Exclusive-or Operation Research Articles

Quantum image encryption based on Baker map and DNA circular shift operation

Quantum computation can improve the efficiency of image processing by utilizing parallelism and superposition characteristics. In this paper, a quantum cryptosystem based on Baker map and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) circular shift operation is designed. Firstly, the digital image to be encrypted is firstly represented with a novel enhanced quantum representation model. Then quantum Baker map is used to permutate the position information of the prepared quantum image. Next, the designed DNA circular shift operation is performed to preliminarily change the color information of the scrambled image. Finally, the ciphertext image is obtained by implementing the exclusive OR (XOR) operation between the pseudo-random sequence generated by a four-dimensional (4D) hyper-chaotic system and the DNA shift operated image. Numerical experimental results and security analysis verify that the proposed scheme has good performance at securing information storage and transmission as the histograms of ciphertexts are uniform, the correlation coefficient values of three directions are very close to 0, the average information entropy is 7.9972, the key space is more than 1015×4 to resist brute-force attack. Furthermore, it has lower computational complexity compared with classical algorithms.

Mouse frontal cortex nonlinearly encodes stimuli, choices, and outcomes

Frontal area MOs (secondary motor area) is a key brain structure in rodents for making decisions based on sensory evidence and on reward value. Its neurons can encode sensory stimuli, upcoming choices, expected rewards, ongoing actions, and recent outcomes. However, the information encoded, and the nature of the resulting code, may depend on the task being performed. We recorded MOs population activity using two-photon calcium imaging, in a task requiring mice to integrate sensory evidence with reward value. Mice turned a wheel to report the location of a visual stimulus following a delay period, to receive a reward whose size varied over trial blocks. MOs neurons encoded multiple task variables, but not all of those seen in other tasks. In the delay period, MOs neurons strongly encoded the stimulus side but did not significantly encode the reward-size block. A correlation of MOs activity with upcoming choice could be explained by a common effect of stimuli on those two correlates. After the wheel turn and the feedback, the MOs population encoded choice side and choice outcome jointly and nonlinearly according to an exclusive-or (XOR) operation. This nonlinear operation would allow a downstream linear decoder to infer the correct choice side (i.e., the side that would have been rewarded) even on zero contrast trials, when there had been no visible stimulus. These results indicate that MOs neurons flexibly encode some but not all variables that determine behavior, depending on task. Moreover, they reveal that MOs activity can reflect a nonlinear combination of these behavioral variables, allowing simple linear inference of task events that would not have been directly observable.

Optical link encoding based simultaneous correction for crosstalk and nonlinearity in multi-site optical converged networks.

This paper reports a correction scheme to address the problem of modulation nonlinearity and optical switch crosstalk simultaneously for the multi-site optical converged network. Based on the optical link encoding and exclusive-or operation for the received signal, the present spectrum usage can be obtained among the confusion with interferences containing the modulated harmonic distortion and the crosstalk leakage from other sites. The proof-of-concept experiment is performed on various interferences involving the linear frequency modulated (LFM) waveform and the quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signal. The corrected spectrum has realized an improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of over 22 dB compared to the uncorrected counterpart. Furthermore, it consistently maintains a superior SNR, surpassing the single impairment-corrected scenario by an impressive margin of at least 15.9 dB. Besides, the implementation would not introduce additional noise, making the corrected result agree well with the ideal case. Without any increase in hardware complexity, the presented scheme provides an effective technique to meet the correction challenge of large-scale and complicated optical networks with multiple optoelectronic devices.

Enhancing Security in ZigBee Wireless Sensor Networks: A New Approach and Mutual Authentication Scheme for D2D Communication.

