Generating cryptography keys using self-organizing maps

Abstract

This paper presents a method to generate cryptography keys instead of exchange them over a public communication channel. Session keys exchange is considered as a major problem to be resolved in a communication network. When two terminals exchange data through an unsecured public channel, they use cryptography techniques to prohibit a third terminal from intercepting exchanged data. Symmetric cryptography is largely used regarding to the short time needed to execute encryption and decryption compared to asymmetric cryptography. Since the channel is unsecure to data exchange, so it is unsecure to key exchange which should be secure and the key should be changed periodically to assure a high security. Instead of exchanging session keys, we suggest a simple and secure method of key generation in the transmitter and the receiver using self organizing maps. We suggest three methods to use self-organizing maps for secret key generation. The paper shows the ability of the SOM to generate secret keys by two ways: the fake-key and the key index. Also it shows the possibility to add a mask to improve the security of keys transmission.