Intelligent Automation & Soft Computing Tech Science Press

DOI:10.32604/iasc.2022.022743
Article

Construction of Key-dependent S-box for Secure Cloud Storage

A. Indumathi* and G. Sumathi

Department of Information Technology, Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering, Sriperumbudur, 602117, India
*Corresponding Author: A. Indumathi Email: [email protected]
Received: 17 August 2021; Accepted: 28 September 2021

Abstract: As cloud storage systems have developed and been applied in complex
environments, their data security has become more prevalent in recent years. The
issue has been approached through many models. Data is encrypted and stored in
these models. One of the most widely used encryption methods is the Advanced
Encryption Standard (AES). In AES, the Substitution box(S-box) is playing a sig-
nificant part in imparting the job of confusion. The security of the entire crypto-
system depends on its nonlinearity. In this work, a robust and secure S-box is
constructed using a novel method, i.e., fingerprint features-based permutation
function. Two stages are considered to construct a strong S-box. Firstly, random
numbers are generated from the fingerprint features such as bifurcation and ridge
endings of the user transmitting data. Subsequently, the permutation function is
adapted on the random numbers (developed in the first stage) to augment the
strength of the S-box. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
STS 800-22 test suite is considered to evaluate the randomness of the enhanced
fingerprint-based S-box. Also, the robustness of the constructed S-box is tested
using cryptographical properties, namely Strict Avalanche Criterion (SAC),
Nonlinearity (NL), Differential Approximation (DA) probability and output Bits
Independence Criterion (BIC). Later, the cryptographical properties of the pro-
posed S-box are compared with several existing S-boxes. After analyzing the
characteristics of the proposed scheme, it is revealed that the newly constructed
S-box is powerful, robust, and safe against linear and differential assaults.

Keywords: Information Security; Cryptography; fingerprint; minutiae points;

permutation function; substitution box (S-box)

1 Introduction
A new trend in the computer field is cloud computing, which is used as a method of storing data. The
physical storage device makes it impossible to store huge amounts of confidential or sensitive information.
Therefore, cloud computing comes into play for storing the data in accordance with their needs. As long as
the data is stored in the cloud, it is easily accessible to all, and maintaining its confidentiality is not possible.
To protect the data from unauthorized user, encrypted data can be stored into the cloud. Encryption is the
process which converts the plain text into an unreadable form. It has two significant types of encryption
techniques which are symmetric cryptosystem, asymmetric cryptosystem. Symmetric cryptosystem uses a

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
work is properly cited.
1510 IASC, 2022, vol.32, no.3

single key for both encryption and decryption. Stream cipher and Block cipher are the two categories of the
Symmetric cryptosystem. Block cipher encrypts a block of plaintext at a time and uses confusion, diffusion
process. It is hard for reverse encryption. On the other hand, stream cipher encrypts a plaintext byte-by-byte
or bit-by-bit. It is dependent only on confusion, and also reversing the encrypted text is easy. Merely, a block
cipher is more efficient than a stream cipher encryption algorithm. Substitution-Permutation and Feistel
cipher are the two categories of block cipher encryption.
Many new cryptographic techniques are evolving recently, notably quantum computing and post-
quantum cryptography. Post-quantum cryptography is a method to establish a new cryptosystem that
offers better security against classical and quantum computers. NIST has recommended the AES
256 block cipher encryption algorithm as quantum-resistant, and it is one of the widely used block cipher
encryption algorithms. AES converts the plaintext into ciphertext with a different number of round of
operations. The number of rounds depends on the key length. Each round consists of set of operations
that use a different key which includes Substitution and permutation operations. These are the essential
function in AES which provides confusion and diffusion by using S-box and P-box respectively.
Diffusion is the property that conceals the bond between the plaintext and ciphertext, accomplished
through transposition function. P-Box (Permutation box) is responsible for diffusion operation. Confusion
is the sole nonlinear component of S-box. It hides the relationship between the ciphertext and the key. S-
box provides confusion by replacing one set of bits with another set of bits. Therefore, it is cumbersome
for the attacker to find the key from the ciphertext. The complexity of the confusion process depends
upon the robustness of an S-box. As the AES uses a static S-box in each round, it allows the attacker to
cryptanalyze the ciphertext that is produced by the block cipher. In order to overcome this limitations,
various methods have been suggested by the researchers for constructing S-box. Namely, Chaotic
systems, affine transformation, Algebraic operations, Heuristic methods and etc. In this paper, A novel
method is presented to get the robust S-box using fingerprint features. The robustness and the strength of
the S-box is examined by the standard cryptographical properties needs to be examined to define the
strength and robustness of an S-box. An intense literature study is carried out and described in the below
section considering these needs.

