Enyo: A Multistage Partition and Transposition Based Cipher

Abstract

The increase in demand for information security has made cryptography a basic need for protecting data from unauthorized access. In this paper, a computationally inexpensive Enyo block cipher has been presented. This multi-layered algorithm provides a promising solution to safeguard user’s information. The cipher works on the same line as the Feistel-based network with the symmetric structure and operates on 8-bit ASCII characters. Using 6-bit custom encoding, a secret key generates 6-bit encrypted text. This cipher modeled using undemanding operations utilizes partitioned key-based encryption with unique mapping followed by various bitwise swaps, a shifted modulo encryption, and using a transposition matrix. The proposed cipher is highly customizable as per user demands and necessities that make it more dependent on user inputs. Enyo cipher is faster in encryption and decryption than the Playfair cipher and shows comparable performance with XOR encryption. Enyo cipher demonstrates good resistance to a brute-force attack. It is well suited for small-scale applications where the computational power is a bottleneck. A comparison is also made that shows the impact of the proposed cipher to commonly available classical ciphers.