Cryptographic Algorithms Research Articles

Application of Cryptography and Steganography Techniques to Improving the Security of Text Messages with RC4 Algorithm and MSB Method

This study discusses the application of cryptography and steganography techniques to improve the security of text messages using the Rivest Code 4 (RC4) algorithm and the Most Significant Bit (MSB) method. In the ever-growing digital era, data security is a top priority due to the increasing threat of cybercrime that can harm many parties. RC4 is a cryptography algorithm known for its encryption and decryption speed, while the MSB method is an effective steganography technique for hiding information in digital images. This study aims to develop an application that is able to encrypt text messages with the RC4 algorithm and hide them in digital images using the MSB method. With this combination, data is not only encrypted but also hidden, thus providing two layers of security to protect information from unauthorized access. The results of the study show that the combination of RC4 cryptography and MSB steganography techniques successfully improves data security well. The developed application is able to protect sensitive information from the risk of data theft and cyber attacks. In addition, this technique is also easy to implement and can be applied in various sectors, such as banking, health, and business communications, to protect sensitive data from unauthorized access. Keywords: Cryptography, Steganography, Most Significant Bit (MSB)

SecureQwen: Leveraging LLMs for vulnerability detection in python codebases

Identifying vulnerabilities in software code is crucial for ensuring the security of modern systems. However, manual detection requires expert knowledge and is time-consuming, underscoring the need for automated techniques. In this paper, we present SecureQwen, a novel vulnerability detection tool leveraging large language models (LLMs) with a context length of 64K tokens to identify potential security threats in large-scale Python codebases. Utilizing a decoder-only transformer architecture, SecureQwen captures complex relationships between code tokens, enabling accurate classification of vulnerable code sequences across 14 common weakness enumerations (CWEs), including OS Command Injection, SQL Injection, Improper Check or Handling of Exceptional Conditions, Path Traversal, Broken or Risky Cryptographic Algorithm, Deserialization of Untrusted Data, and Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information. Therefore, we evaluate SecureQwen on a large Python dataset with over 1.875 million function-level code snippets from different sources, including GitHub repositories, Codeparrot’s dataset, and synthetic data generated by GPT4-o. The experimental evaluation demonstrates high accuracy, with F1 scores ranging from 84% to 99%. The results indicate that SecureQwen effectively detects vulnerabilities in human-written and AI-generated code.

Security primitives for memoryless IoT devices based on Physical Unclonable Functions and True Random Number Generators

The article describes various security primitives for significantly resource-constrained devices, such as sensors or sensor networks, IoT devices, wearables, etc. — i.e., devices without programmable memory. It is dedicated to parts which cannot handle complex algorithms of modern secure cryptography, cannot be equipped with programmable memories, or their circuits or data in permanent memories can be easily reverse-engineered. Instead, all security techniques (e.g., identification, authentication, and encryption) are based on modern hardware cryptography, mainly: physical unclonable functions (PUFs) and true random number generators (TRNGs). The paper addresses numerous issues from untraceable identification to mutual authentication to one-time pad encryption. The communication security is considered to be a trade-off between the device’s resources (processing ability, energy consumption, implementation size, response time), preparation complicity (initialization time, size of a server data storage) and the security capabilities and protection levels. Primitives can be included into the communication protocol based on particular needs and available hardware resources.

DLSEA-64: dynamic lightweight symmetric encryption algorithm for secure data transmission in IoT based pervasive sensing applications

ABSTRACT Remote patient monitoring, particularly for the elderly, is gaining popularity due to the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). However, IoMT devices are highly vulnerable to cyber attacks related to data confidentiality. Hence, lightweight cryptographic algorithms are found to be highly necessary to ensure safe data transfer in such devices. This paper introduces a Dynamic Lightweight Symmetric Encryption Algorithm (DLSEA) in order to challenge issues related to real-time data security and privacy. DLSEA is executed on Arduino Uno (ATmega328P) and Arduino Mega (ATmega2560) microcontrollers by using the Proteus simulation tool that employs a 64-bit temporal secret key and a 64-bit block cipher for encryption of data. Several experiments were conducted using payloads of varying sizes to record execution time, energy consumption, RAM usage, ROM usage and avalanche effect. The experiments demonstrated that for data sizes between 128-512 bytes, DLSEA requires 2.49-3.27 ms on the ATmega2560, which is 47% faster than a similar algorithm known as PRESENT. Additionally, DLSEA is 46% more energy-efficient, with RAM usage decreased by 41.81% and ROM usage decreased by 57.19% compared to PRESENT. Experimental results also show that DLSEA satisfies the plaintext sensitivity test, the key sensitivity test, and the rigorous avalanche criteria test (i.e., ~50%).

