Symmetric Cipher Research Articles

Randomized nonlinear software-oriented MDS diffusion layers

Abstract MDS diffusion layers are critical components in the design of symmetric ciphers. In this paper, after introducing some new algebraic structures, we provide new MDS matrices over special types of R-modules. With the help of the proposed methodology, we have more flexibility in designing software-oriented diffusion layers. Most notably, we construct randomized and/or nonlinear MDS diffusion layers, based upon the presented theoretical results, and discuss the resistance of the presented diffusion layers against various kinds of cryptanalysis, compared with classical linear diffusion layers.

SAL – A Lightweight Symmetric Cipher for Internet-of-Things

The modern era of computing demands high-speed performance and maximizing efficiency for commercial applications and business modules. Embedded systems and devices are unlike traditional computer systems. The computing power of the embedded device is very limited to perform a specific task, it consumes little hardware footprint and operates at electronic high speed by minimizing clock cycles and memory management. Embedded security issues and security challenges are a major concern resisting against advanced cryptanalytic attacks. In this research, we propose a new lightweight cryptographic algorithm SAL (Secure Advanced Lightweight). The algorithm is based on NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) standards and guidelines in design implementation of SAL to secure lower end of the device spectrum are internet of things (IoT), wireless sensors network (WSNs), aggregation network, pervasive devices, Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, and embedded devices. SAL operates on the 64-bit block with a key size of 64-bit to 128- bit for 14 rounds of Feistel function. The internal structure of SAL powered with tiny 16-bit S-box using composite field arithmetic (CFA) technology. Our experimental results prove SAL has high efficiency and high throughput to achieve optimum performance when compared with standard cryptographic algorithms

Efficient & secure cipher scheme with dynamic key-dependent mode of operation

Security attacks are constantly on the rise leading to drastic consequences. Several security services are required more than ever to prevent both passive and active attacks such as Data Confidentiality (DC). A DC security service is typically based on a strong symmetric cipher algorithm. However, some of today’s applications, such as real-time applications and those running on constrained devices, require efficient lightweight cipher schemes that can achieve a good balance between the security level and system performance. Recently, a set of lightweight cryptographic algorithms has been proposed to that end, which is based on a dynamic key approach. The dynamic structure enables the reduction of the number of rounds to the minimum possible value of just one or two rounds, which minimizes the computational overhead without degrading the security level. This paper follows the dynamic key-dependent cipher logic and proposes a new flexible lightweight technique with or without the reliance on the chaining mode of operation. Furthermore, the dynamic key changes for each input message, which leads to different cipher primitives such as substitution and permutation tables, in addition to round keys. Also, the proposed mode of operation is based on the dynamic key approach whereby blocks are selected and mixed according to a dynamic permutation table. Accordingly, different plaintext messages are encrypted differently while preserving the avalanche effect. Finally, we conduct security and performance analysis to validate the efficiency and robustness of the proposed cipher scheme as compared to traditional ciphers and to the recently proposed dynamic key-dependent ciphers.

Measuring Performances of a White-Box Approach in the IoT Context

The internet of things (IoT) refers to all the smart objects that are connected to other objects, devices or servers and that are able to collect and share data, in order to “learn” and improve their functionalities. Smart objects suffer from lack of memory and computational power, since they are usually lightweight. Moreover, their security is weakened by the fact that smart objects can be placed in unprotected environments, where adversaries are able to play with the symmetric-key algorithm used and the device on which the cryptographic operations are executed. In this paper, we focus on a family of white-box symmetric ciphers substitution–permutation network (SPN)box, extending and improving our previous paper on the topic presented at WIDECOM2019. We highlight the importance of white-box cryptography in the IoT context, but also the need to have a fast black-box implementation (server-side) of the cipher. We show that, modifying an internal layer of SPNbox, we are able to increase the key length and to improve the performance of the implementation. We measure these improvements (a) on 32/64-bit architectures and (b) in the IoT context by encrypting/decrypting 10,000 payloads of lightweight messaging protocol Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT).

