A Novel DNA Techniques to Strengthen Cryptographic Permutation Tables in Encryption Algorithm

Cryptography has long safeguarded sensitive data within information security. Recently, integrating traditional cryptographic methods with Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) technologies sparked interest, giving rise to DNA cryptography. This hybrid approach seeks to leverage both domains to enhance security measures and explore new avenues for encryption and data protection. DNA-based cryptography combines a transdisciplinary structure of natural sciences specifically biology, and technological sciences, particularly information security. A good cryptosystem should accommodate Shannon’s confusion and diffusion properties. However, recent studies in DNA cryptography do not consider these two properties in the cryptographic design. This research introduces a novel approach to cryptographic permutation techniques utilizing DNA-based methodologies to achieve good diffusion properties. It begins with foundational DNA concepts, including DNA encoding/decoding rules, Watson-Crick complementary rules, and DNA hybridization. Subsequently, the paper proposes a new cryptographic DNA-based Permutation Table called the DNA P-Box as a secure cryptographic primitive. Security analysis of the DNA P-Box is then performed, focusing on three key aspects: Correlation Coefficient, Bit Error Rate (BER), and Key Sensitivity. Results from the analysis demonstrate the robustness of the DNA P-Box in maintaining cryptographic security properties. The average Correlation Coefficient value calculated for the DNA P-Box is 0.01665, which is concentrated around the lower range of the Correlation Coefficient values. The average Bit Error Rate for the DNA P-Box is 50.20%, close to the optimum value. The Key Sensitivity assessment shows the average Correlation Coefficient value ranges from -0.44262 to 0.57447, with an average Bit Error Rate of 50.74%. Overall, this study highlights the promising potential of DNA-based permutation techniques in enhancing cryptographic security and presents avenues for further exploration in this domain towards the reliability of the encryption algorithm.