Abstract
The capabilities of embedded systems extend beyond the technologies used to secure these devices. Internet of Things devices, with limited resources, have to be capable of protecting themselves against attacks originating from computers with far more resources. A survey of current embedded system security was conducted in search of the state of the art in securing 8-bit microcontrollers in systems that are network connected. An experiment was conducted comparing the performance of AES, Blowfish, Camellia and 3DES algorithms on 8-bit hardware. The results from the survey and experiment were used in the formulation of a security scheme for an underwater drifter that is currently in the prototyping phase, Aurelia. The proposed scheme consisted of using elliptic curve cryptography for authentication and establishing a secret key, before switching to AES-128 for data transfer. The proposed scheme was then analyzed for resource usage and its security provided to protect Aurelia against known attack methods..