1.1 Related Existing Work

Several authors have demonstrated numerous works to construct a robust S-box for effective operation.
An intense literature study is carried out and portrayed below.
Jamal S.S [1] proposed the Mobius transformation method and chaotic Tent Sine system and proved that
the generated S-box was strong. Wang et al. constructed dynamic S-boxes by using logistic map and Kent
map [2]. Authors in [3] made use of Liu J S-boxes [4] as initial seed to construct 40320 S-boxes by utilizing
S8 permutation operation on the elements of Liu J S-boxes. In [5], authors suggested Quantum Walk (QW)
based S-box and used for designing a different steganography technique. Cryptographic QW S-box
guaranteed high security, good visual quality, and high embedding capacity. But it requires seed values to
generate the S-box.
Malik et al. [6] proposed chaos-based affine transformation generation and rotational matrices to
generate dynamic AES S-boxes. It also entailed closer to optimal cryptographic properties, and therefore
the proposed S-boxes are equal to AES S-box. Tian et al. [7] constructed an S-box by combining the
Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm and six-dimensional hyperchaotic map (CSABC). It yielded a
cryptographically strong S-box. In Reference [8], S-box was constructed based on the linear group action
of a finite local ring. Authors in [9] utilized a Spatiotemporal nonlinear chaotic system and permutation
function to construct the S-box. It had an improved output bit independence criterion and capacity to
resist linear password attacks. Siddiqui et al. [10] constructed 8*8 robust S-box by adapting adjacency
matrixes on the Galois field. Authors in [11] used the composition of transposition for constructing
IASC, 2022, vol.32, no.3 1511

bijective S-boxes. They claimed that the proposed method has better cryptographic properties. Hussain et al.
Constructed nonlinear S-boxes using Symmetric group, Mobius transformation, and Chaotic logistic map
[12]. It had the potential to generate a high resistant S-box. In [13], authors used Cascaded quantum-
inspired quantum walks and chaos inducement for generating S-box. Özkaynak et al. [14] constructed an
S-box by employing FO chaotic Chen system and predictor-corrector scheme. But it failed to satisfy the
bijectivity property. Khan et al. [15] proposed Gingerbreadman chaotic map and S8 permutation to build
an efficient S-box. It was efficient for secure communications. Khan et al. [16] constructed an S-box from
the binary chaotic sequences. They considered algebraic degree, Balancedness, Algebraic immunity,
Correlation immunity to find the strength of the S-box. They didn’t evaluate some of the S-box properties
like nonlinearity, differential uniformity, and SAC. Random numbers were generated from the fingerprint
[17]. Dwivedi et al. [18] used the fingerprint of the sender and receiver to generate a symmetric key
along with the Diffie-Hellman algorithm

1.2 Research Gap and Motivation

As discussed above, Researchers have proposed numerous methods to construct the strong S-box,
notably the Pseudo-random number generator algorithm, inversion mapping, heuristic method, power
polynomial, linear fractional transformation, algebraic method, and chaos-based system to generate the
initial S-box due to its high randomness, nonlinearity, and simplicity. Followed by complex mathematical
operations, and permutations were applied to improve the strength of the S-box. However, it adapted the
initial seed values to produce the random number sequence. The attacker could easily predict these seed
values that may reduce the reliability of the design. Therefore, it is essential to construct an S-box with
unpredictable random sequences.
Here, we propose a method of constructing S-boxes using the fingerprint features of the sender [19] and
Zigzag transformation-based permutation [20] for improving the performance of the S-box. The key reason
for using fingerprint feature are as follows; fingerprint is unique for a human being, unpredictable in nature,
and non-transferrable. It produces unique and random values that have better resistant to cryptanalysis
attacks. The constructed S-box is utilized for at least ten rounds to encrypt the data in the AES algorithm.
The S-box provides confusion by performing substitution operations among data while encrypting it.
Then, the Permutation operation is employed to perform the transposition. Hence it is more difficult for
the attackers to reach the original plaintext. In this way, the proposed S-box provides a higher level of
security. Our proposed system is simple when compared with the existing approaches and constructs a
highly secure, unpredictable S-box. We verified the numerical results of the standard cryptographical
properties (SAC, NL, BIC-SAC, BIC-NL, DU), and the results show that the S-box proposed is strong.

1.3 Objectives
Based on the perceived research gaps, this work targets the following objectives:

To construct the initial S-box using biometric features of the user like ridges and bifurcations

To adapt Zigzag transformation-based permutation function on initial S-box for optimal S-box design.

To investigate the randomness of the fingerprint-based S-box using NIST SP 800-22 data.

To analyze the cryptographical properties of the proposed scheme using the online tool ‘S-box
analyzer’ [21].