Secured Fog-Body-Torrent : A Hybrid Symmetric Cryptography with Multi-layer Feed Forward Networks Tuned Chaotic Maps for Physiological Data Transmission in Fog-BAN Environment

Recently, the Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) have become a promising and practical option in the tele-care medicine information system that aids for the better clinical monitoring and diagnosis. The trend of using Internet of Things (IoT) has propelled the WBAN technology to new dimension in terms of its network characteristics and efficient data transmission. However, these networks demand the strong authentication protocol to enhance the confidentiality, integrity, recoverability and dependability against the emerging cyber-physical attacks owing to the exposure of the IoT ecosystem and the confidentiality of biometric data. Hence this study proposes the Fog based WBAN infrastructure which incorporates the hybrid symmetric cryptography schemes with the chaotic maps and feed forward networks to achieve the physiological data info security without consuming the characteristics of power hungry WBAN devices. In the proposed model, scroll chaotic maps are iterated to produce the high dynamic keys streams for the real time applications and feed-forward layers are leveraged to align the complex input-output associations of cipher data for subsequent mathematical tasks. The feed forward layers are constructed which relies on the principle of Adaptive Extreme Learning Machines (AELM) thereby increasing randomness in the cipher keys thereby increasing its defensive nature against the different cyber-physical attacks and ensuring the high secured encrypted-decrypted data communication between the users and fog nodes. The real time analysis is conducted during live scenarios. BAN-IoT test beds interfaced with the heterogeneous healthcare sensors and various security metrics are analysed and compared with the various residing cryptographic algorithms. Results demonstrates that the recommended methodology has exhibited the high randomness characteristics and low computational overhead compared with the other traditional BAN oriented cryptography protocol schemes

DATA SECURITY IN IOT DEVICES AND SENSOR NETWORKS FOR ROBUST THREAT DETECTION AND PRIVACY PROTECTION

The rapid proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and sensor networks has revolutionized various industries by enhancing automation, connectivity, and operational efficiency. However, these advancements have also introduced significant security challenges due to the resource constraints and decentralized nature of IoT environments. This paper provides a systematic review of IoT security solutions, focusing on encryption techniques, authentication protocols, and machine learning-based anomaly detection methods. A total of 55 peer-reviewed articles were analyzed following the PRISMA guidelines. The findings reveal that while lightweight cryptographic algorithms, such as elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), offer robust security with low energy consumption, scalability across large IoT networks remains a challenge. Blockchain-based authentication has emerged as a promising decentralized solution, but issues related to energy consumption and latency hinder its widespread adoption. Machine learning techniques have shown high accuracy in detecting threats in real-time, but their resource-intensive nature limits their application in low-power IoT devices. This review underscores the need for multi-layered, integrated security frameworks and highlights gaps in research on quantum-resistant cryptography and interoperable security standards. Future research must focus on developing scalable, energy-efficient security solutions to ensure data integrity and privacy in expanding IoT ecosystems.

Performance analysis and evaluation of postquantum secure blockchained federated learning

As the field of quantum computing progresses, traditional cryptographic algorithms such as RSA and ECDSA are becoming increasingly vulnerable to quantum-based attacks, underscoring the need for robust post-quantum security in critical systems like Federated Learning (FL) and Blockchain. In light of this, we propose a novel hybrid approach for blockchain-based FL (BFL) that integrates a stateless signature scheme, such as Dilithium or Falcon, with a stateful hash-based scheme like XMSS. This combination leverages the complementary strengths of both schemes to provide enhanced security. To further optimize performance, we introduce a linear formula-based device role selection method that takes into account key factors such as computational power and stake accumulation. This selection process is reinforced by a verifiable random function (VRF), which strengthens the blockchain consensus mechanism. Our extensive experimental results demonstrate that this hybrid approach significantly enhances both the security and efficiency of BFL systems, establishing a robust framework for the integration of post-quantum cryptography as we transition into the quantum computing era.

