Secure Cryptosystem Using Randomized Rail Fence Cipher for Mobile Devices

Abstract

Transferring files between mobile devices through a wireless medium has security implications. Particularly for applications that transfer personal information like healthcare records or location information. Designing an efficient and secure cryptosystem for these resource-constrained modern smart devices is a challenging task. In this paper, we address the same and propose a light-weight, energy-efficient and secure cryptosystem based on rail-fence cipher (RFC). We refer the proposed algorithm as “randomized rail fence cipher (RRFC)” as it uses pseudorandom numbers to select the fences for transposing characters of a file. The idea is to remove security vulnerabilities of RFC by increasing the complexity of determining the pattern used for the transposition. We implement the proposed algorithm and experimentally analyze the performances of the algorithm on mobile devices. We also present attack analysis for the proposed cryptosystem.