A Review on Biological Inspired Computation in Cryptology

Cryptology is a field that concerned with cryptography and cryptanalysis. Cryptography, which is a key technology in providing a secure transmission of information, is a study of designing strong cryptographic algorithms, while cryptanalysis is a study of breaking the cipher. Recently biological approaches provide inspiration in solving problems from various fields. This paper reviews major works in the application of biological inspired computational (BIC) paradigm in cryptology. The paper focuses on three BIC approaches, namely, genetic algorithm (GA), artificial neural network (ANN) and artificial immune system (AIS). The findings show that the research on applications of biological approaches in cryptology is minimal as compared to other fields. To date only ANN and GA have been used in cryptanalysis and design of cryptographic primitives and protocols. Based on similarities that AIS has with ANN and GA, this paper provides insights for potential application of AIS in cryptology for further research

A Comparison of Generalizability for Anomaly Detection

In security-related areas there is concern over the novel “zeroday” attack that penetrates system defenses and wreaks havoc. The best methods for countering these threats are recognizing “non-self” as in an Artificial Immune System or recognizing “self” through clustering. For either case, the concern remains that something that looks similar to self could be missed. Given this situation one could logically assume that a tighter fit to self rather than generalizability is important for false positive reduction in this type of learning problem. This article shows that a tight fit, although important, does not supersede having some model generality. This is shown using three systems. The first two use sphere and ellipsoid clusters with a k-means algorithm modified to work on the one-class/blind classification problem. The third is based on wrapping the self points with a multidimensional convex hull (polytope) algorithm capable of learning disjunctive concepts via a thresholding constant. All three of these algorithms are tested on an intrusion detection problem and a steganalysis problem with results exceeding published results using an Artificial Immune System

The Importance of Generalizability to Anomaly Detection

In security-related areas there is concern over novel “zero-day” attacks that penetrate system defenses and wreak havoc. The best methods for countering these threats are recognizing “nonself” as in an Artificial Immune System or recognizing “self” through clustering. For either case, the concern remains that something that appears similar to self could be missed. Given this situation, one could incorrectly assume that a preference for a tighter fit to self over generalizability is important for false positive reduction in this type of learning problem. This article confirms that in anomaly detection as in other forms of classification a tight fit, although important, does not supersede model generality. This is shown using three systems each with a different geometric bias in the decision space. The first two use spherical and ellipsoid clusters with a k-means algorithm modified to work on the one-class/blind classification problem. The third is based on wrapping the self points with a multidimensional convex hull (polytope) algorithm capable of learning disjunctive concepts via a thresholding constant. All three of these algorithms are tested using the Voting dataset from the UCI Machine Learning Repository, the MIT Lincoln Labs intrusion detection dataset, and the lossy-compressed steganalysis domain

Image steganography using least significant bit and secret map techniques

In steganography, secret data are invisible in cover media, such as text, audio, video and image. Hence, attackers have no knowledge of the original message contained in the media or which algorithm is used to embed or extract such message. Image steganography is a branch of steganography in which secret data are hidden in host images. In this study, image steganography using least significant bit and secret map techniques is performed by applying 3D chaotic maps, namely, 3D Chebyshev and 3D logistic maps, to obtain high security. This technique is based on the concept of performing random insertion and selecting a pixel from a host image. The proposed algorithm is comprehensively evaluated on the basis of different criteria, such as correlation coefficient, information entropy, homogeneity, contrast, image, histogram, key sensitivity, hiding capacity, quality index, mean square error (MSE), peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and image fidelity. Results show that the proposed algorithm satisfies all the aforementioned criteria and is superior to other previous methods. Hence, it is efficient in hiding secret data and preserving the good visual quality of stego images. The proposed algorithm is resistant to different attacks, such as differential and statistical attacks, and yields good results in terms of key sensitivity, hiding capacity, quality index, MSE, PSNR and image fidelity