To design a robust S-box for effective security systems compared with existing methods.
The rest of the article is structured as follows: Section 2 represents the proposed method and its design
factors such as image acquisition, preprocessing, and permutation; Section 3 describes the analysis features
of constructed S-box using various characteristics; Section 4 demonstrates a detailed comparative study
1512 IASC, 2022, vol.32, no.3

considering the previous works; Section 5 concludes the article based on the observed outcome from the
proposed scheme.

2 Proposed Method and its Design

The elements of the S-box ought to be random, highly nonlinear. And, it needs to satisfy the basic
cryptographical properties to use for encryption and decryption. Therefore, random numbers are
generated from the adapted fingerprint patterns of the user transmitting the information. It has many
special features, including spur, ridge endings, core points, ridge dots, bifurcations, delta points, ridge
islands, ponds, and bridges. These are also known as minutiae points that can determine uniqueness, and
the most frequently used features are ridges and bifurcations. In this work, we have constructed the S-box
in two stages. Initially, we have built an S-box using the ridge and bifurcation features and explained in
Section 2.1. And then, Zigzag transformation-based permutation is applied over the initial S-box to
enhance the strength of the S-box. The user who wants to store their information in the cloud can encrypt
the data using the enhanced fingerprint-based S-box. This allows the right person to decrypt the ciphertext.

2.1 Construction of Fingerprint-based S-box

Fingerprint-based S-box construction consists of four phases. It includes fingerprint image acquisition,
preprocessing, feature extraction, and mathematical operations on the feature coordinates to fill the S-box. In
order to prove that any fingerprint can provide a strong S-box, we have taken fingerprints of two users for our
experiment.

2.1.1 Image Acquisition

In this stage, the biometric scanner scans the user’s fingerprint. Notably, the fingerprint image’s quality
depends on the scanner‘s quality and the finger’s position during the scanning process. It is not easy to extract
accurate minutiae points from the poor-quality image. The researchers state that a good quality scanner can
acquire 25 to 100 minutiae points. The observed source image of User1 and User2 from the scanner is shown
in Fig. 1a.

Figure 1: (a) Original Image from Scanner (b) Binarized Image (c) Thinned Image (d) Minutiae Extraction
IASC, 2022, vol.32, no.3 1513

2.1.2 Preprocessing
It plays a principal role in enhancing the quality of the acquired image. It helps to extract required
features with high accuracy from the fingerprint image using the defined functions such as binarization
and thinning.
i. Binarization: It is the process of transforming the acquired image into black and white (0’s and 1’s)
through thresholding, as illustrated in Fig. 1b. The term thresholding is a technique of image
segmentation that extracts the foreground image from the background image by comparing every pixel
value of an image Iðv; cÞ with the threshold value ðT Þ. If the pixel value is larger than the threshold
value, it changed to white; otherwise, it maintains a black image as given in Eq. (1).


1; 8Iðv; cÞ  T;
gðv; cÞ ¼ (1)
0; 8ðv; cÞ  T :
ii. Thinning: It is a morphological operation and is performed number of times until the image no longer
changes, intending to remove imperfections from the binary image. As an outcome, the skeleton of the image
with a single-pixel wide is obtained and given in Fig. 1c.
iii. Feature Extraction (FE): The last step of preprocessing is called feature extraction (FE). There are
two types of FE, namely local and global features. In this work, local features are considered ridge
endings and ridge bifurcations. It reduces the dimension of an image to extract precise and essential
components from an image. Minutiae points (Mp) are extracted from the thinned image (Fig. 1d) as
denoted in Eq. (2). Blue color specifies ridge ending, and red color indicates ridge bifurcations. This
minutiae point is the most distinguishing feature among the people.
 g
Mp ¼ Mp ðvi ; ci Þ i¼1 (2)

where g denotes the extracted number of features from the fingerprint; v; c are the coordinates of the feature.
We constructed the initial S-box from two different fingerprints by performing an XOR operation
between coordinates of the fingerprint features, and the respective consequence is illustrated in Tabs. 1
and 2. To use the S-box for encryption and decryption, it should satisfy the NIST randomness test and
cryptographic properties. We use the NIST randomness assessment to evaluate the randomness of S-box
values that endorse this process. The observed results show that the elements of the initial S-box are
highly random. “S-box analyzer tool” [21] is used to evaluate the performance of the initial S-box. As a
result, the initial S-box had 106 as maximum nonlinearity and 16 as differential uniformity. Although the
range of attained nonlinearity value is optimal, differential uniformity needs to be reduced to improve the
S-box strength. Therefore, the Zigzag transformation-based permutation function is applied to the initial
S-box to enrich the S-box nonlinearity and decrease the differential uniformity.

