A DNA-Based Cryptographic Key Generation Algorithm

This paper presents a detail description of a new DNA-based cryptographic key generation algorithm that can be used to generate strong cryptographic key(s) for symmetric ciphering applications. The algorithm uses an initial private/secret key as an input to the Key-Based Random Permutation (KBRP) algorithm to generate a permutation of size n, which is half of the size of the required cryptographic key, and to derive four vectors of size n representing the DNA bases (A, C, G, and T) of the private key. The DNA vectors are mathematically processed using a linear formula to generate the cryptographic key. The generated bases are re-permuted using the same permutation vector and re-processed to determine new cryptographic keys, and this can be continue as much as new cryptographic keys are required. The performance of the new algorithm is evaluated in two different scenarios that demonstrate its high potential for providing high randomness cryptographic key(s). The results show that the generated cryptographic keys always have ≈0.7 entropy, and acceptable maximum and average run length for both 0’s and 1’s for various key-lengths and private keys.