Authenticated encryption is a symmetric cryptography scheme that provides both confidentiality and authentication. In this work we describe an optimized implementation of authenticated encryption for the MSP430X family of microcontrollers. The CCM, GCM, SGCM, OCB3, Hummingbird-2 and MASHA authenticated encryption schemes were implemented at the 128-bit level of security and their performance was compared. The AES accelerator included in some models of the MSP430X family is also studied and we explore its characteristics to improve the performance of the implemented modes, achieving up to 10 times of speedup. The CCM and OCB3 schemes were the fastest when using the AES accelerator while MASHA and Hummingbird-2 were the fastest when using only software. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.7533 LNCS 288304 Intel and McAfee Chile,NIC Chile,Certivox,Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM) of the University of Chile,INRIA ChileBellare, M., Rogaway, P., Wagner, D., The EAX Mode of Operation (2004) LNCS, 3017, pp. 389-407. , Roy, B., Meier, W. (eds.) FSE 2004. Springer, HeidelbergChai, Q., Gong, G., A cryptanalysis of HummingBird-2: The differential sequence analysis (2012) Cryptology EPrint Archive, , http://eprint.iacr.org/, Report 2012/233Chatterjee, S., Menezes, A., Sarkar, P., Another Look at Tightness LNCS, 7118 (2012), pp. 293-319. , Miri, A., Vaudenay, S. (eds.) SAC 2011. Springer, HeidelbergDidla, S., Ault, A., Bagchi, S., Optimizing AES for embedded devices and wireless sensor networks (2008) Proceedings of the 4th International ICST Conference on Testbeds and Research Infrastructures for the Development of Networks and Communities, pp. 4:1-4:10Engels, D., Saarinen, M.-J.O., Schweitzer, P., Smith, E.M., The Hummingbird-2 Lightweight Authenticated Encryption Algorithm LNCS, 7055 (2012), pp. 19-31. , Juels, A., Paar, C. (eds.) RFIDSec 2011. Springer, HeidelbergGladman, B., (2008) AES and Combined Encryption/authentication Modes, , http://gladman.plushost.co.uk/oldsite/AES/Gouvêa, C.P.L., López, J., Efficient software implementation of public-key cryptography on sensor networks using the MSP430X microcontroller (2012) Journal of Cryptographic Engineering, 2 (1), pp. 19-29(2012) Crypto Software for Microcontrollers - Texas Instruments MSP430 Microcontrollers, , http://jce.iaik.tugraz.at/sic/Products/ Crypto_Software_for_Microcontrollers/Texas_Instruments_MSP430_MicrocontrollersKiyomoto, S., Henricksen, M., Yap, W.-S., Nakano, Y., Fukushima, K., MASHA - Low Cost Authentication with a New Stream Cipher (2011) LNCS, 7001, pp. 63-78. , Lai, X., Zhou, J., Li, H. (eds.) ISC 2011. Springer, HeidelbergKrovetz, T., Rogaway, P., The Software Performance of Authenticated-Encryption Modes (2011) LNCS, 6733, pp. 306-327. , Joux, A. (ed.) FSE 2011. Springer, HeidelbergLim, S.Y., Pu, C.C., Lim, H.T., Lee, H.J., Dragon-MAC: Securing wireless sensor networks with authenticated encryption (2007) Cryptology EPrint Archive, , http://eprint.iacr.org/, Report 2007/204López, J., Dahab, R., High-Speed Software Multiplication in F 2m (2000) LNCS, 1977, pp. 203-212. , Roy, B., Okamoto, E. (eds.) INDOCRYPT 2000. Springer, HeidelbergMcGrew, D.A., Viega, J., The Security and Performance of the Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) of Operation (2004) LNCS, 3348, pp. 343-355. , Canteaut, A., Viswanathan, K. (eds.) INDOCRYPT 2004. Springer, HeidelbergSaarinen, M.J.O., SGCM: The Sophie Germain counter mode (2011) Cryptology EPrint Archive, , http://eprint.iacr.org/, Report 2011/326Simplicio Jr., M.A., Barbuda, P.F.F.S., Barreto, P.S.L.M., Carvalho, T.C.M.B., Margi, C.B., The MARVIN message authentication code and the LETTERSOUP authenticated encryption scheme (2009) Security and Communication Networks, 2 (2), pp. 165-180Simplicio Jr., M.A., De Oliveira, B.T., Barreto, P.S.L.M., Margi, C.B., Carvalho, T.C.M.B., Naslund, M., Comparison of authenticated-encryption schemes in wireless sensor networks (2011) 2011 IEEE 36th Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN), pp. 450-457Tahir, R., Javed, M., Cheema, A., Rabbit-MAC: Lightweight authenticated encryption in wireless sensor networks (2008) International Conference on Information and Automation, ICIA 2008, pp. 573-577Whiting, D., Housley, R., Ferguson, N., (2002) Counter with CBC-MAC (CCM), , http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/toolkit/BCM/index.htmlZhang, K., Ding, L., Guan, J., Cryptanalysis of Hummingbird-2 (2012) Cryptology EPrint Archive, , http://eprint.iacr.org/, Report 2012/207