Lorentz Chaotic System key generation with Low Area FPGA Implementation using Present Security Algorithm

Recently, the study of lightweight symmetric ciphers has gained more importance because of high requirement in the services for security in the CCNs (Constrained Computing Environments): Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), Internet of Things (IoT). A lightweight cipher is a cryptographic algorithm which is used for low resource device, minimal area optimization, low power design and attains sufficient security level. Size of the key is considered as major challenges in the cryptographic algorithms, because it increases the complexity of the cryptographic algorithm. To overcome this issue and improve the security, Lorentz Chaotic System (LCS) based PRESENT architecture is introduced in this research. The PRESENT lightweight block cipher is selected due to it is most general and famous lightweight algorithms. Hence, the random numbers were generated for a key purpose by using an LCS circuit. The streaming data will be encrypt and decrypt by using this algorithm. In this research, the modified lightweight block cipher algorithm is called as LCS- PRESENT architecture. Finally, the performance of LCS - PRESENT architecture was evaluated by FPGA hardware utilizations such as Lookup Table (LUT), flip flop, slices, and frequency. The security level of LCS- PRESENT architecture was analysed based on encrypted and decrypted results in XILINX tool. The LCS- PRESENT architecture utilizes the FPGA device to attain maximum accuracy and throughput, such as 30 of LUTs, 115 of flip flops and 47 of slices from available sources compared to existing cryptographic algorithms.

Construction of resilient Boolean functions in odd variables with strictly almost optimal nonlinearity

Construction of resilient Boolean functions in odd variables having strictly almost optimal (SAO) nonlinearity is a challenging problem in coding theory and symmetric ciphers. In this paper, we propose a new method to obtain SAO resilient Boolean functions. By combining this method with High-Meets-Low construction technique, we can obtain resilient functions with better resiliency order and currently best known nonlinearity.

Comparative Study of Cryptographic Algorithms

This paper presents a comparative study of two cryptosystems, Data Encryption Standard (DES) and the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) schemes. DES is a symmetric (or private) key cipher. This means that the same key is used for encryption and decryption. RSA, on the other hand, is an asymmetric (or public) key cipher, meaning that two keys are used, one for encryption and the other for decryption. The objective of this paper is to implement these two schemes in software. The program is written in the Java™ language. It generates a key from a passphrase given by the user, encrypts and decrypts a message using the same key, for the case of DES. In RSA, decryption is done by computing the decryption key from the encryption key. Finally, the program returns the time taken to encrypt and decrypt a message.

Development of kleptographic mechanisms into hash functions

This research belongs to kleptographic problems of hash functions. Relevance of the research follows from importance of hash functions in hybrid cryptosystem and also from existence of kleptographic attack vectors on such systems. Currently, there are numerous results at kleptography in symmetric ciphers and asymmetric crypto protocols which demonstrate different aspects of kleptographic trapdoor implementation, however, a few of them highlight kleptographic problems of hash functions. Insufficiency of researches in hash kleptography problems leads to kleptography related risks in hash function at designing and standardization stage. In this article, we analyse ways to develop hash functions with kleptographic trapdoor. One of informal requirements for such functions is ''proximity'' to famous and common used constructions, i.e. it must be based on common schemes, that are used for development of well known hash functions. In current paper, it's suggested to build trapdoored hash function based on Merkle-Damgard scheme, which is the base of numerous of wide spread hash function. As compression function we choose one of the well known compression function schemes which are based on block ciphers and are proved to be collision resistant (like as Davice-Mayer or Miyaguchi-Preneel constructions). Instead of block ciphers in compression function we use special transformation based of Discrete Logarithm Problem and prove collision resistance preserving. The final result of the research is hash function with kleptographic trapdoor which allows developer effectively recover part of message (till 50\%) using knowledge of hash digest and secret in the kleptographi trapdoor design. In the same time, this function is still secure for other users who don't own design's secret

Efficient implementation of lightweight block ciphers on volta and pascal architecture

Lightweight block ciphers based on symmetric cipher are tailored to addressing security issues for highly constrained Internet of things devices. In this article, we explore general software implementations of lightweight ciphers on GPU architectures, with a special focus on LED, Piccolo and PRESENT. First, we implement the lightweight block ciphers using lookup table based technique. Then we analyze the effect of different factors on the encryption performance, such as the size of lookup table, the parallelism level, the use of different type of memory and the idle state caused by data transmission. We evaluated the three lightweight block ciphers on Nvidia Tesla V100 and Nvidia GTX1060 GPUs. Finally, the experimental result shows a great improvement on all the investigated ciphers compared to the unoptimized implementations.

