Innocipher: A Novel Innocent-Cipher-Based Cryptography Paradigm—High Level of Security for Fooling the Enemy

Abstract

ABSTRACT The recent advances in cryptanalysis techniques are the major threat to cryptography. A leakage of information about the cryptosystem used by either a fatal shortcoming or an insider enemy can easily defeat the cryptographic goal. An adversary may succeed in decrypting ciphertexts, while users of a particular cryptosystem unwarily continue using same vulnerable encryption techniques. Such major concerns motivate the development of a novel Innocent-Cipher-Based Cryptography Paradigm (Innocipher), which is presented in this paper. Innocipher focuses on high level security that protects private information through two phases. First, Innocipher system conceals the required data in a legible form of legitimate plaintext other than ciphertext, for example, legitimate text, graph, game, and image, that looks benign and legitimate. Second, it converts the output of the first phase, the encoded data in the legible form, into a ciphertext. The main advantage of the Innocipher paradigm is that if a worst case scenario occurred, which is an adversary succeeding in decrypting a cipher message, then an adversary will be fooled by getting a legible form of legitimate text. At this point, the adversary will stop any further investigation while an original message is not revealed. This fooling mechanism of Innocipher is the key-feature that enables a multilayer of security for protecting valuable information. The presented implementation and validation of Innocipher demonstrates the robust capabilities of achieving the goal of securing information in static stage and during data transmission to its legitimate recipient.