Chaotic iterations, a tool formerly used in distributed computing, hasrecently revealed various interesting properties of disorder leading to its usein the computer science security field. In this paper, a comprehensive study ofits topological behavior is proposed. It is stated that, in addition to beingchaotic as defined in the Devaney's formulation, this tool possesses theproperty of topological mixing. Additionally, its level of sensibility,expansivity, and topological entropy are evaluated. All of these propertieslead to a complete unpredictable behavior for the chaotic iterations. As itonly manipulates binary digits or integers, we show that it is possible to useit to produce truly chaotic computer programs. As an application example, atruly chaotic hash function is proposed in two versions. In the second version,an artificial neural network is used, which can be stated as chaotic accordingto Devaney.
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