Secure Symmetric Block Cipher Design for Encrypting the Bitcoin Wallets in Cryptocurrencies Applications

This paper proposes a new symmetric secret-key cipher for construction of block cipher model. This new approach is considered as a smart step that can be applied to the long process research of modern designing methods used in developing earlier symmetric algorithms. The present cipher can encrypt block lengths of 128-bit by employing Substitution-Permutation Network (SPN) structure. The present cipher uses three options of strong ciphering-key along with variable lengths of 192-bit for 12 rounds, 128-bit for 10 rounds and long ciphering key of 256-bit for 14 rounds similar to standard ciphers. The proposed algorithm has been designed to trust applications that are based on Bitcoin and crypto-currencies. The current algorithm intended to encrypt addresses of Bitcoin wallet that work quite similar to the e-mail address. The bitcoin wallet includes sensitive information like private secret keys and derived password that are highly confidential. The Advance Encryption Standard (AES) is employed to encrypt most of the bitcoin wallet database. The proposed cipher can act as a good substitute for the standard cipher that allows trusting the Bitcoin wallet database with high security and with a much more complex scheme. The key goal of the submitted algorithm is to build a new enhanced modern cipher with a secure and efficient applicable algorithm that can be used for crypto currencies applications employing a wide trail design strategy.

The code for securing web applications

Web applications are becoming more and more prominent in our daily lives. A challenge that follows is protecting these applications from unauthorised users. This paper introduces a scheme for generating and verifying authentication codes, where these codes can be implemented to restrict the access to only the intended users of the web application. The scheme incorporates a changing key acquired from a secret key and a random number, a symmetrical block cipher and the Message Authentication Code system to produce multiple different authentication codes that are linked to each user’s personal identification. By using cryptography, this design embeds mathematical structure within the codes, making it superior to current database systems.

Clustering Based Physical-Layer Authentication in Edge Computing Systems with Asymmetric Resources.

In this paper, we propose a clustering based physical-layer authentication scheme (CPAS) to overcome the drawback of traditional cipher-based authentication schemes that suffer from heavy costs and are limited by energy-constrained intelligent devices. CPAS is a novel cross-layer secure authentication approach for edge computing system with asymmetric resources. The CPAS scheme combines clustering and lightweight symmetric cipher with physical-layer channel state information to provide two-way authentication between terminals and edge devices. By taking advantage of temporal and spatial uniqueness in physical layer channel responses, the non-cryptographic physical layer authentication techniques can achieve fast authentication. The lightweight symmetric cipher initiates user authentication at the start of a session to establish the trust connection. Based on theoretical analysis, the CPAS scheme is secure and simple, but there is no trusted party, while it can also resist small integer attacks, replay attacks, and spoofing attacks. Besides, experimental results show that the proposed scheme can boost the total success rate of access authentication and decrease the data frame loss rate, without notable increase in authentication latencies.

A Lightweight Mutual Authentication Scheme for Power Edge Computing System

Because of heavy cost, using of the traditional Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) authentication schemes is limited for the energy-constrained intelligent devices such as the power edge computing system, in which lightweight secure authentication schemes are urgent needed. In this paper, we propose a lightweight mutual authentication scheme supported by the edge computing, which is a novel cross-layer secure authentication program with asymmetric resources. The novel scheme combines lightweight symmetric cipher and physical-layer Channel State Information (CSI) to provide two-way authentication between terminals and edge devices. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme can significantly reduce the access authentication latency compared with the traditional PKI authentication scheme.

On the Constructions of New Symmetric Ciphers Based on Nonbijective Multivariate Maps of Prescribed Degree

The main purpose of this paper is to introduce stream ciphers with the nonbijective encryption function of multivariate nature constructed in terms of algebraic graph theory. More precisely, we describe the two main symmetric algorithms for creation of multivariate encryption transformations based on three families of bipartite graphs with partition sets isomorphic to Kn, where K is selected as the finite commutative ring. The plainspace of the algorithm is Ω={x∣∑xi∈K⁎, x∈Kn}⊂Kn,Ω≅K⁎×Kn-1. The second algorithm is a generalization of the first one with using the jump operator, where generalized encryption map has an essentially higher degree in comparison with the previous version. Moreover, the degree of this generalized map is not bounded by some constant. This property guarantees resistance of the cipher to linearization attacks.