The latest version of ZigBee offers improvements in various aspects, including its low power consumption, flexibility, and cost-effective deployment. However, the challenges persist, as the upgraded protocol continues to suffer from a wide range of security weaknesses. Constrained wireless sensor network devices cannot use standard security protocols such as asymmetric cryptography mechanisms, which are resource-intensive and unsuitable for wireless sensor networks. ZigBee uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which is the best recommended symmetric key block cipher for securing data of sensitive networks and applications. However, AES is expected to be vulnerable to some attacks in the near future. Moreover, symmetric cryptosystems have key management and authentication issues. To address these concerns in wireless sensor networks, particularly in ZigBee communications, in this paper, we propose a mutual authentication scheme that can dynamically update the secret key value of device-to-trust center (D2TC) and device-to-device (D2D) communications. In addition, the suggested solution improves the cryptographic strength of ZigBee communications by improving the encryption process of a regular AES without the need for asymmetric cryptography. To achieve that, we use a secure one-way hash function operation when D2TC and D2D mutually authenticate each other, along with bitwise exclusive OR operations to enhance cryptography. Once authentication is accomplished, the ZigBee-based participants can mutually agree upon a shared session key and exchange a secure value. This secure value is then integrated with the sensed data from the devices and utilized as input for regular AES encryption. By adopting this technique, the encrypted data gains robust protection against potential cryptanalysis attacks. Finally, a comparative analysis is conducted to illustrate how the proposed scheme effectively maintains efficiency in comparison to eight competitive schemes. This analysis evaluates the scheme's performance across various factors, including security features, communication, and computational cost.

Mobile coded caching in small cell networks: Algorithm design and performance analysis

In coded caching, users cache pieces of files under a specific arrangement so that the server can satisfy their requests simultaneously in the broadcast scenario via eXclusive OR (XOR) operation and therefore reduce the amount of transmission data. However, when users' locations are changing, the uploading of caching information is frequent and extensive that the traffic increase outweighed the traffic reduction that the traditional coded caching achieved. In this paper, we propose mobile coded caching schemes to reduce network traffic in mobility scenarios, which achieve a lower cost on caching information uploading. In the cache placement phase, the proposed scheme first constructs caching patterns, and then assigns the caching patterns to users according to the graph coloring method and four color theorem in our centralized cache placement algorithm or randomly in our decentralized cache placement algorithm. Then users are divided into groups based on their caching patterns. As a benefit, when user movements occur, the types of caching pattern, rather than the whole caching information of which file pieces are cached, are uploaded. In the content delivery phase, XOR coded caching messages are reconstructed. Transmission data volume is derived to measure the performance of the proposed schemes. Numerical results show that the proposed schemes achieve great improvement in traffic offloading.

Adaptive HDR Image Blind Watermarking Approach Based on Redundant Discrete Wavelet Transform

Remarkable success has been recorded in the usage of digital watermarking which is aimed at protecting the intellectual property of multimedia content. In this paper, a new tone mapping attack-resistant high dynamic range (HDR) image zero-watermarking algorithm is proposed. In this algorithm extraction of stable and invariant features are extracted for efficient zero-watermarking through the application of the redundant discrete wavelet transform (RDWT) to the HDR image. The first step involves transforming the HDR image to HVS color space, and RDWT is implemented using the V-channel so that the LL sub-band which contains the strong structure contents of the image is obtained. The second step involves dividing the LL sub-band into non-overlapping blocks, which are afterwards subjected to the process of transformation through the use of the singular value decomposition (SVD) so that the U matrix can be extracted. Third, the use of an Auto-Regressive (AR) prediction technique was employed in generating a local relationship model and comparison is done to facilitate the production of a binary feature mask. In the fourth process, hybrid chaotic mapping (HCM) is used to generate blended watermark so that the security of the watermark can be fortified. Lastly, the computation of an effective zero-watermark is achieved through the implementation of an exclusive-or operation on the blended watermark and the binary feature mask. Based on the results, the approach presented in this study demonstrated superior performance in terms of withstanding TM attacks and other attacks associated with image processing.