2.2 Zigzag Transformation-based Permutation

It is a process of rearranging the elements of the matrix in the shape of ‘Z’ letter. It can improve the
diffusion level and enhances the strength of the S-box further. Three types of Zigzag transformation are in
use to change the position of a matrix. Namely, the Standard Zigzag Transformation process (SZT),
Modified Zigzag Transformation process (MZT), and Parallel way of the Zigzag Transformation process
(PZT). In SZT, the matrix elements are scanned from the top left corner, and ending with the bottom right
corner (Fig. 2a). Whereas MZT (Figs. 2b–2i), scans the matrix elements from the top right corner with the
direction from the right to the left or top to the bottom and ending with the bottom left corner as
represented in Figs. 2b and 2d. Similarly, the top left corner matrix elements are scanned downwards and
ending with the bottom right corner (Fig. 2c). The parallel– Zigzag transformation process scans the matrix
elements horizontally or vertically as depicted in Figs. 2j–2l. A Blue circle and a red circle denote the
1514 IASC, 2022, vol.32, no.3

starting position and the ending position respectively. The authors of [22,23] used the MZT approach for image
encryption. We use the recursive SZT permutation operation to improve the nonlinearity of the initial S-box.

Table 1: Initial S-box generated from fingerprint of User-1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
1 166 164 83 95 178 94 253 39 56 237 50 23 35 236 20 101
2 120 14 251 214 97 41 219 51 243 54 230 184 182 4 0 55
3 235 239 132 138 71 197 78 248 205 173 174 123 127 217 82 77
4 100 102 107 177 88 186 159 52 196 57 183 99 25 92 212 80
5 45 190 220 6 2 206 209 228 24 84 231 213 204 87 252 28
6 96 245 147 158 79 156 143 140 65 142 43 42 167 40 161 34
7 53 195 146 144 229 234 125 113 233 103 149 135 155 154 226 153
8 216 225 227 238 232 115 171 124 222 223 136 33 221 93 160 162
9 157 90 72 150 73 151 85 169 86 170 175 188 189 67 66 3
10 15 68 181 180 244 133 26 141 134 129 130 131 61 128 137 91
11 11 21 18 246 32 247 145 187 139 163 185 218 112 165 118 249
12 250 12 211 31 30 19 210 29 27 179 37 224 193 152 200 207
13 203 198 194 5 47 104 176 46 98 172 89 168 148 7 48 105
14 191 8 49 106 192 9 58 108 199 10 59 109 201 13 60 110
15 202 16 62 111 208 17 63 114 215 22 64 116 240 1 69 117
16 241 38 70 119 242 44 74 121 254 36 75 122 255 76 126 81

Figure 2: (a) – SZT, 2 (b) – 2 (i) – MZT, 2 (j) – 2 (l) – PZT

IASC, 2022, vol.32, no.3 1515

Table 2: Initial S-box generated from fingerprint of User-2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
1 93 91 47 51 58 10 9 57 246 55 194 53 64 71 46 18
2 126 229 238 36 224 42 33 7 24 255 31 219 38 3 13 34
3 202 61 230 22 29 32 208 50 15 75 63 215 8 218 223 243
4 253 191 12 28 199 227 205 203 231 37 20 44 14 2 17 25
5 30 214 39 212 35 220 21 206 244 209 193 249 252 192 43 247
6 200 211 248 201 221 40 59 198 62 41 27 60 81 49 74 76
7 56 125 102 107 148 73 106 150 83 0 82 90 139 138 136 128
8 190 5 4 77 65 6 66 67 116 78 84 92 19 16 108 144
9 145 147 11 48 26 170 186 168 171 187 23 104 113 184 52 112
10 119 177 178 118 179 105 115 114 160 130 166 167 175 133 174 132
11 121 122 96 172 1 117 185 110 176 123 155 151 94 226 95 99
12 225 100 235 236 85 240 242 97 124 68 239 154 254 228 237 251
13 109 213 245 153 204 146 232 143 142 141 140 241 234 233 207 127
14 165 181 182 164 161 162 183 250 163 210 173 69 189 111 80 86
15 120 45 196 197 169 70 89 72 195 54 88 222 87 98 129 134
16 101 152 216 79 103 131 135 137 149 156 157 158 159 180 188 217

The flowchart of the complete process is given in Fig. 3 and the pseudocode is presented in Tab. 3. The
enhanced fingerprint-based S-box (FSB) is illustrated in Tabs. 4 and 5.