STUDIES ON STATISTICAL ANALYSIS AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION FOR SOME STREAM CIPHERS

This paper presents the results of the comparative analysis of safety statistics and performance of encryption, the Strumok stream symmetric cipher (proposed for the national encryption standard of Ukraine) with other known cryptographic transformation algorithms, such as SALSA20, SNOW2.0, HC, AES with usages in stream mode, etc. They are accepted as national, international standards or are presented by the New European Schemes for Signatures, Integrity, and Encryptions (NESSI), Cryptography Research and Evaluation Committees (CRYPTREC) and others. The result of safety statistics is an analysis of the cryptographic properties of the output sequences using statistical test sets developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST STS) and the DIEHARD tests. The result of the study of performance is the evaluation of the use of central processing unit (CPU) time to convert one octet of data to 64-bit computing platforms, following the test profile used in the eSTREAM contest.

A novel chaotic image encryption algorithm based on content-sensitive dynamic function switching scheme

This paper proposes a novel chaotic image encryption algorithm based on a content-sensitive dynamic function switching mechanism. The proposed encryption algorithm is a symmetric cipher, operating on 1D byte sequence. Three independent chaotic maps are utilized for scrambling plain image bytes in order to realize confusion and diffusion properties. The first chaotic map is used for choosing one out of previously encrypted bytes, the second for choosing one out of remaining bytes not encrypted yet, and the last for determining a stochastic value to be externally injected into the stream simply by exclusive-or operation. An innovative content-sensitive dynamic function switching mechanism introducing more random behavior is incorporated in order to ensure high sensitivity to slight changes in plain image bytes. The proposed cryptosystem has gone through various common security analyses and tests to prove its validity. The results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves high security level regarding information entropy, key space, key sensitivity, and resistance to differential, data loss and noise attacks.

Statistical Analysis and Security Evaluation of Chaotic RC5-CBC Symmetric Key Block Cipher Algorithm

In some previous research works, it has been theoretically proven that RC5-CBC encryption algorithm behaves as a Devaney topological chaos dynamical system. This unpre-dictable behavior has been experimentally illustrated through such sensitivity tests analyses encompassing the avalanche effect phenomenon evaluation. In this paper, which is an extension of our previous work, we aim to prove that RC5 algorithm can guarantee a much better level of security and randomness while behaving chaotically, namely when embedded with CBC mode of encryption. To do this, we have began by evaluating the quality of such images encrypted under chaotic RC5-CBC symmetric key encryption algorithm. Then, we have presented the synthesis results of an hardware architecture that implements this chaotic algorithm in FPGA circuits.

A New Type of Signature Scheme Derived from a MRHS Representation of a Symmetric Cipher

A New Type of Signature Scheme Derived from a MRHS Representation of a Symmetric Cipher

New Transport Layer Security using Metaheuristics and New Key Exchange Protocol

The easiness of data transmission is one of the information security flaws that needs to be handled rigorously. It makes eavesdropping, tampering and message forgery by malicious more simple. One of the protocols developed to secure communication between the client and the server consists of using Transport Layer Security (TLS). TLS is a cryptographic protocol that allows encryption using record protocol, authentication and data integrity. In this paper, a new TLS version is proposed, named Transport Layer Security with Metaheuristics (TLSM), which is based on a recently designed metaheuristic symmetric ciphering technique for data encryption, combined with hash function SHA-SBOX and a new method for private key exchange. Compared to the existing TLS versions, the suggested protocol outperform all of them in terms of level of security of the encrypted data, key management and execution time.

Optimizing a Password Hashing Function with Hardware-Accelerated Symmetric Encryption

Password-based key derivation functions (PBKDFs) are commonly used to transform user passwords into keys for symmetric encryption, as well as for user authentication, password hashing, and preventing attacks based on custom hardware. We propose two optimized alternatives that enhance the performance of a previously published PBKDF. This design is based on (1) employing a symmetric cipher, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), as a pseudo-random generator and (2) taking advantage of the support for the hardware acceleration for AES that is available on many common platforms in order to mitigate common attacks to password-based user authentication systems. We also analyze their security characteristics, establishing that they are equivalent to the security of the core primitive (AES), and we compare their performance with well-known PBKDF algorithms, such as Scrypt and Argon2, with favorable results.