Evolution of an Emerging Symmetric Quantum Cryptographic Algorithm
This work addresses security needs for data storage and communication by proposing an incremental improvement to existing symmetric encryption methods.
The paper tackles the problem of enhancing information security in data exchange by developing a new symmetric quantum cryptographic algorithm called Quantum-AES (QAES), which integrates Quantum Key Distribution with an enhanced AES to generate dynamic quantum S-Boxes and uses secret keys from QKD in online and off-line modes.
With the rapid evolution of data exchange in network environments, information security has been the most important process for data storage and communication. In order to provide such information security, the confidentiality, data integrity, and data origin authentication must be verified based on cryptographic encryption algorithms. This paper presents a new emerging trend of modern symmetric encryption algorithm by development of the advanced encryption standard (AES) algorithm. The new development focuses on the integration between Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and an enhanced version of AES. A new quantum symmetric encryption algorithm, which is abbreviated as Quantum-AES (QAES), is the output of such integration. QAES depends on generation of dynamic quantum S-Boxes (DQS-Boxes) based quantum cipher key, instead of the ordinary used static S-Boxes. Furthermore, QAES exploits the specific selected secret key generated from the QKD cipher using two different modes (online and off-line).