On multiplexing in physical random number generation, and conserved total entropy content

In the current article, we use a random supercontinuum based on a random Raman distributed feedback laser to investigate the generation of random numbers by spectrally demultiplexing the broad supercontinuum spectrum in parallel channels. By tuning the spectral separation between two independent channels, we test the most typically used statistical tests’ abilities to identify the required minimum spectral separation between channels, especially after the use of post-processing steps. Out of all the tests that were investigated, the cross-correlation across channels using the raw data appears to be the most robust. We also demonstrate that the use of post-processing steps, either least significant bits extraction or exclusive-OR operations, hinders the ability of these tests to detect the existing correlations. As such, performing these tests on post-processed data, often reported in literature, is insufficient to properly establish the independence of two parallel channels. We therefore present a methodology, which may be used to confirm the true randomness of parallel random number generation schemes. Finally, we demonstrate that, while tuning a single channel’s bandwidth can modify its potential randomness output, it also affects the number of available channels, such that the total random number generation bitrate is conserved.

Double Encryption Algorithm for Massive Personal Biometric Authentication Images Based on Chaotic Mapping for Future Smart Cities

Abstract To address the problems of low encryption security, slow encryption speed, and small key space of personal biometric authentication image, a double encryption algorithm of image based on chaotic mapping is proposed. The global block-matching strategy of sparse clustering is used to remove the image noise, and the encrypted key information in the biometric authentication image is extracted by mathematical morphology. The logistic index is used to disrupt the image information distribution, bit scrambling is used to double scramble the image, and the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA)-256 hash function is used to generate the initial value of the chaotic system to obtain the chaotic map and the random variable sequence of hyperchaotic Chen system, and the chaotic sequence is transformed into the ciphertext image matrix after exclusive OR (XOR) operation in order to realize the double encryption of personal biometric authentication image. The results show that the proposed method has large key space, high encryption accuracy, fast efficiency, and better security performance.

Advanced approach for encryption using advanced encryption standard with chaotic map

At present, security is significant for individuals and organizations. All information need security to prevent theft, leakage, alteration. Security must be guaranteed by applying some or combining cryptography algorithms to the information. Encipherment is the method that changes plaintext to a secure form called cipherment. Encipherment includes diverse types, such as symmetric and asymmetric encipherment. This study proposes an improved version of the advanced encryption standard (AES) algorithm called optimized advanced encryption standard (OAES). The OAES algorithm utilizes sine map and random number to generate a new key to enhance the complexity of the generated key. Thereafter, multiplication operation was performed on the original text, thereby creating a random matrix (4×4) before the five stages of the coding cycles. A random substitution-box (S-Box) was utilized instead of a fixed S-Box. Finally, we utilized the eXclusive OR (XOR) operation with digit 255, also with the key that was generated last. This research compared the features of the AES and OAES algorithms, particularly the extent of complexity, key size, and number of rounds. The OAES algorithm can enhance complexity of encryption and decryption by using random values, random S-Box, and chaotic maps, thereby resulting in difficulty guessing the original text.

SecGreen: Secrecy Ensured Power Optimization Scheme for Software-Defined Connected IoV

