TARU PUBLICATIONS
Journal of Discrete Mathematical Sciences and Cryptography cover
Open Access ·Peer-reviewed·ISSN (Online): 2169-0065·ISSN (Print): 0972-0529

Monthly Journal: Publishes theoretical and applied research in all areas of Discrete Mathematical Sciences, Cryptography, Combinatorics, Elliptic Curves and Information Security.

Issues up to 2022 co-published with and available at:Taylor & Francis Online
submissions@tarupublications.com
Open Access Research Article

On the use of Egyptian fractions for stream ciphers

* ,

* Corresponding author · click or hover a name for details

pp. 139–152Vol. 26Issue 1February 2021DOI: 10.1080/09720529.2021.1923921 Crossmark XML
Received:
30 Sep 2020
Accepted:
28 Feb 2021
Published Online:
14 Nov 2021
Article type:
Research Article
Language:
EN
Article no.:
JDMSC-1336
Pages:
139–152

Abstract

Within the scope of the mutual interference between modern number theory and chaos-based cryptography, and as it is well-known and already explored for the decimal or the continued fraction expansion of irrational numbers, interesting random-like behaviors seem to be hidden in Egyptian fraction expansions, thus suggesting new chaos-based encryption systems. In fact, at a practical level, and as will be shown through the present study, concatenation of involved denominators and binary expansion generally lead to pseudo-random streams which satisfactorily pass the NIST statistical test suite for randomness. Then, to a certain extent, and for cryptographic purposes, this can be considered as a new tool to complete the conventional class of already-in-use pseudo-random number generators. Some mathematical issues, however, have to be clarified, as for example the chaoticity of the process obtained after converting these denominators to fractional parts of a wandering sequence of real numbers in the unit interval. To the best of our knowledge, and from a cryptographic point of view, previous works on the subject are limited to statistical tests (and subsequent cryptographic analysis) of the resulting one-time pads or stream ciphers, but no rigorous study has been conducted to justify these methods within chaos theory. Considering Egyptian expansions as a working example and using the term “chaotic” in the sense of Devaney, this is what our proposal is aimed at in the present work.

Keywords

Subject Classifications

11A5537A2574H65 & 94A60

References

  1. Shannon, C. E. (1948) ‘A Mathematical Theory of Communication’, The Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 27, pp. 379-423, 623-656. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-7305.1948.tb01338.x [Crossref][Web of Science ®][Google Scholar]
  2. Pecora, L. M. and Carroll, T. L. (1990) ‘Synchronization in chaotic systems’, Phys. Rev. Lett., 64, 821. doi: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.64.821 [Crossref][PubMed][Web of Science ®][Google Scholar]
  3. Baptista, M. S. (1998) ‘Cryptography with chaos’, Physics Letters A, 240(12), 50-54. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0375-9601(98)00086-3 [Crossref][Google Scholar]
  4. Kocarev, L. and Lian, S. (2011) ‘Chaos-Based Cryptography: Theory, Algorithms and Applications’, Studies in Computational IntelligenceSpringer, Volume 354. [Google Scholar]
  5. Kane, A. M. (2013) ‘On the use of continued fractions for stream ciphers’, IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive, In Proceedings of Security and Management 2009, Las Vegas. [Google Scholar]
  6. Mikram, J.Zinoun, F. and Hamri, M. (2012) ‘An Encryption Algorithm Based on the Decimal Expansion of Irrationals’, Applied Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 6, no. 70, 3475-3494[Google Scholar]
  7. Masmoudi, A.Puech, W.Bouhlel, M. S. (2010) ‘An Efficient PRBG Based on Chaotic Map and Engel Continued Fractions’, J. Software Engineering & Applications, 3, 1141-1147. doi: https://doi.org/10.4236/jsea.2010.312133 [Crossref][Google Scholar]
  8. Hussain A. YounisIsraa M. HayderIsraa Shakir Seger and Hameed Abdul-Kareem Younis, (2020) ‘Design and implementation of a system that preserves the confidentiality of stream cipher in non-linear flow coding’, Journal of Discrete Mathematical Sciences and Cryptography, 23:7, 1409-1419. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09720529.2020.1714890[Taylor & Francis Online][Web of Science ®][Google Scholar]
  9. Fibonacci, L. (trad. Laurence E.Sigler)(2002) ‘Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci: A Translation Into Modern English of Leonardo Pisano’s Book of Calculation’Springer-Verlag[Google Scholar]
  10. Devaney, R. L. (1989) ‘An introduction to chaotic dynamical systems’, Addison-Wesley[Google Scholar]
  11. Erdös, P.Rényi, A., and Szüsz, P. (1958) ‘On Engel’s and Sylvester’s series’, Ann. Univ. Sci. Budapest., Eötvös Sect. Math. 1, 7-32[Google Scholar]
  12. Rènyi, A. (1962) ‘A new approach to the theory of Engel’s series.’, Ann. Univ. Sci. Budapest, Sectio Math. 5 (1962), 25-32[Google Scholar]
  13. Hardy, G. H. and Wright, E. M. (1979) ‘An introduction to the theory of numbers’, Fifth edThe Clarendon Press Oxford University Press[Google Scholar]
  14. Rukhin, A.Soto, J.Nechvatal, J.Smid, M.Barker, E.Leigh, S.Levenson, M.Vangel, M.Banks, D.Heckert, A. and Dray, J. (2010) ‘A Statistical Test Suite for Random and Pseudorandom Number Generators for Cryptographic Applications’, National Institute of Standards and Technology, computer security, Special Publication 800-22, Revision 1a. [Google Scholar]
Views: 98Downloads: 5Citations: 1