A new diffusion mechanism for data encryption in the ECB mode

Abstract

In this paper, a diffusion mechanism for encrypting data in the electronic code book (ECB) mode is introduced. Our diffusion mechanism treats the encryption leakages of the ECB mode by using a substitution/permutation network (SPN), which diffuses the bytes of the data together before encryption. The tests were made on AES and RC6 block ciphers implemented in the ECB mode pre-processed with our mechanism and the results were compared to those obtained by these ciphers implemented in the ECB, cipher block chaining mode (CBC), cipher feedback (CFB) and output feedback (OFB) modes. Experimental results verify that this mechanism gives any encryption algorithm implemented in the ECB mode the ability to encrypt the data in a better efficiency than the CBC mode without losing the benefits of the ECB mode of parallel processing provided by processing powers nowadays.