Stream Cipher Based on Game Theory and DNA Coding

Abstract

Securing communication over public communication channels is one of the challenging issues in the field of cryptography and information security. A stream cipher is presented as an approach for securing exchanged data between different parties through encryption. The core of stream cipher relies on its keystream generator, that is responsible for generating random and secure keystream of encrypting streaming data. Thus, the security of the keystream is measured by its randomness and its resistance to statistical and cryptanalytic attacks. As there is always a trade-off between the security and performance while designing new cryptographic primitives, we introduce a game theory-based stream cipher that performs fast and utilises the unpredictable behaviour of prisoners' dilemma players to generate random sequences that serve as keystreams. To assure further security, the ciphertext is coded by DNA bases that are randomly scrambled at the beginning of every iteration of generating new keystream. The proposed stream cipher's performance and security are thoroughly examined in terms of randomness, performance, and resistance to cryptanalytic attacks. The experiments show that our stream cipher can encrypt around 1230 Mbit/s. Statistically, our proposed stream cipher passed the NIST statistical tests successfully.

Enhanced Parallelized DNA-Coded Stream Cipher Based on Multiplayer Prisoners’ Dilemma

“…Recently, a stream cipher based on a two-player prisoner's dilemma (2PD) game and DNA coding was introduced in [17]. The cipher generates keystreams from rounds of PD games played between two players.…”

“…In conclusion, the application of game theory and DNA approaches provides benefits in the cryptographic field. This work presents an enhanced design of the promising stream cipher introduced in [17]. The main contributions that our enhanced design offers are related to security and performance (Section 4).…”

“…With reference to [17], the basic design of the algorithm needs a 256-bit secret key (SecK) and four 8-bit initial vectors (denoted as Val 1 , Val 2 , Val 3 and Val 4 ) for producing a 512-bit keystream/round. The design of the algorithm utilises randomness in most of the components (core operations) to avoid correlations and statistical dependencies.…”

“…The design of the algorithm utilises randomness in most of the components (core operations) to avoid correlations and statistical dependencies. As we are enhancing the original formation of the DNAcoded stream cipher proposed in [17], we will employ the same notations used in that study:…”

“…Recently, by considering the game theory and DNA coding, a stream cipher was introduced [17]. The cipher offers an alternative methodology that is based on generating a keystream through a game played between two players following/applying the prisoner's dilemma paradigm.…”