Dutra e Silva Junior, ÉC. orcid.org/0009-0002-2130-2123, Cruz, C.A.D.M. orcid.org/0000-0002-0614-1379, Saraiva, I.A.L. orcid.org/0000-0001-6016-0768 et al. (5 more authors) (2025) Chaos-Based S-Boxes as a Source of Confusion in Cryptographic Primitives. Electronics, 14 (11). 2198. ISSN 2079-9292
Abstract
In recent years, many chaos-based encryption algorithms have been proposed. Many of these are based on established designs and populate their S-boxes with values derived from chaotic maps, following conventional implementation strategies to enable comparison with their original non-chaotic counterparts. In contrast, this work proposes a novel approach: a Chaos-Based Substitution Box (CB-SBox) implementation, in which conventional ROM-based S-boxes are replaced by a digital circuit that directly executes a selected chaotic map. This method enables the construction of S-boxes with long word lengths through an FPGA-based programmable circuit that allows for variable S-box lengths, facilitating the analysis of S-boxes of varying sizes, and ultimately enhancing security, particularly for larger S-boxes, as demonstrated by increased resistance to linear and differential cryptanalysis. Furthermore, the proposed CB-SBox achieves reductions in both area and power consumption compared to size-comparable ROM-based S-boxes. A 19-bit chaos-based S-box consumes just 0.0238% of the area and 0.0241% of the power required by an equivalent ROM-implemented S-box while providing the same level of security. The inherent unpredictability of non-linear chaotic behavior causes the proposed chaos-based S-boxes to exhibit non-bijective characteristics, making them well suited for application in non-invertible cryptographic primitives, such as hash functions and Feistel networks. The proposed CB-SBox is implemented in a Feistel network as described in the literature, and the results are provided.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2025 by the authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | substitution boxes (s-boxes); chaos; chaotic map; encryption; cryptographic primitives; Feistel networks; linear and differential cryptanalysis; field-programmable gate array (FPGA); FPGA-based programmable circuit; application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Computing (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 30 May 2025 10:00 |
Last Modified: | 30 May 2025 10:00 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/electronics14112198 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:227226 |