Software-Defined Internet of Vehicles (SD-IoV) is an emerging technology that is being used in modern intelligent transportation systems (ITS). The ultimate goal of SD-IoV is to provide seamless connectivity to the end-users with low latency and high-speed data transfer. However, due to the increase in the density of the connected IoV using an open channel, i.e., the Internet, the foremost challenges of high power consumption and secure data transfer are inevitable in such an environment. An external eavesdropper may intercept the transmitted message to access the legitimate information over the public channel, i.e., the Internet. Most of the solutions reported in the literature to tackle these issues may not be applicable in the SD-IoV environment due to high computation and communication costs. Motivated from this, in this paper, the problems of high power consumption and secure data transfer in SD-IoV are formulated using mixed-integer non-linear programming (MINLP) with associated constraints. To solve the aforementioned problem, we propose a joint power optimization and secrecy ensured scheme known as <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">SecGreen</i> . <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">SecGreen</i> has an efficient energy harvesting algorithm using simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) to maximize the energy efficiency. Moreover, to mitigate various security attacks, a resilient lightweight secrecy association protocol is designed between vehicle and trusted gateway node of SD-IoV so that only trusted vehicles can communicate with each other and with the nearest base stations. The secrecy association protocol uses security primitives such as– physically unclonable function (PUF), one-way hash function, and bitwise exclusive OR (XOR) operations which are suitable for energy-constraint sensors in SD-IoV. The performance of the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">SecGreen</i> is compared with the existing schemes, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Stable &amp; Scalable Link Optimization (SSLO), and Secure &amp; Energy-Efficient Blockchain-enabled (SEEB)</i> respectively. The result shows that when the number of packets across the subchannel increases, the energy consumption increases. Also, the result shows that the proposed scheme attains 22.5% and 20.34% better energy efficiency as compared to SSLO and SEEB schemes, respectively. In addition, the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">SecGreen</i> scheme achieves 37.48% and 32.15% higher throughput as compared to SSLO and SEEB schemes. The results obtained show the superior performance of the proposed <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">SecGreen</i> scheme in comparison to these existing competitive schemes in the literature.

DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF DNA BASED CIPHER FOR IMAGE USING DUAL CHAOTIC MAP

Design and analysis of an image encryption technique using DNA computation and chaos function has been emphasized in the present paper. The plain image was scrambled using Henon map followed by the implementation of a DNA sequence addition operation over the scrambled image with the DNA sequence-based key generated by the Logistic map. Thereafter, the generated sequence was subjected to exclusive-or operation with partial key and modulo of sum of all the pixel values. The experimental and safety analysis highlighted that the proposed encryption technique was not only invertible and computationally efficient, but also had a large key space, was extremely sensitive to secret key credentials, had a high NPCR value and a low correlation coefficient, rendering the system efficient and secure against brute-force, statistical and differential attack.

A Novel Hybrid Edge Detection and LBP Code-Based Robust Image Steganography Method

In digital image processing and steganography, images are often described using edges and local binary pattern (LBP) codes. By combining these two properties, a novel hybrid image steganography method of secret embedding is proposed in this paper. This method only employs edge pixels that influence how well the novel approach embeds data. To increase the quantity of computed edge pixels, several edge detectors are applied and hybridized using a logical OR operation. A morphological dilation procedure in the hybridized edge image is employed to this purpose. The least significant bits (LSB) and all LBP codes are calculated for edge pixels. Afterward, these LBP codes, LSBs, and secret bits using an exclusive-OR operation are merged. These resulting implanted bits are delivered to edge pixels’ LSBs. The experimental results show that the suggested approach outperforms current strategies in terms of measuring perceptual transparency, such as peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity index (SSI). The embedding capacity per tempered pixel in the proposed approach is also substantial. Its embedding guidelines protect the privacy of implanted data. The entropy, correlation coefficient, cosine similarity, and pixel difference histogram data show that our proposed method is more resistant to various types of cyber-attacks.

PACM: Privacy-Preserving Authentication Scheme With on-Chain Certificate Management for VANETs

Privacy-preserving authentication is designed to protect vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) from illegitimate users and fake messages while maintaining the privacy of legitimate users’ identities. However, existing authentication schemes have disadvantages such as non-transparent certificate issuance and revocation, high identity authentication and certificate revocation overhead. In this paper, we propose an efficient privacy-preserving authentication scheme with on-chain certificate management (PACM) in VANETs, where the service manager (SM) of each domain serves as a node of the blockchain to build a distributed system. Specifically, based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and exclusive-OR operations, we achieve secure and lightweight mutual authentication between vehicles and roadside units (RSUs) by regularly updated pseudonyms. Then, we adopt the blockchain to record the issuance and revocation of all certificates, which makes SM’s activities transparent. Moreover, we introduce the counting garbled bloom filter (CGBF) to enable fast query and revocation of certificates. Besides, we design a non-forgeable and non-repudiable billing mechanism based on the hash chain technology. Security analysis and experimental results show that PACM achieves stronger security with less overhead.

