A novel ASCII code-based polybius square alphabet sequencer as enhanced cryptographic cipher for cyber security protection (APSAlpS-3CS)

Abstract

For all industries, cybersecurity is regarded as one of the major areas of concern that needs to be addressed. Data and information in all forms should be safeguarded to avoid leakage of information, data theft, and robbery through intruders and hackers. This paper proposes a modification on the traditional 5x5 Polybius square in cryptography, through dynamically generated matrices. The modification is done through shifting cell elements for every encrypted character using a secret key and its ASCII decimal code equivalents. The results of the study revealed that the modified Polybius cipher offers a more secure plaintext-ciphertext conversion and is difficult to break, as evident in the frequency analysis. In the proposed method, each element produced in the digraphs exhibits a wider range of possible values. However, with the increase of process in the encryption and decryption, the modified Polybius cipher obtained a longer execution time of 0.0031ms, being identified as its tradeoff. The unmodified Polybius cipher, however, obtained an execution time of 0.0005ms. Future researchers may address the execution time tradeoff of the modified Polybius cipher.