<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<article article-type="Research Article">
  <front>
    <journal-meta>
      <journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">journal-of-discrete-mathematical-sciences-and-cryptography</journal-id>
      <journal-title-group>
        <journal-title>Journal of Discrete Mathematical Sciences and Cryptography</journal-title>
      </journal-title-group>
      <issn publication-format="electronic">2169-0065</issn>
      <issn publication-format="print">0972-0529</issn>
      <publisher>
        <publisher-name>Taru Publications</publisher-name>
      </publisher>
    </journal-meta>
    <article-meta>
      <article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.1080/09720529.2021.1923921</article-id>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>On the use of Egyptian fractions for stream ciphers</article-title>
      </title-group>
      <contrib-group>
        <contrib contrib-type="author" corresp="yes">
          <name>
            <surname>Cherkaoui</surname>
            <given-names>I.</given-names>
          </name>
          <aff>Department of Mathematics and Information Security, Faculty of Sciences, Laboratory of Mathematics, Computing and Applications, Mohammed V University in Rabat, P. O. Box 1014 RP, Rabat, Morocco</aff>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <name>
            <surname>Zinoun</surname>
            <given-names>F.</given-names>
          </name>
          <aff>Department of Mathematics and Information Security, Faculty of Sciences, Laboratory of Mathematics, Computing and Applications, Mohammed V University in Rabat, P. O. Box 1014 RP, Rabat, Morocco</aff>
        </contrib>
      </contrib-group>
      <volume>26</volume>
      <issue>1</issue>
      <fpage>139</fpage>
      <lpage>152</lpage>
      <pub-date date-type="pub">
        <day>14</day>
        <month>11</month>
        <year>2021</year>
      </pub-date>
      <abstract>
        <p>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.</p>
      </abstract>
      <kwd-group>
        <kwd>Egyptian fractions</kwd>
        <kwd>Number theory</kwd>
        <kwd>Chaos</kwd>
        <kwd>Cryptography</kwd>
      </kwd-group>
      <custom-meta-group>
        <custom-meta>
          <meta-name>access</meta-name>
          <meta-value>open</meta-value>
        </custom-meta>
        <custom-meta>
          <meta-name>retracted</meta-name>
          <meta-value>no</meta-value>
        </custom-meta>
      </custom-meta-group>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
</article>