Design and Implementation of Hardware-Software Architecture Based on Hashes for SPHINCS+

Advances in quantum computing have posed a future threat to today’s cryptography. With the advent of these quantum computers, security could be compromised. Therefore, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued a request for proposals to standardize algorithms for post-quantum cryptography (PQC), which is considered difficult to solve for both classical and quantum computers. Among the proposed technologies, the most popular choices are lattice-based (shortest vector problem) and hash-based approaches. Other important categories are public key cryptography (PKE) and digital signatures. Within the realm of digital signatures lies SPHINCS+. However, there are few implementations of this scheme in hardware architectures. In this article, we present a hardware-software architecture for the SPHINCS+ scheme. We utilized a free RISC-V (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) processor synthesized on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), primarily integrating two accelerator modules for Keccak-1600 and the Haraka hash function. Additionally, modifications were made to the processor to accommodate the execution of these added modules. Our implementation yielded a 15-fold increase in performance with the SHAKE-256 function and nearly 90-fold improvement when using Haraka, compared to the reference software. Moreover, it is more compact compared to related works. This implementation was realized on a Xilinx FPGA Arty S7: Spartan-7.

A quantum-safe authentication scheme for IoT devices using homomorphic encryption and weak physical unclonable functions with no helper data

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are widely used to authenticate electronic devices because they take advantage of random variations in the manufacturing process that are unique to each device and cannot be cloned. Therefore, each device can be uniquely identified and counterfeit devices can be detected. Weak PUFs, which support a relatively small number of challenge-response pairs (CRPs), are simple and easy to construct. Device authentication with weak PUFs typically uses helper data to obfuscate and recover a cryptographic key that is then required by a cryptographic authentication scheme. However, these schemes are vulnerable to helper-data attacks and many of them do not protect conveniently the PUF responses, which are sensitive data, as well as are not resistant to attacks performed by quantum computers. This paper proposes an authentication scheme that avoids the aforementioned weaknesses by not using helper data, protecting the PUF response with a quantum-safe homomorphic encryption, and by using a two-server setup. Specifically, the CRYSTALS-Kyber public key cryptographic algorithm is used for its quantum resistance and suitability for resource-constrained Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. The practicality of the proposal was tested on an ESP32 microcontroller using its internal SRAM as a SRAM PUF. For PUF responses of 512 bits, the encryption execution time ranges from 16.41 ms to 41.08 ms, depending on the desired level of security. In terms of memory, the device only needs to store between 800 and 1,568 bytes. This makes the solution post-quantum secure, lightweight and affordable for IoT devices with limited computing, memory, and power resources.

Design and implementation of dynamic s-boxes based on non-degenerate discrete chaotic systems

In recent years, digital chaotic systems have received considerable attention in the field of secure communications. However, during the digitalization of the system, the original properties of the chaotic system may change, resulting in the degradation of the dynamics. To address this problem, this paper designs a novel simplicial non-degenerate discrete chaotic system based on the inverse hyperbolic tangent function, and selects a three-dimensional discrete system as the object of analysis. Through the research conducted, it is found that the chaotic system exhibits high Lyapunov exponents under certain conditions. Furthermore, the excellent randomness of the system has been further validated by NIST SP800–22 tests. At the same time, this paper also proposes a dynamic S-box construction method based on the chaotic sequence generated from the three-dimensional chaotic mapping. By performing a series of basic operations and permutation treatment, many dynamic S-boxes can be generated. This paper comprehensively analyses the performance of S-boxes from two perspectives: single S-boxes and multiple S-boxes. The analysis covers issues such as bijective property, nonlinearity, strict avalanche criterion, differential approximation probability and bit independence criteria. The results of the performance analysis show that the dynamically generated S-boxes have excellent cryptographic properties, making them suitable for the design and application of cryptographic algorithms.

