Chaos-Based Symmetric Key Cryptosystems

摘要

Chaos theory is the study of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions and exhibit seemingly random behavior. From the perspective of cryptography and information security, randomness generated from entirely deterministic systems is a very appealing property. As such, the application of chaos in modern cryptography has been a topic of much research and debate for over a decade. This paper presents an overview of chaotic dynamics and their role in symmetric key chaos-based cryptosystems from both a theoretical and practical perspective. It is argued that chaos-based ciphers are not likely to succeed until a valid and accepted definition of discrete chaos in finite domains is established, the inefficiencies of chaos-based cipher implementations are improved, and thorough security analysis reveals them to be comparable to standardized cryptographic primitives.