Various examples are provided related to software and hardware architectures that enable lightweight encryption and anonymous routing in a network-on-chip (NoC) based system-on-chip (SoC). In one example, among others, method for lightweight encryption and anonymous routing includes identifying, by a source node in a network-on-chip (NoC) based system-on-chip (SoC) architecture, a routing path from the source node to a destination node in the NoC-based SoC architecture, where the routing path comprises the source node, a plurality of intermediate nodes in the NoC-based SoC architecture, and the destination node; generating, by the source node, a plurality of tuples, a number of tuples in the plurality of tuples being based on a threshold; and distributing, by the source node, the plurality of tuples to the plurality of intermediate nodes and the destination node.