A short-list of pairing-friendly curves resistant to the Special TNFS algorithm at the 192-bit security level

For more than two decades, pairings have been a fundamental tool for designing elegant cryptosystems, varying from digital signature schemes to more complex privacy-preserving constructions. However, the advancement of quantum computing threatens to undermine public-key cryptography. Concretely, it is widely accepted that a future large-scale quantum computer would be capable to break any public-key cryptosystem used today, rendering today's public-key cryptography obsolete and mandating the transition to quantum-safe cryptographic solutions. This necessity is enforced by numerous recognized government bodies around the world, including NIST which initiated the first open competition in standardizing post-quantum (PQ) cryptographic schemes, focusing primarily on digital signatures and key encapsulation/public-key encryption schemes. Despite the current efforts in standardizing PQ primitives, the landscape of complex, privacy-preserving cryptographic protocols, e.g., zkSNARKs/zkSTARKs, is at an early stage. Existing solutions suffer from various disadvantages in terms of efficiency and compactness and in addition, they need to undergo the required scrutiny to gain the necessary trust in the academic and industrial domains. Therefore, it is believed that the migration to purely quantum-safe cryptography would require an intermediate step where current classically secure protocols and quantum-safe solutions will co-exist. This is enforced by the report of the Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite version 2.0, mandating transition to quantum-safe cryptographic algorithms by 2033 and suggesting to incorporate ECC at 192-bit security in the meantime. To this end, the present paper aims at providing a comprehensive study on pairings at 192-bit security level. We start with an exhaustive review in the literature to search for all possible recommendations of such pairing constructions, from which we extract the most promising candidates in terms of efficiency and security, with respect to the advanced Special TNFS attacks. Our analysis is focused, not only on the pairing computation itself, but on additional operations that are relevant in pairing-based applications, such as hashing to pairing groups, cofactor clearing and subgroup membership testing. We implement all functionalities of the most promising candidates within the RELIC cryptographic toolkit in order to identify the most efficient pairing implementation at 192-bit security and provide extensive experimental results.

Plaintext-based Side-channel Collision Attack

Side-channel Collision Attacks (SCCA) is a classical method that exploits information dependency leaked during cryptographic operations. Unlike collision attacks that seek instances where two different inputs to a cryptographic algorithm yield identical outputs, SCCAs specifically target the internal state, where identical outputs are more likely. Although SCCA does not rely on the pre-assumption of the leakage model, it explicitly operates on precise trace segments reflecting the target operation, which is challenging to perform when the leakage measurements are noisy. Besides, its attack performance may vary dramatically, as it relies on selecting a reference byte (and its corresponding leakages) to “collide” other bytes. A poor selection would lead to many bytes unrecoverable. These two facts make its real-world application problematic. This paper addresses these challenges by introducing a novel plaintext-based SCCA. We leverage the bijective relationship between plaintext and secret data, using plaintext as labels to train profiling models to depict leakages from varying operations. By comparing the leakage representations produced by the profiling model instead of the leakage segmentation itself, all secret key differences can be revealed simultaneously without processing leakage traces. Furthermore, we propose a novel error correction scheme to rectify false predictions further. Experimental results show that our approach significantly surpasses the state-of-the-art SCCA in both attack performance and computational complexity (e.g., training time reduced from approximately three hours to five minutes). These findings underscore our method's effectiveness and practicality in real-world attack scenarios.

Efficiently Detecting Masking Flaws in Software Implementations

Software implementations of cryptographic algorithms often use masking schemes as a countermeasure against side channel attacks. A number of recent results show clearly the challenge of implementing masking schemes in such a way, that (unforeseen) micro-architectural effects do not cause masking flaws that undermine the intended security goal of an implementation. So far, utilising a higher-order version of the non-specific (fixed-vs-random) input test of the Test Vector Leakage Assessment (TVLA) framework has been the best option to identify such flaws. The drawbacks of this method are both its significant computation cost, as well as its inability to pinpoint which interaction of masking shares leads to the flaw. In this paper we propose a novel version, the fixed-vs-random shares test, to tackle both drawbacks. We explain our method and show its application to three case studies, where each time it outperforms its conventional TVLA counterpart. The drawback of our method is that it requires control over the shares, which, we argue, is practically feasible in the context of in-house evaluation and testing for software implementations.

