Honey Encryption based Hybrid Cryptographic Algorithm:A Fusion Ensuring Enhanced Security

Abstract

Providing high security to data exchange is one of the most primary concerns with fast evolution in communication technology. So, a Hybrid cryptographic algorithm is proposed where, Rivest Cipher 5 (RC5) is used for encryption and decryption of data and Honey Encryption (HE) is used for secret key exchange, which is a major challenge of symmetric cryptography. In this paper, number of rounds of RC5 is varied and its strength is studied based on randomness, considering avalanche effect. Time complexity of RC5 is also analyzed and increasing strength is chosen over time complexity as RC5 shows very slight increase in time when number of rounds is increased. Additionally, HE involves Distribution Transforming Encoder (DTE) and generation of honey-words. HE acts an additional layer of protection for RC5 cryptographic algorithm. HE is password based and it gives fake messages if any intrusion is detected and have utilized this concept to protect sharing of secret key. Both algorithms are efficiently integrated; obtained results clearly justify that greater number of rounds provide more randomness and hence better security and key exchange is done securely. Thus, proposed Hybrid cryptographic algorithm efficiently provides enhanced security as it involves double encryption.