Security improvement on an anonymous key agreement protocol based on chaotic maps

In 2009, Tseng et al. proposed a password sharing and chaotic map based key agreement protocol (Tseng et al.’s protocol). They claimed that the protocol provided mutual authentication between a server and a user, and allowed the user to anonymously interact with the server to establish a shared session key. However, in 2011, Niu et al. have proved that Tseng et al.’s protocol cannot guarantee user anonymity and protocol security when there is an internal adversary who is a legitimate user. Also it cannot provide perfect forward secrecy. Then Niu et al. introduced a trust third party (TTP) into their protocol designing (Niu et al.’s protocol). But according to our research, Niu et al.’s protocol is found to have several unsatisfactory drawbacks. Based on reconsidering Tseng et al.’s protocol without introducing TTP, we give some improvements to meet the original security and performance requirements. Meanwhile our proposed protocol overcomes the security flaws of Tseng et al.’s protocol.     

Efficiency and security problems of anonymous key agreement protocol based on chaotic maps

In 2011, Niu-Wang proposed an anonymous key agreement protocol based on chaotic maps in [Niu Y, Wang X. An anonymous key agreement protocol based on chaotic maps. Commun Nonlinear Sci Simulat 2011;16(4):1986-92]. Niu-Wang’s protocol not only achieves session key agreement between a server and a user, but also allows the user to anonymously interact with the server. Nevertheless, this paper points out that Niu-Wang’s protocol has the following efficiency and security problems: (1) The protocol has computational efficiency problem when a trusted third party decrypts the user sending message. (2) The protocol is vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS) attack based on illegal message modification by an attacker.     

Security of a key agreement protocol based on chaotic maps

Kacorev et al. proposed new public key encryption scheme using chaotic maps. Subsequently, Bergamo et al. has broken Kacorev and Tasev’s encryption scheme and then applied the attack on a key agreement protocol based on Kacorev et al.’s system. In order to address Bergamo et al.’ attack, Xiao et al. proposed a novel key agreement protocol. In this paper, we will present two attacks on Xiao et al.’s key agreement protocol using chaotic maps. Our new attack method is different from the one that Bergamo et al. developed. The proposed attacks work in a way that an adversary can prevent the user and the server from establishing a shared session key even though the adversary cannot get any private information from the user and the server’s communications.     

An improved key agreement protocol based on chaos

Cryptography based on chaos theory has developed fast in the past few years, but most of the researches focus on secret key cryptography. There are few public key encryption algorithms and cryptographic protocols based on chaos, which are also of great importance for network security. We introduce an enhanced key agreement protocol based on Chebyshev chaotic map. Utilizing the semi-group property of Chebyshev polynomials, the proposed key exchange algorithm works like Diffie–Hellman algorithm. The improved protocol overcomes the drawbacks of several previously proposed chaotic key agreement protocols. Both analytical and experimental results show that it is effective and secure.     

Multiple-watermarking scheme based on improved chaotic maps

In this letter a new watermarking scheme for color image is proposed based on a family of the pair-coupled maps. Pair-coupled maps are employed to improve the security of watermarked image, and to encrypt the embedding position of the host image. Another map is also used to determine the pixel bit of host image for the watermark embedding. The purpose of this algorithm is to improve the shortcoming of watermarking such as small key space and low security. Due to the sensitivity to the initial conditions of the introduced pair-coupled maps, the security of the scheme is greatly improved.     

An extended method for obtaining S-boxes based on three-dimensional chaotic Baker maps

Tang et al. proposed a novel method for obtaining S-boxes based on the well-known two-dimensional chaotic Baker map. Unfortunately, some mistakes exist in their paper. The faults are corrected first in this paper and then an extended method is put forward for acquiring cryptographically strong S-boxes. The new scheme employs a three-dimensional chaotic Baker map, which has more intensive chaotic characters than the two-dimensional one. In addition, the cryptographic properties such as the bijective property, the nonlinearity, the strict avalanche criterion, the output bits independence criterion and the equiprobable input/output XOR distribution are analyzed in detail for our S-box and revised Tang et al.’s one, respectively. The results of numerical analysis show that both of the two boxes can resist several attacks effectively and the three-dimensional chaotic map, a stronger sense in chaotic characters, can perform more smartly and more efficiently in designing S-boxes.     

An image encryption scheme with a pseudorandom permutation based on chaotic maps

Many research efforts for image encryption schemes have elaborated for designing nonlinear functions since security of these schemes closely depends on inherent characteristics of nonlinear functions. It is commonly believed that a chaotic map can be used as a good candidate of a nonlinear component for image encryption schemes. We propose a new image encryption algorithm using a large pseudorandom permutation which is combinatorially generated from small permutation matrices based on chaotic maps. The random-like nature of chaos is effectively spread into encrypted images by using the permutation matrix. The experimental results show that the proposed encryption scheme provides comparable security with that of the conventional image encryption schemes based on Baker map or Logistic map.     