Unpacking Needs Protection

Most of the previous attacks on Dilithium exploit side-channel information which is leaked during the computation of the polynomial multiplication cs1, where s1 is a small-norm secret and c is a verifier's challenge. In this paper, we present a new attack utilizing leakage during secret key unpacking in the signing algorithm. The unpacking is also used in other post-quantum cryptographic algorithms, including Kyber, because inputs and outputs of their API functions are byte arrays. Exploiting leakage during unpacking is more challenging than exploiting leakage during the computation of cs1 since c varies for each signing, while the unpacked secret key remains constant. Therefore, post-processing is required in the latter case to recover a full secret key. We present two variants of post-processing. In the first one, a half of the coefficients of the secret s1 and the error s2 is recovered by profiled deep learning-assisted power analysis and the rest is derived by solving linear equations based on t = As1 + s2, where A and t are parts of the public key. This case assumes knowledge of the least significant bits of t, t0. The second variant uses lattice reduction to derive s1 without the knowledge of t0. However, it needs a larger portion of s1 to be recovered by power analysis. We evaluate both variants on an ARM Cortex-M4 implementation of Dilithium-2. The experiments show that the attack assuming the knowledge of t0 can recover s1 from a single trace captured from a different from profiling device with a non-negligible probability.

Role of Encryption/decryption Key in Cryptography

Abstract — Cryptography is a powerful technique for securing data and communication. cryptography is a technique used to encrypt and decrypt the data. A technique encryption (hiding information) data will be encoded which is used to provide secure data to prevent from fraud user and hackers where decryption is used to convert the encoded data into user readable format. It is used for storage and transmission compression is a reduction in the number of bits needed to represent the data."Cryptography algorithms serve the crucial purpose of safeguarding sensitive data. As the internet has seamlessly integrated into our daily lives, experiencing rapid growth over recent decades, ensuring data security has emerged as a paramount concern for every individual connected to the web. Data security guarantees that our information remains accessible solely to its intended recipient while thwarting any unauthorized alterations or tampering attempts. Achieving this high level of security necessitates the utilization of diverse algorithms and techniques. Cryptography encompasses methods that encode data through specific algorithms, rendering it indecipherable to the naked eye unless decoded using predetermined algorithms set by the sender.

Applying Polynomials for Developing Post Quantum Cryptography Algorithms to Secure Online Information - An Initial Hypothesis

In the contemporary era, a vast array of applications employs encryption techniques to ensure the safeguarding and privacy of data. Quantum computers are expected to threaten conventional security methods and two existing approaches, namely Shor's and Grover's algorithms, are expediting the process of breaking both asymmetric and symmetric key classical algorithms. The objective of this article is to explore the possibilities of creating a new polynomial based encryption algorithm that can be both classically and quantum safe. Polynomial reconstruction problem is considered as a nondeterministic polynomial time hard problem (NP hard), and the degree of the polynomials provide the usage of scalable key lengths. The primary contribution of this study is the proposal of a novel encryption and decryption technique that employs polynomials and various polynomial interpolations, specifically designed for optimal performance in the context of a block cipher. This study also explores various root convergence techniques and provides algorithmic insights, working principles and the implementation of these techniques, which can potentially be utilized in the design of a proposed block-cipher symmetric cryptography algorithm. From the implementation, comparison and analysis of Durand Kernal, Laguerre and Aberth Ehrlich methods, it is evident that Laguerre method is performing better than other root finding approaches. The present study introduces a novel approach in the field of polynomial-based cryptography algorithms within the floating-point domain, thereby offering a promising solution for enhancing the security of future communication systems.

