Enhancement of Caesar Cipher Algorithm using Four Keys

Salah Abdulghani Alabady; Thabita Fawaz Shawkat; Amina Waad Adrees

doi:10.62760/iteecs.4.2.2025.121

Authors

Salah Abdulghani Alabady Computer Engineering Department, College of Engineering, University of Mosul, Mosul – 41002, Iraq https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9687-2724
Thabita Fawaz Shawkat Computer Engineering Department, College of Engineering, University of Mosul, Mosul – 41002, Iraq
Amina Waad Adrees Computer Engineering Department, College of Engineering, University of Mosul, Mosul – 41002, Iraq

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.62760/iteecs.4.2.2025.121

Keywords:

Caesar Cipher, Network Security, Cybersecurity, Brute Force, Encryption

Abstract

There are serious worries about possible cybersecurity risks and the necessity for reliable solutions as the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes more integrated into our daily lives. IoT security is crucial to preserving the privacy and accuracy of user data. Nowadays, cryptography is a key component of information security systems' defense against hostile attacks. The Caesar cipher is one of the most popular encryption-decryption methods. The encrypted text is evolved by the use of a substitution method. This type of replacement cipher uses a key, which is a numerical value, to split the letters and replaces each letter in the plaintext with a letter at a predetermined moment. The goal of this research is to create a technique with a higher level of security than the original algorithm. It suggests altering the encryption algorithm for the Caesar cipher, which would complicate the procedure. The Caesar cipher has been improved by using extended ASCII code instead of ASCII code, in addition to adding alphabets, integers, and symbols. Additionally, we use four different keys (Key1, Key2, Key3, and Key4) to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed method. The length of the primary key is 128 bits. It has been split into four halves, or four keys, each of which has a key length of 32 bits. The encryption strength of the modified Caesar cipher was assessed using the Brute Force attack, which was then compared to the Caesar method. The results showed that the Caesar method was broken and that the value of the key used in the encryption process was discovered, despite the fact that the proposed algorithm was unknown and revealed the value of the encryption key.

References

M. Albany, E. Alsahafi, I. Alruwili, and S. Elkhediri "A review: Secure Internet of thing System for Smart Houses”, Procedia Computer Science, Vol. 201, pp. 437-444, 2022.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2022.03.057

T. Abdullah, W. Ali, S. Malebary, and A. A. Ahmed “A review of cyber security challenges attacks and solutions for Internet of Things based smart home," International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, Vol. 19, No. 9, pp. 139-146, 2019. [CrossRef]

M. Algarni, M. Alkhelaiwi, and A. Karrar, "Internet of things security: A review of enabled application challenges and solutions," International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 201-215, 2021. [CrossRef]

S. Chandra, S. Bhattacharyya, S. Paira and S. S. Alam, "A study and analysis on symmetric cryptography," 2014 International Conference on Science Engineering and Management Research (ICSEMR), Chennai, India, pp. 1-8, 2014.

https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSEMR.2014.7043664

G. Sharma and A. Kakkar, “Cryptography Algorithms and approaches used for data security”, International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Vol. 3, No. 6, pp. 1-6, 2012. [CrossRef]

Y. J. Lee, K. R. Park, S. J. Lee, K. Bae and J. Kim, "A New Method for Generating an Invariant Iris Private Key Based on the Fuzzy Vault System," in IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B (Cybernetics), Vol. 38, No. 5, pp. 1302-1313, Oct. 2008,

https://doi.org/10.1109/TSMCB.2008.927261

S. Saudagar, N. Kamtalwar, H. Karadbhajne, M. Karmarkar, H. Kendre and O. Ketkar, "File Encryption-Decryption using Java," 2023 International Conference on Intelligent Data Communication Technologies and Internet of Things (IDCIoT), Bengaluru, India, pp. 855-859, 2023.

https://doi.org/10.1109/IDCIoT56793.2023.10053514

K. Goyal and S. Kinger, “Modified caesar cipher for better security enhancement”, International Journal of Computer Applications, Vol. 73, No. 3, pp. 0975-8887, 2013. [CrossRef]

M. D. Sinaga, N. S. B. Sembiring, F. Tambunan and C. J. M. Sianturi, "Hybrid Cryptography WAKE (Word Auto Key Encryption) and Binary Caesar Cipher Method for Data Security," 2018 6th International Conference on Cyber and IT Service Management (CITSM), Parapat, Indonesia, 2018, pp. 1-5, 2018.

https://doi.org/10.1109/CITSM.2018.8674346

A. Jain, R. Dedhia, and A. Patil, “Enhancing the security of caesar cipher substitution method using a randomized approach for more secure communication," arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.05483, 2015.

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1512.05483

D. Buddh and V. K. Srivastav, "Hybrid three layer Fibonacci Caesar Cipher," 2022 International Interdisciplinary Humanitarian Conference for Sustainability (IIHC), Bengaluru, India, pp. 1567-1573, 2022.

https://doi.org/10.1109/IIHC55949.2022.10059848

A. H. Disina “Robust Caesar Cipher against frequency cryptanalysis using bi-directional shifting”, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, 2014. [CrossRef]

B. Purnama, and A. H. H Rohayani “A new modified caesar cipher cryptography method with legibleciphertext from a message to be encrypted”, Procedia Computer Science, Vol. 59, pp. 195-204, 2015.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2015.07.552

M. Kothari, M. Shah, M. Malde, and A. Wad, “Comcrypt: An Encryption Algorithm based on Vernam cipher”, International Journal on Computer Science and Technology (IJCST), Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 364-367, 2012. [CrossRef]

G. Pinheiro and S. Saraf, “Improved Caesar cipher algorithm using multistage encryption”, IJCSIT) International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technologies, IJCST, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 117-119, 2016. [CrossRef]

A. Albugmi, M. O. Alassafi, R. Walters and G. Wills “Data security in cloud computing”, 2016 Fifth International Conference on Future Generation Communication Technologies (FGCT), London, UK, pp. 55-59, 2016.

https://doi.org/10.1109/FGCT.2016.7605062

M. Cardei, A. Marcus, I. Cardei and T. Tavtilov, “Web-based heterogeneous WSN integration using pervasive communication”, 30th IEEE International Performance Computing and Communications Conference, Orlando, FL, USA, pp. 1-6, 2011.

https://doi.org/10.1109/PCCC.2011.6108065

S. N. Gowda, "Innovative enhancement of the Caesar cipher algorithm for cryptography," 2016 2nd International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communication, & Automation (ICACCA) (Fall), Bareilly, India, pp. 1-4, 2016.

https://doi.org/10.1109/ICACCAF.2016.7749010

M. Srivastava, U. Srivastava and S. Srivastava, "Modified Caesar Cipher with Image Steganography," 2023 6th International Conference on Information Systems and Computer Networks (ISCON), Mathura, India, pp. 1-6, 2023.

https://doi.org/10.1109/ISCON57294.2023.10111954

A. Saraswat, C. Khatri, P. Thakral, and P. Biswas. “An extended hybridization of vigenére and caesar cipher techniques for secure communication”, Procedia Computer Science, Vol. 92, pp. 355-360, 2016.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2016.07.390

Z. West, ASCII Table, Available at https://www.alpharithms.com/ascii-table-512119/

Extended ASCII Code Available at https://www.asciitable.com/2018