Pseudo-random number generator based on mixing of three chaotic maps

A secure pseudo-random number generator three-mixer is proposed. The principle of the method consists in mixing three chaotic maps produced from an input initial vector. The algorithm uses permutations whose positions are computed and indexed by a standard chaotic function and a linear congruence. The performance of that scheme is evaluated through statistical analysis. Such a cryptosystem lets appear significant cryptographic qualities for a high security level.     

A novel method for designing S-boxes based on chaotic maps

A method for obtaining cryptographically strong 8 × 8 S-boxes based on chaotic maps is presented and the cryptographical properties such as bijection, nonlinearity, strict avalanche criterion, output bits independence criterion and equiprobable input/output XOR distribution of these S-boxes are analyzed in detail. The results of numerical analysis also show that the S-boxes proposed are of the above properties and can resist the differential attack. Furthermore, our approach is suitable for practical application in designing cryptosystem.     

An improved chaotic cryptosystem with external key

In recent years, external key was introduced to chaotic cryptography by Pareek et al. and find its application in several discrete chaotic cryptosystems. The first part of this paper is devoted to the analysis of their essential weaknesses as well as some redundancies that contribute little to the security of those cryptosystems. Then, an improved scheme with all existing deficiencies and redundancies eliminated, is proposed. Theoretic analysis and numerical simulation both verify its superiority and security.     

A fast image encryption and authentication scheme based on chaotic maps

In recent years, a variety of chaos-based image cryptosystems have been proposed. The key used for encryption/decryption is usually independent of the plain-image. To achieve a satisfactory level of security, at least two overall rounds of the substitution-diffusion process are required so that a change in any pixels of the plain-image spreads over the whole cipher-image. Moreover, the receiver is not able to determine whether the decrypted image is exactly the one sent. In this paper, a fast image encryption and authentication scheme is proposed. In particular, a keyed hash function is introduced to generate a 128-bit hash value from both the plain-image and the secret hash keys. The hash value plays the role of the key for encryption and decryption while the secret hash keys are used to authenticate the decrypted image. Simulation results show that satisfactory security performance is achieved in only one overall round. The speed efficiency is thus improved.     

An application of deterministic chaotic maps to model packet traffic

We investigate the application of deterministic chaotic maps to model traffic sources in packet based networks, motivated in part by recent measurement studies which indicate the presence of significant statistical features in packet traffic more characteristic of fractal processes than conventional stochastic processes. We describe one approach whereby traffic sources can be modeled by chaotic maps, and illustrate the traffic characteristics that can be generated by analyzing several classes of maps. We outline a potential performance analysis approach based on chaotic maps that can be used to assess the traffic significance of fractal properties. We show that low order nonlinear maps can capture several of the fractal properties observed in actual data, and show that the source characteristics observed in actual traffic can lead to heavy-tailed queue length distributions. It is our conclusion that while there are considerable analytical difficulties, chaotic maps may allow accurate, yet concise, models of packet traffic, with some potential for transient and steady state analysis.     

Chaotic map based key agreement with/out clock synchronization

In order to address Bergamo et al.’s attack, Xiao et al. proposed a key agreement protocol using chaotic maps. Han then presented three attacks on Xiao et al.’s protocol. To enhance the security of key agreement based on chaotic maps, Chang et al. proposed a new key agreement using passphrase, which works in clock synchronization environment. However, their protocol still has some issues: one is its passphrase is not easy to remember and much longer than password; the second one is it cannot resist guessing attack if the constructed passphrase is easy to remember and also has already existed in some rational dictionaries; the third one is it cannot work without clock synchronization. In this paper, we will present two different key agreement protocols, which can resist guessing attack. The first one works in clock synchronization environment. The second one can work without clock synchronization. They both use authenticated password for secure communications. The protocols are secure against replaying attacks and a shared session key can be established.     

Obtaining a secure and efficient key agreement protocol from (H)MQV and NAXOS

LaMacchia, Lauter and Mityagin recently presented a strong security definition for authenticated key agreement strengthening the well-known Canetti-Krawczyk definition. They also described a protocol, called NAXOS, that enjoys a simple security proof in the new model. Compared to MQV and HMQV, NAXOS is less efficient and cannot be readily modified to obtain a one-pass protocol. On the other hand MQV does not have a security proof, and the HMQV security proof is extremely complicated. This paper proposes a new authenticated key agreement protocol, called CMQV (‘Combined’ MQV), which incorporates design principles from MQV, HMQV and NAXOS. The new protocol achieves the efficiency of HMQV and admits a natural one-pass variant. Moreover, we present a relatively simple and intuitive proof that CMQV is secure in the LaMacchia-Lauter-Mityagin model.      

