Open Access

ARTICLE

An Innovative Technique for Constructing Highly Non-Linear Components of Block Cipher for Data Security against Cyber Attacks

Abid Mahboob¹, Muhammad Asif², Rana Muhammad Zulqarnain^3,*, Imran Siddique⁴, Hijaz Ahmad⁵, Sameh Askar⁶, Giovanni Pau⁷

1 Department of Mathematics, Division of Science and Technology, University of Education, Lahore, Pakistan
2 Department of Mathematics, University of Management and Technology, Sialkot Campus, Sialkot, 51310, Pakistan
3 School of Mathematical Sciences, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, 321004, China
4 Department of Mathematics, University of Management and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan
5 Section of Mathematics, International Telematic University Uninettuno, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 39, Roma, 00186, Italy
6 Department of Statistics and Operations Research, College of Science, King Saud University, P. O. Box 2455, Riyadh, 11451, Saudi Arabia
7 Faculty of Engineering and Architecturer-Kore University of Enna, Enna, 94100, Italy

* Corresponding Author: Rana Muhammad Zulqarnain. Email:

Computer Systems Science and Engineering 2023, 47(2), 2547-2562. https://doi.org/10.32604/csse.2023.040855

Received 01 April 2023; Accepted 06 June 2023; Issue published 28 July 2023

Abstract

The rapid advancement of data in web-based communication has created one of the biggest issues concerning the security of data carried over the internet from unauthorized access. To improve data security, modern cryptosystems use substitution-boxes. Nowadays, data privacy has become a key concern for consumers who transfer sensitive data from one place to another. To address these problems, many companies rely on cryptographic techniques to secure data from illegal activities and assaults. Among these cryptographic approaches, AES is a well-known algorithm that transforms plain text into cipher text by employing substitution box (S-box). The S-box disguises the relationship between cipher text and the key to guard against cipher attacks. The security of a cipher using an S-box depends on the cryptographic strength of the respective S-box. Therefore, various researchers have employed different techniques to construct high order non-linear S-box. This paper provides a novel approach for evolving S-boxes using coset graphs for the action of the alternating group over the finite field and the symmetric group . The motivation for this work is to study the symmetric group and coset graphs. The authors have performed various analyses against conventional security criteria such as nonlinearity, differential uniformity, linear probability, the bit independence criterion, and the strict avalanche criterion to determine its high cryptographic strength. To evaluate its image application performance, the proposed S-box is also used to encrypt digital images. The performance and comparison analyses show that the suggested S-box can secure data against cyber-attacks.

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Keywords

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