A Block Cipher Based on Hybrid Radius-1 Cellular Automata
Everton R. Lira, Bastien Chopard, Luiz Gustavo A. Martins and Gina M. B. Oliveira
The proposed cryptographic model, VHCA, is a novel approach to encryption using cellular automata. This block cipher algorithm enables encryption and decryption of a plaintext using an arrangement of radius-1 CA toggle rules, expressed as a binary secret key, to encrypt blocks having 128-bits or more. While hybrid CA forward evolution is used for encryption, a deterministic preimage computation logic is used for decryption. Promising results were obtained using periodic boundary condition, which favors diffusion, in combination with multiple permutive rules that are inherently balanced functions. Evaluations of the method using statistical randomness test suites, NIST and PractRand, point to the cryptographic robustness of VHCA.
Keywords: Cryptography, block cipher, hybrid cellular automata, preimage, reversibility, parallelism
DOI: 10.32908/jca.v18.290824