PERFORMANCE, SECURITY AND STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF NIMBE CIPHER 1 (NC1)
PETER NIMBE *
Department of Computer Science, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana
J. B. HAYFRON-ACQUAH
Department of Computer Science, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana
BENJAMIN A. WEYORI
Department of Computer Science and Informatics, University of Energy and Natural Resources, Sunyani, Ghana
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
This paper presents a performance, security and statistical evaluation of NC1. NC1 is a symmetric cryptographic algorithm which employs positive integers as private key-spaces of varying lengths to encrypt and decrypt data or information. This symmetric cipher is quite non-susceptible to exhaustive key search considering its large key-space and the strength of the underlying cipher. Computational security analysis based on brute-force or exhaustive key search is conducted on NC1 and is compared with some existing ciphers like DES, triple DES and AES. The results are quite intriguing. The speed and throughput based on text sizes and keys (in increasing order of magnitude) are the performance indicators employed in the performance analysis of NC1.
Keywords: Cipher, cryptanalysis, symmetric, cryptographic algorithm, speed, throughput, exhaustive key search, brute-force attack