Incorporating a New Pseudorandom Number Generator in AES Algorithm to Improve Its Security Level

The implementation of the multiplicative inverses of elemental polynomials under an irreducible polynomial over GF(pn) played an important role in cryptography. In the AES algorithm, the multiplicative inverses under the first irreducible polynomial over GF(28) have been used for the first time in 1999 to design its substitution box. The new PRNG RC4-MI in which the multiplicative inverses under the two irreducible polynomials over GF(73) are being used accepts the AES key as its own key and generates random bytes. Undertaking exclusive OR operation of RC4-MI bytes with AES cipher bytes, one gets a new sequence of cipher bytes thatexhibits randomness quantitatively better than that of the original sequence of AES cipher bytes.

PUF-based user access control scheme for IoT environment

A very important part of any software or hardware associated with the Internet of Things (IoT) is the User Access Control. User Access Control deals with the important security features like authenticating a legitimate user, authorizing a user, etc. A very effective and secure way to ensure the user access control is: three factor user access control. Some three factor user authentication schemes have been developed in the past, brief details regarding them can be found in further sections of the paper. In this paper, we propose a new three factor user access control scheme. Our proposed scheme is based on Mandal et. al.’s user access control scheme published recently. Our scheme involves the use of lightweight cryptographic primitives like Physically Unclonable Function (PUF), one way cryptographic hash function and bitwise exclusive OR (XOR) operations. PUFs make the scheme very lightweight and efficient as compared to other schemes of similar nature. The three factors used in our scheme are: registered device of the user, personal biometrics of the user and password of the user. We present the informal security analysis to show that our scheme is safe from several known attacks.

Distributed integrity and non-repudiation scheme in the dynamic vehicular cloud environment

Data storage is one of the major applications of vehicular cloud computing (VCC) where the data is shared concurrently among many vehicles participating in vehicular communications. Integrity and non-repudiation are some of the important security challenges encountered during the provisioning of data storage services. This paper proposes an integrity and non-repudiation verification scheme in a dynamic vehicular cloud storage environment. Vehicle authentication is performed by employing Boneh-Lynn-Shacham (BLS) short signature mechanism. The cryptographic hash function and bitwise exclusive-OR (XOR) operation provide data integrity checking of messages which are uploaded from the vehicle to the cloud. RSU acts as a trusted verifier for data transactions. We evaluated the efficiency of the proposed scheme against standard attacks such as replay attack and tampering attack. Extensive simulations are carried out and the results are compared to ID-based cryptographic schemes. The scheme proposed achieved better in terms of computation overhead, average throughput and communication overhead.

Medical Image Encryption Based on Josephus Traversing and Hyperchaotic Lorenz System.

This study proposes a new medical image encryption scheme based on Josephus traversing and hyperchaotic Lorenz system. First, a chaotic sequence is generated through hyperchaotic system. This hyperchaotic sequence is used in the scrambling and diffusion stages of the algorithm. Second, in the scrambling process, the image is initially confused by Josephus scrambling, and then the image is further confused by Arnold map. Finally, generated hyperchaos sequence and exclusive OR operation is used for the image to carry on the positive and reverse diffusion to change the pixel value of the image and further hide the effective information of the image. In addition, the information of the plaintext image is used to generate keys used in the algorithm, which increases the ability of resisting plaintext attack. Experimental results and security analysis show that the scheme can effectively hide plaintext image information according to the characteristics of medical images, and is resistant to common types of attacks. In addition, this scheme performs well in the experiments of robustness, which shows that the scheme can solve the problem of image damage in telemedicine. It has a positive significance for the future research.

