Increasing Randomization of Ciphertext in DNA Cryptography

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) cryptography is becoming an emerging area in hiding messages, where DNA bases are used to encode binary data to enhance the randomness of the ciphertext. However, an extensive study on existing algorithms indicates that the encoded ciphertext has a low avalanche effect of providing a desirable confusion property of an encryption algorithm. This property is crucial to randomize the relationship between the plaintext and the ciphertext. Therefore, this research aims to reassess the security of the existing DNA cryptography by modifying the steps in the DNA encryption technique and utilizing an existing DNA encoding/decoding table at a selected step in the algorithm to enhance the overall security of the cipher. The modified and base DNA cryptography techniques are evaluated for frequency analysis, entropy, avalanche effect, and hamming weight using 100 different plaintexts with high density, low density, and random input data, respectively. The result introduces good performances to the frequency analysis, entropy, avalanche effect, and hamming weight, respectively. This work shows that the ciphertext generated from the modified model yields better randomization and can be adapted to transmit sensitive information.

@article{Imdad2021,
  title     = {Increasing Randomization of Ciphertext in DNA Cryptography},
  journal   = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
  volume    = {12},
  number    = {10},
  year      = {2021},
  publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
  author    = {Maria Imdad and Sofia Najwa Ramli and Hairulnizam Mahdin},
  doi       = {10.14569/IJACSA.2021.0121047},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2021.0121047}
}