Encryption Algorithm Based on One Time Pad and DNA

Abstract

Security of data is an important field of information technology. This paper proposes a new encryption algorithm, which is fast, simple, inexpensive, robust, and flexible. Our new encryption technique is based on the combination of the one-time-pad concept and DNA (Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid) gene banks. In our algorithm, the plaintext is first reduced as close as possible to its true entropy by feeding it into a good compression algorithm. The sender generates a 256-bit random number, R, and uses it as an index into an agreed-upon gene bank, which contains billions of DNA bases. As the one-time-pad, the sender then translates a sequence, K, of DNA bases starting from position R into binary string with a length that equals half the number of bits of the compressed plaintext CP. The cipher text is finally produced by XORing CP with the one-time-pad K. The receiver performs the reverse operation to get the plain text after receiving R from the sender over a secure channel (e.g., RSA-encrypted channel). We ran a suite of statistical tests and concluded that the outputs of our proposed algorithm were random, which means that a cryptanalyst must try exhaustive key search to break it.