities this has for reducing the power cost of communication[0]. Please use the savings on some (at least half-decent) crypto.&lt;p&gt;[0] Seriously, can this work for a consumer handset communication network?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dfox</author><text>Doing reasonable encryption and authentication on interfaces with MTUs on the order of tens of bytes (which is common for various low-power IoT radio interfaces) is actually pretty complex problem.&lt;p&gt;Essentially all widely used and safe cryptographic constructions have overhead (IV and MAC tag for example) that would consume significant portion of your packet (or in some cases is actually larger that the packet).</text></comment>