3 Performance Analysis of Constructed S-box

3.1 Randomness Assessment
It is known that the S-box elements are random and nonlinear and it is necessary to maintain these
elements as unpredictable. NIST STS, Dieharder Test are commonly used for randomness testing. Among
these, NIST STS is the popular and faster random analysis method. The NIST randomness test considered
fifteen statistical assessments to prove the randomness. These assessments determine the power of
randomness, and the significant value (ρ) utilized for examination is 0.01, as expressed by NIST. Every
assessment result is compared with the significant value (ρ). If ρ is greater than or equal to 0.01, then the
sequence is random or irregular. If ρ < 0.01, then it is regular sequence. Moreover, if the significant value
is 0, then the sequence is completely non-random. Also, if the ρ is 1, then the sequence is said to be
perfectly random. The frequency test is the basic test to evaluate the randomness of the data. If the
significant value (ρ) of the frequency test is less than 0.01, then there is the possibility of failing all other
tests. The minimum sequence length to perform all the NIST STS test is 10,00,000 bits with minimum of
100 sequences. Each sequence should have 10,00,000 bits. Certain types of the test cannot be executed
when the length of the sequences is less than the required limit. For example, the approximate entropy
test and universal statistical test which requires 106 bits. In [24], the authors were used minimum of
1000 bits and maximum of 10000 bits for testing the randomness. In our case, 256 random elements are
filled in the S-box proposed. To use this S-box in AES for encryption and decryption, its randomness has
to be examined. We tested the randomness of the S-box elements using NIST STS-2.1.2, in two different
methods.
1516 IASC, 2022, vol.32, no.3

(a) Nonlinearity (b) SAC

108 107.25
106 0.53
Average Nonlinearity

0.5178
106 104.5 104.7 0.52
103.5 0.51 0.5037 0.5039
104 102.5 102.5 0.5034 0.498 0.49580.4982
0.5
102
100 0.49 0.4812
100 0.48
98 0.47
96 0.46

(c) (d)
BIC-SAC BIC-NL
0.504 0.5021 106 105.29
0.502 0.5013 0.5008
105 104.64 104.43
0.5 0.497 0.4978 103.93
0.498 0.4966 104 103.5
0.496 0.4942 103 103.1 102.64
0.494 0.4926 101.93
0.492 102
0.49 101
0.488
0.486 100

(e) DU
60 54

40
12 12 14 16
20 10 10 10
0
QWSB AT SCS CDTQW FCCS GBCM BCS Proposed
FSB

Figure 3: (a) Nonlinearity (b) SAC (c) BIC-SAC (d) BIC-NL (e) Differential Uniformity

1. The S-box elements are converted into binary sequences and concatenated together to form 2048 bits
and its randomness is verified. It is perceived that the enhanced fingerprint-based S-box satisfies
thirteen tests out of 15 tests. It fails to satisfy the approximate entropy test and universal statistical
test because it requires a long sequence.
2. We have analyzed the randomness of Enhanced fingerprint-based S-box of User-1 from the obtained
ciphertext by employing the proposed S-box in AES encryption [25]. We have generated Ciphertext
of length 13028 bits and used it for randomness analysis. The numerical values of NIST tests are
presented in Tab. 6 and compared with the related works. It reveals a success status for thirteen
tests by considering 2048 bits as a sequence and fourteen tests for 13028 bits.
IASC, 2022, vol.32, no.3 1517

Table 3: Pseudocode of enhanced Fingerprint based S-box

Input: Raw image of the fingerprint

Output: S-box
Step 1: Initialize an S-box(16 × 16) with zeroes
Step 2: Acquire the biometric image from the biometric scanner and store it in I.
I = Input(Image)
Step 3: Apply binarization methods on the acquired image
Step 3.1: Get the height(h) and width(w) of an image(I)
for i = 1 to h
for j = 1 to w
if (I(i,j) ≥ Threshold)
set I(i,j) = 1
else
set I(i,j) = 0
Step 4: Perform morphological operation on binarized image to get the thinned image
Step 5: Extract the ridge and bifurcation features (minutiae points) from the thinned image
Step 5.1: minutiae points = ridgei ðv; cÞ; bifurcationsj ðv; cÞ ,where 1  i  n1 and
1  j  n2 ,n1 number of ridge points and n2 number of bifurcations
Step 5.2: Get the number of ridges and bifurcations and store it in n1, n2 respectively
Step 6: Initialize n, i and j with zero
If (n<256)
while (i<n1 && j<n2)
for i = 1 to n1
BEGIN
v ¼ ridgesi ½v  ridgesi ½c
S  Box½n ¼ v //If v does not exist in S-box
n = n+1
i = i+1
END BEGIN
for j = 1 to n2
BEGIN
v1 ¼ bifurcationsi ½v  bifurcationsi ½c
if (v! = v1)
S  Box½n ¼ v1
n = n+1
j = j+1
END BEGIN
END IF
Step 7: print(S-box)
Step 8: new_SBox = Zigzag_transformation(S-box)
Step 9: Result = Performance_Evaluation_Test(new_SBox)
Step 10: If result = “PASS”
Optimized_Sbox = new_Sbox
Else
Repeat Step 8-10
Step 11: Stop
1518 IASC, 2022, vol.32, no.3

