SCKHA: A New Stream Cipher Algorithm Based on Key Hashing and Splitting Technique

Abstract

Cryptographic algorithms are playing an important role in the information security field. Strong and unbreakable algorithms provide high security and good throughput. The strength of any encryption algorithm is basically based on the degree of difficulty to obtain the encryption key by such cyber-attacks as brute. It is supposed that the bigger the key size, the more difficult it is to compute the key. But increasing the key size will increase both the computational complexity and the processing time of algorithms. In this paper, we proposed a reliable, effective, and more secure symmetric stream cipher algorithm for encryption and decryption called Symmetric Cipher based on Key Hashing Algorithm (SCKHA). The idea of this algorithm is based on hashing and splitting the encryption symmetric key. Hashing the key will hide the encrypted key to prevent any intruder from forging the hash code, and, thus, it satisfies the purpose of security, authentication, and integrity for a message on the network. In addition, the algorithm is secure against a brute-force attack by increasing the resources it takes for testing each possible key. Splitting the hashed value of the encryption key will divide the hashed key into two key chunks. The encryption process performed using such one chunk based on some calculations on the plaintext. This algorithm has three advantages that are represented in computational simplicity, security and efficiency. Our algorithm is characterized by its ability to search on the encrypted data where the plaintext character is represented by two ciphertext characters (symbols).