Cryptography using multiple one-dimensional chaotic maps

Recently, Pareek et al. [Phys. Lett. A 309 (2003) 75] have developed a symmetric key block cipher algorithm using a one-dimensional chaotic map. In this paper, we propose a symmetric key block cipher algorithm in which multiple one-dimensional chaotic maps are used instead of a one-dimensional chaotic map. However, we also use an external secret key of variable length (maximum 128-bits) as used by Pareek et al. In the present cryptosystem, plaintext is divided into groups of variable length (i.e. number of blocks in each group is different) and these are encrypted sequentially by using randomly chosen chaotic map from a set of chaotic maps. For block-by-block encryption of variable length group, number of iterations and initial condition for the chaotic maps depend on the randomly chosen session key and encryption of previous block of plaintext, respectively. The whole process of encryption/decryption is governed by two dynamic tables, which are updated time to time during the encryption/decryption process. Simulation results show that the proposed cryptosystem requires less time to encrypt the plaintext as compared to the existing chaotic cryptosystems and further produces the ciphertext having flat distribution of same size as the plaintext.     

Strange distributionally chaotic triangular maps II

The notion of distributional chaos was introduced by Schweizer and Smítal [Measures of chaos and a spectral decomposition of dynamical systems on the interval, Trans Am Math Soc 1994;344:737–854] for continuous maps of the interval. For continuous maps of a compact metric space three mutually non-equivalent versions of distributional chaos, DC1–DC3, can be considered. In this paper we study distributional chaos in the class of triangular maps of the square which are monotone on the fibres. The main results: (i) If has positive topological entropy then F is DC1, and hence, DC2 and DC3. This result is interesting since similar statement is not true for general triangular maps of the square [Smítal and Štefánková, Distributional chaos for triangular maps, Chaos, Solitons & Fractals 2004;21:1125–8]. (ii) There are which are not DC3, and such that not every recurrent point of F₁ is uniformly recurrent, while F₂ is Li and Yorke chaotic on the set of uniformly recurrent points. This, along with recent results by Forti et al. [Dynamics of homeomorphisms on minimal sets generated by triangular mappings, Bull Austral Math Soc 1999;59:1–20], among others, make possible to compile complete list of the implications between dynamical properties of maps in , solving a long-standing open problem by Sharkovsky.     

Logistic chaotic maps for binary numbers generations

Two pseudorandom binary sequence generators, based on logistic chaotic maps intended for stream cipher applications, are proposed. The first is based on a single one-dimensional logistic map which exhibits random, noise-like properties at given certain parameter values, and the second is based on a combination of two logistic maps. The encryption step proposed in both algorithms consists of a simple bitwise XOR operation of the plaintext binary sequence with the keystream binary sequence to produce the ciphertext binary sequence. A threshold function is applied to convert the floating-point iterates into binary form. Experimental results show that the produced sequences possess high linear complexity and very good statistical properties. The systems are put forward for security evaluation by the cryptographic committees.     

Stochastic control stabilizing unstable or chaotic maps

This paper considers a stabilizing stochastic control which can be applied to a variety of unstable and even chaotic maps. Compared to previous methods introducing control by noise, we relax assumptions on the class of maps, as well as consider a wider range of parameters for the same maps. This approach allows to stabilize unstable and chaotic maps by noise. The interplay between the map properties and the allowed neighbourhood where a solution can start to be stabilized is explored: as instability of the original map increases, the interval of allowed initial conditions narrows. A directed stochastic control aiming at getting to the target neighbourhood almost sure is combined with a controlling noise. Simulations illustrate that for a variety of problems, an appropriate bounded noise can stabilize an unstable positive equilibrium, without a limitation on the initial value.     

An optimization algorithm based on chaotic behavior and fractal nature

In this paper, we propose a new optimization technique by modifying a chaos optimization algorithm (COA) based on the fractal theory. We first implement the weighted gradient direction-based chaos optimization in which the chaotic property is used to determine the initial choice of the optimization parameters both in the starting step and in the mutations applied when a convergence to local minima occurred. The algorithm is then improved by introducing a method to determine the optimal step size. This method is based on the fact that the sensitive dependence on the initial condition of a root finding technique (such as the Newton–Raphson search technique) has a fractal nature. From all roots (step sizes) found by the implemented technique, the one that most minimizes the cost function is employed in each iteration. Numerical simulation results are presented to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm.