Variable-length Hill Cipher with MDS Key Matrix

2012/10/06 by Kondwani Magamba, Magamba, Kondwani, Solomon Kadaleka +3
Computer Science · Mathematics · #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Information Theory (cs.IT) #cs.CR #cs.IT #math.IT

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1210.1940

arxiv created 2012/10/06 · arxiv updated 2012/10/09

Abstract

The Hill Cipher is a classical symmetric cipher which breaks plaintext into blocks of size m and then multiplies each block by an m by m key matrix to yield ciphertext. However, it is well known that the Hill cipher succumbs to cryptanalysis relatively easily. As a result, there have been efforts to strengthen the cipher through the use of various techniques e.g. permuting rows and columns of the key matrix to encrypt each plaintext vector with a new key matrix. In this paper, we strengthen the security of the Hill cipher against a known-plaintext attack by encrypting each plaintext matrix by a variable-length key matrix obtained from a Maximum Distance Separable (MDS) master key matrix.

Related

• A Vector Space Approach to Generate Dynamic Keys for Hill Cipher
• Key Matrix Generation Using Random Functions in Hill Cipher Modulo 95 Cryptography
• Dynamic MDS Matrices for Substantial Cryptographic Strength
• On the construction of ultra-light MDS matrices
• Enhancing the Hill Cipher Algorithm and Employing a One Time Pad Key Generation Technique