Table 4: Enhanced fingerprint-based S-box of User-1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
1 166 164 133 245 14 226 219 90 113 106 123 100 209 116 178 46
2 82 138 26 249 243 104 214 217 141 220 21 4 186 236 25 174
3 180 198 228 216 23 156 213 43 235 230 221 136 195 175 66 93
4 121 159 55 77 78 41 60 167 223 131 109 7 210 87 130 95
5 51 40 237 204 6 15 250 252 108 254 222 75 45 145 36 184
6 177 190 98 35 88 188 203 47 19 171 92 117 173 61 63 111
7 189 143 181 248 218 224 227 24 57 187 197 125 44 83 16 147
8 124 140 146 162 1 132 42 20 37 33 112 11 241 244 91 48
9 102 53 135 101 34 158 73 206 38 32 13 251 157 128 139 86
10 165 0 76 50 129 59 65 176 29 67 2 79 199 154 163 238
11 182 54 144 58 120 194 170 231 99 80 232 168 119 52 200 148
12 208 253 142 207 94 169 39 205 12 28 153 193 31 74 18 215
13 255 234 211 84 107 71 229 85 246 239 64 10 191 202 172 56
14 72 225 115 137 151 150 17 110 247 30 185 242 3 27 212 155
15 9 5 70 89 62 161 152 233 49 240 183 114 96 103 201 8
16 196 122 97 179 105 192 127 134 160 22 68 69 118 149 126 81

Table 5: Enhanced fingerprint-based S-box of User-2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
1 93 91 170 113 58 107 146 41 65 14 220 32 172 39 46 28
2 182 229 219 53 135 178 29 78 8 177 249 122 4 255 117 33
3 240 44 197 22 82 79 214 213 62 208 36 119 209 92 6 150
4 40 5 9 246 211 102 198 221 165 123 47 43 245 154 12 56
5 231 191 13 19 63 83 183 140 0 192 224 49 101 254 88 31
6 127 145 148 142 51 68 108 124 71 252 73 7 199 205 10 130
7 60 149 194 61 109 120 202 98 174 196 94 15 116 161 50 232
8 190 111 118 126 225 76 30 67 24 11 226 90 99 244 187 223
9 181 66 97 200 179 248 16 72 171 251 121 247 134 139 230 112
10 37 163 215 168 250 201 3 125 238 86 34 25 80 131 57 1
11 106 157 141 241 195 166 236 216 206 147 21 159 203 167 144 253
12 70 42 212 18 96 222 235 115 227 75 114 164 48 45 207 143
13 132 233 35 2 100 180 59 243 151 176 133 95 137 156 52 155
14 160 23 26 242 128 87 210 110 17 237 64 105 189 38 204 193
15 54 27 89 184 74 85 136 164 186 69 138 55 103 169 129 218
16 234 152 228 81 173 239 153 104 185 20 175 158 77 84 188 217
IASC, 2022, vol.32, no.3 1519

Table 6: NIST test numerical values of the enhanced Fingerprint-based S-box of Uer-1
NIST statistical test/ Ref. [17] Ref. [9] Ref. [24] Ref. [25] Proposed
Sequence length
10,00,000 bits 2048 bits 10000 bits 100 bits 2048 bits 13028 bits
Frequency test 0.304126 1.000000 0.080519 0.580000 1.000000 0.362211
Block frequency test 0.739918 0.102530 0.494392 – 0.149349 0.459487
Run test 0.334538 0.658531 0.102526 0.500000 0.626870 0.980216
Longest run of ones in a block 0.534146 1.000000 0.678686 1.000000 0.999999 0.340905
Binary matrix rank test 0.637119 0.481248 0.69372 – 0.085200 0.858362
Discrete Fourier Transform test 0.759756 0.208675 0.121488 – 0.570187 0.407615
Non-Overlapping Template Test 0.145326 0.844144 – 0.128475 0.560620
Overlapping Template Matching 0.213309 0.282761 – 0.488415 0.475823
Test
Linear Complexity test 0.202268 0.481431 0.918243 – 0.868443 0.206109
Serial Test 1 0.739918 0.645337 0.00513 – 0.600084 0.900023
Serial Test 2 0.955835 – 0.324382 0.817120
Cumulative Sums test – Forward 0.867692 0.984155 0.664283 0.580000 0.223219 0.459428
Cumulative Sums test – 0.223219 0.598593
Backward
Random Excursion Test X = 1 0.110952 NA – 0.589884 0.247998
Random Excursion Variant 0.468595 NA – 0.917850 0.737315
Test X = 1
Approximate Entropy Test 0.334538 0.024931 0.991535 – NA 0.356464
Universal Statistical Test – NA – NA NA

3.2 Performance Evaluation Test

Performance Evaluation Test is used to evaluate the strength of the S-box. To ensure an efficient S-box, it
should satisfy the cryptographic criteria: Bijective, Nonlinearity, Bit Independence Criterion, Strict
avalanche, and Linear approximation probability. In this section, the proposed S-box’s cryptographical
capability is analyzed with the properties mentioned above using the S-box analyzer tool.