Energy Efficient Dynamic Symmetric Key Based Protocol for Secure Traffic Exchanges in Smart Homes

Highly sensitive information about people’s social life and daily activities flows in smart home networks. As such, if attackers can manage to capture or even eavesdrop on this information, the privacy of the users can be compromised. The consequences can be far-reaching, such as knowing the status of home occupancy that can then facilitate burglary. To address these challenges, approaches such as data aggregation and signcryption have been utilized. Elliptic curve cryptography, bilinear pairing, asymmetric key cryptosystem, blockchain, and exponential operations are among the most popular techniques deployed to design these security solutions. However, the computational, storage and communication complexities exhibited by the majority of these techniques are too high. This renders these techniques unsuitable for smart home components such as smart switches and sensors. Some of these schemes have centralized architectures, which present some single points of failure. In this paper, symmetric key authentication procedures are presented for smart home networks. The proposed protocol leverages on cryptographic primitives such as one-way hashing and bitwise exclusive-Or operations. The results indicate that this scheme incurs the lowest communication, storage, and computation costs compared to other related state-of-the-art techniques. Empirically, our protocol reduces the communication and computation complexities by 16.7% and 57.7%, respectively. In addition, it provides backward key secrecy, robust mutual authentication, anonymity, forward key secrecy, and unlinkability. Moreover, it can effectively prevent attacks such as impersonation, session hijacking, denial of service, packet replays, man-in-the-middle, and message eavesdropping.

Privacy conserving authenticated key settlement approach for remote users in IoT based Telecare Medicine information system

The Fourth Healthcare Industrial Revolution is transforming the traditional healthcare service to Internet of Things (IoT) based smart healthcare system. Telecare medicine information system (TMIS) is one of them which demands 100% electronic transaction. In this situation, User authentication, fortifies the legitimate patients, doctors, medical helper staffs, etc. Not only that, but it also allows them to access the remote medical servers to serve medical services. Robust and Efficient user authentication plays a vital role here. Many researchers proposed different techniques, but all of them have different limitations like computational expenses, huge memory usage, excessive communication overhead, etc. In this article, a very lightweight authentication approach of remote user is demonstrated in IoT based smart healthcare environment. This approach optimizes the use of one-way hash function, exclusive-or operation and extended One-Time-Password which make the authentication approach lighter and effective. The security strength of the recommended protocol is elaborated with the help of informal and formal security analysis. Well known BAN logic and Real-Or-Random (ROR) model are used in to check the correctness of the protocol and ensure the security of the established session key. In addition to that, AVISPA (automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications) and ProVerif software simulation tools are utilized which parade, the proposed protocol is safe and secure against many attacks like Man-In-The-Middle attack and Replay attack, Ephemeral secret leakage attack, Known-session-specific-temporary-information attack, Impersonation attack, etc. and maintain the secrecy of the session key. Furthermore, the recommended protocol is compared with the existing/recently published protocols to exhibit better performance.

A dynamic S-box generation based on a hybrid method of new chaotic system and DNA computing

S-box is one of the most significant structures used to construct encryption that is strong and resistant to attacks in encryption algorithms. The new 4D-hyper chaotic system and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) computing are used in this paper to provide a new dynamic S-box generating approach. The 4D generated numbers are processed to generate a hexadecimal number that will encode using the DNA coding method and using addition, subtraction, and exclusive-or operations to produce the final DNA string decoded to make the S-Box. The dynamic form of s-boxes is represented by a minor change in the initial conditions of the proposed chaotic method that will generate dynamic sequences of numbers. The proposed method enhances the security criteria of the block ciphers. The S-box testing criteria were done like strict avalanche, balanced, and bit independence criteria, in addition to differential approximation probability and linearity approximation probability, to test the security of the new S-Box. The results show that the new S-box has good security and is resistant to attacks.