An efficient block cipher based on multiple optimal quasigroups

An efficient block cipher that uses 16 optimal quasigroups is proposed in this paper. All the 16 optimal quasigroups are created using the 16 optimal S-boxes of 4 × 4 bits with the lowest differential and linearity characteristics. These S-boxes are secure against differential and linear attacks. The new block cipher is implemented in C++, compared its performance with the existing quasigroup based block ciphers, and found that the proposed cipher is more efficient than existing quasigroup based proposals. The proposed cipher is analysed against various attacks, including differential and linear attacks, and we found it to be resistant to these attacks. Also, we evaluated our cipher using various statistical tests of the NIST-STS test suite, and we found it to pass each of these tests. We also established in this study that the randomness of our cipher is almost the same as that of the AES-128.