3.2.1 Bijective
Commonly, the S-box is bijective when the observed output values of the proposed S-box fall between
the defined interval. Also, a Boolean function f : v ! c denotes a bijective when there is a unique mapping
between two sets. At this juncture, v; c are the two sets, namely input, and output sets, and mathematically
modeled as follows:
X n 
hw ai fi ¼ 2n1 ; (3)
i¼1

The term ‘hw’ represents a hamming weight; ai2 f0; 1g; ai 6¼ 0 (1≤ i ≥ n). The proposed S-box has a
distinct elements framework that satisfies the bijective property.
1520 IASC, 2022, vol.32, no.3

3.2.2 Nonlinearity
Pieprzyk and Finkelstein introduced the nonlinearity model. It is the first and foremost requirement of
the S-box. To realize the higher nonlinearity, the elements of the S-box should be highly random. The optimal
value of nonlinearity of the Boolean function is defined as follows:
NLðf Þ ¼ 2g1  2g2 ; (4)
Further, Boolean function nonlinearity is described using the below equation.
 
NLðf Þ ¼ 2g1 ð1  2g max n sðf Þ ðwÞÞ (5)
w2GFð2 Þ

Notably, the Walsh spectrum is used to compute the nonlinearity of the Boolean expression as described
below.
X
sf ðwÞ ¼ w2GFð2n Þ
ð1Þf ðvÞv:w (6)

For symmetric Boolean functions, the nonlinearity of S-box should lie between 100 and 120. If the
experimental values violate the said band, it is susceptible to cryptanalysis. However, the proposed
scheme offers the best value of about 108 as maximum nonlinearity and average nonlinearity of 106
(Tab. 7), which ensures the robustness of the newly constructed S-box.

Table 7: Nonlinearity values

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
106 106 106 108 106 106 104 106

3.2.3 Strict Avalanche Criteria (SAC)

Tavares and Webster introduced SAC in 1986 to investigate the strength of the cryptosystem. Its scale
should satisfy by changing a single input bit that reflects the change of about 50% of the output bits, i.e., the
SAC value should be close to 0.5. The proposed scheme produces the SAC value of about 0.5039 which
satisfies the SAC (Tab. 8). A dependence matrix is evaluated to test the SAC effectiveness using the
following expressions.

Table 8: Strict avalanche criterion

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1 0.5625 0.375 0.4688 0.5 0.5781 0.5156 0.5781 0.4531
2 0.4531 0.5312 0.5156 0.5156 0.5312 0.5 0.4844 0.4844
3 0.5 0.4688 0.5312 0.5938 0.4844 0.5156 0.5625 0.4375
4 0.5156 0.4688 0.4844 0.4375 0.5156 0.5312 0.5156 0.4688
5 0.5312 0.5 0.4844 0.5938 0.5156 0.5938 0.5312 0.5312
6 0.4375 0.4531 0.5625 0.4531 0.5312 0.5156 0.4844 0.4375
7 0.4688 0.5 0.4219 0.5781 0.5156 0.5625 0.5156 0.5
8 0.4531 0.5156 0.4844 0.5 0.5312 0.4531 0.4844 0.5312
IASC, 2022, vol.32, no.3 1521

 
1X 1 
sðf Þ ¼ 2 sum1jg    Pi;j ðf Þ
 (7)
g 1ig 2

3.2.4 Bit Independence Criterion (BIC)

BIC is a cryptosystem parameter introduced by Webster and Tavares. This analysis required maintaining
the output bits that should not correlate with each other. Also, an adjustment in any single input bit and
respective output bits should change independently for avalanche vectors. It is essential to satisfy the BIC
with maximum nonlinearity and SAC, as shown in Tabs. 9 and 10.

Table 9: BIC-SAC of the proposed S-box

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1 0 0.5098 0.4785 0.5137 0.498 0.4941 0.5039 0.5137
2 0.5098 0 0.5078 0.4941 0.5078 0.5 0.4688 0.502
3 0.4785 0.5078 0 0.5234 0.5176 0.5 0.4941 0.4805
4 0.5137 0.4941 0.5234 0 0.5117 0.5195 0.5039 0.5059
5 0.498 0.5078 0.5176 0.5117 0 0.4883 0.4883 0.5176
6 0.4941 0.5 0.5 0.5195 0.4883 0 0.498 0.4863
7 0.5039 0.4688 0.4941 0.5039 0.4883 0.498 0 0.4961
8 0.5137 0.502 0.4805 0.5059 0.5176 0.4863 0.4961 0

Table 10: BIC-Nonlinearity values

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1 0 102 104 104 106 104 104 104
2 102 0 102 104 102 104 108 106
3 104 102 0 108 108 102 104 106
4 104 104 108 0 108 106 98 104
5 106 102 108 108 0 106 106 102
6 104 104 102 106 106 0 104 104
7 104 108 104 98 106 104 0 104
8 104 106 106 104 102 104 104 0

The above tables show that the value of BIC-nonlinearity and BIC-SAC are within the acceptable range.
It ensures the robustness of the proposed S-box further.