State‐of‐the‐Art 3DES Pipelined Cryptographic Engine Design Against Side‐Channel Attacks

ABSTRACTIn this paper, a high‐speed, low‐latency, and high‐security hardware‐implemented triple data encryption standard (3DES) cryptographic algorithm is proposed for securing data privacy. In order to achieve a high throughput for the 3DES architecture, the whole circuit is optimized with a 24‐stage pipelined design at first. For breaking the correlation between the processed data and power dissipation of the 3DES circuit against differential power analysis (DPA) attacks, two pseudo‐random number generators (PRNGs) are embedded to randomly alter the number of pipelined stages and data substitution locations within the 3DES circuit, respectively. Under such a circumstance, the proposed 3DES circuit is able to achieve high performance and strong robustness against DPA attacks without causing much overhead. As shown in the results, under the synthesis of SMIC 14‐nm process design kits (PDK), the clock frequency, area, power dissipation, and throughput of the proposed 3DES circuit, respectively, are achieved as 1.2 GHz, 26,435 m2, 21.05 mW, and 64 Gbps. Furthermore, when DPA attacks are executed on the proposed 3DES circuit, the corresponding secret key cannot be revealed even if 2 million plaintexts are enabled. In contrast, only 40,000 plaintexts are adequate to disclose the secret key of a regular pipelined 3DES circuit.

Privately Generated Key Pairs for Post Quantum Cryptography in a Distributed Network

In the proposed protocol, a trusted entity interacts with the terminal device of each user to verify the legitimacy of the public keys without having access to the private keys that are generated and kept totally secret by the user. The protocol introduces challenge–response–pair mechanisms enabling the generation, distribution, and verification of cryptographic public–private key pairs in a distributed network with multi-factor authentication, tokens, and template-less biometry. While protocols using generic digital signature algorithms are proposed, the focus of the experimental work was to implement a solution based on Crystals-Dilithium, a post-quantum cryptographic algorithm under standardization. Crystals-Dilithium generates public keys consisting of two interrelated parts, a matrix generating seed, and a vector computed from the matrix and two randomly picked vectors forming the secret key. We show how such a split of the public keys lends itself to a two-way authentication of both the trusted entity and the users.

PreSCAN: A Comprehensive Review of Pre-Silicon Physical Side-Channel Vulnerability Assessment Methodologies

Physical side-channel attacks utilize power, electromagnetic (EM), or timing signatures from cryptographic implementations during operation to retrieve sensitive information from security-critical devices. This paper provides a comprehensive review of these potent attacks against cryptographic hardware implementations, with a particular emphasis on pre-silicon leakage assessment methodologies. We explore the intricacies of cryptographic algorithms, various side-channel attacks, and the latest mitigation techniques. Although leakage assessment techniques are widely adopted in the post-silicon phase, pre-silicon leakage assessment is an emerging field that addresses the inherent limitations of its post-silicon counterpart. We scrutinize established post-silicon techniques and provide a detailed comparative analysis of pre-silicon leakage assessment across different abstraction levels in the hardware design and verification flow. Furthermore, we categorize and discuss existing pre-silicon power and electromagnetic modeling techniques for leakage detection and mitigation that can be integrated with electronic design automation (EDA) tools to automate security assessments. Lastly, we offer insights into the future trajectory of physical side-channel leakage assessment techniques in the pre-silicon stages, highlighting the need for further research and development in this critical area of cybersecurity.

Generating efficient circulant-like MDS matrices for implementation

The exploration of maximal distance separable codes (MDS codes) has been a longstanding focus in error-correcting code theory and holds significant relevance in cryptography. Numerous approaches have been investigated for constructing MDS matrices, including deriving them from MDS codes, utilizing Hadamard matrices, Cauchy matrices, Vandermonde matrices, circulant matrices, circulant-like matrices, among others. However, a major challenge for cryptography designers is finding MDS matrices with low implementation cost. In this paper, we propose algorithms for generating efficient circulant-like MDS matrices of size , and for implementation. Subsequently, we evaluate the fixed points, the number of XOR operations of the proposed MDS matrices, and compare them with MDS matrices of other well-known ciphers. These proposed MDS matrices can become promising candidates for many cryptographic algorithms in the future.