Design and Analysis of a Cuckoo-Based Lightweight Stream Cipher for Battery-Constrained Internet of Things (IoT) Devices

Abstract

This paper proposes a Cuckoo-Based Stream Cipher (CBSC-128), in which the cuckoo-inspired mechanism is used as an optimization-driven strategy to enhance internal state evolution and key scheduling dynamics. Inspired by adaptive cuckoo nesting behavior, the proposed design introduces stochastic state mutation, nonlinear diffusion, and probabilistic diversity to improve randomness, strengthen key-space exploration, and prevent predictable keystream generation. This optimization-oriented structure enables dynamic restructuring of internal states, thereby increasing cryptographic complexity and resistance to statistical attacks. Security analysis demonstrates that CBSC-128 provides improved resistance against linear, differential, and algebraic cryptanalysis, supported by strong confusion and diffusion properties. Experimental evaluations using the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Statistical Test Suite (STS), entropy analysis, and avalanche effect metrics confirm that the proposed cipher achieves near-ideal randomness and strong sensitivity to input variations. Comparative results further show that CBSC-128 maintains competitive performance against well-known lightweight stream ciphers, such as Grain, Trivium, and ChaCha20, while remaining efficient for resource-constrained environments. Overall, the proposed design is suitable for battery-limited IoT applications, offering a balanced trade-off between security strength and computational efficiency.