3.2.5 Differential Uniformity

It evaluates the resistance power against differential attacks. The lower range of Differential Uniformity
value represent a high resistance during differential cryptanalysis attack and computed using the following
equation.
1522 IASC, 2022, vol.32, no.3

 
#fv 2 Zjf ðvÞ  f ðv  DvÞ ¼ Dcg
DPf ¼ max (8)
Dv6¼0;Dc 2g
where Z is a collection of all possible input values; 2g is the count of elements; Δχ and Δυ are input and output
differences respectively. The analysis shows that the differential uniformity of the proposed S-box is 10,
which shows the S-box’s resistivity against the differential attacks.

4 Comparative Analysis with Existing Works

The observed results are compared with recently published works using different strategies to validate
the effectiveness of the proposed S-box notably, QW S-box (QWSB) [5], Algebraic Technique (AT) [8],
Spatiotemporal Chaotic System (SCS) [9], Cascaded Discrete-time Quantum Walk (CDTQW) [13],
Fractional-order Chaotic Chen System (FCCS) [14], Gingerbreadman Chaotic Map (GBCM) [15], and
Binary Chaotic Sequence (BCS). The figurative demonstration of the comparative study illustrated in
Fig. 3 and the numerical reports are presented in Tab. 11.

Table 11: Numerical comparative analysis

Techniques used Avg. Min. Max. Avg. BIC- BIC- DU
NL NL NL SAC NL SAC
QW S-box (QWSB) [5] 102.5 96 106 0.5037 103.93 0.497 10
Algebraic Technique (AT) [8] 107.25 106 108 0.5034 105.29 0.4966 12
Spatiotemporal Chaotic System (SCS) [9] 104.5 102 108 0.498 104.64 0.5013 12
Cascaded Discrete-time Quantum Walk 103.5 98 106 0.4958 103.5 0.5021 14
(CDTQW) [13]
Fractional-order chaotic Chen system 104.7 100 108 0.4982 103.1 0.4942 10
(FCCS) [14]
Gingerbreadman chaotic map (GBCM) [15] 102.5 96 106 0.5178 102.64 0.4926 54
Binary Chaotic Sequence (BCS) [16] 100 84 106 0.4812 101.93 0.4978 16
Proposed - FSB of User 1 106 104 108 0.5039 104.43 0.5008 10
Proposed - FSB of User 2 104.75 102 108 0.5181 103.71 0.5023 10

It is perceived that the maximum nonlinearity of Fingerprint-based initial S-box-1 of user-1 was
106 initially, and then it is improved to 108 after permutation. Further, the average value of SAC value of
the proposed scheme offered the best deal, about 0.5039. It shows that the proposed system satisfies the
strict avalanche criterion. S-box quality is depending on the smaller value of differential uniformity. The
differential uniformity of the enhanced FSB is 10, which is lesser than the other methodologies. The
cryptographic criterions of S-box (NL, SAC, DU, BIC-SAC, BIC-NL) is compared with other S-boxes
and illustrated in Tab. 11.

5 Conclusions
An effective S-box is constructed using fingerprint pattern and permutation function in this work. Initially,
S-box is built from X-Y coordinates of the user’s extracted fingerprint features (ridges, bifurcation).
Subsequently, Recursive Zigzag transformation-based permutation function is carried out on the initial
IASC, 2022, vol.32, no.3 1523

S-box to boost the overall characteristics. Further, a randomness test and cryptographic efficiency are performed
to check S-box’s strength. From the observed results, the following conclusions are made:

The maximum range of nonlinearity is obtained from the proposed S-box of about 108 and the 106 as
average nonlinearity.

SAC shows a significant scale of about 0.5039, closer to the required band (0.5).

BIC-NL and BIC-SAC offer the best value, about 104.43 and 0.5008, respectively.

The rate of DU also superior for the proposed scheme compared with existing methods.
The statistical results reveal that the proposed scheme satisfies all the cryptographic properties, and
therefore the proposed S-box is strong enough against linear and differential attacks. An optimization
model can be incorporated with this scheme for further enhancement in the future.
Funding Statement: The authors received no specific funding for this study.

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to report regarding this study.

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