A Novel Scheme for Secured Data Transfer Over Computer Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new encryption-free data transfer method using a 'jigsaw puzzle' approach to enhance security, employing information-theoretic principles and packet authentication for secure network communication.

Contribution

It proposes a novel, encryption-less algorithm that provides unconditional security using a puzzle-based data segmentation and a secure packet conveyance mechanism.

Findings

Provides information-theoretic security with a one-time pad scheme.

Ensures data authenticity through packet authentication.

Design is parallelizable for efficient implementation.

Abstract

This paper presents a novel encryption-less algorithm to enhance security in transmission of data in networks. The algorithm uses an intuitively simple idea of a "jigsaw puzzle" to break the transformed data into multiple parts where these parts form the pieces of the puzzle. Then these parts are packaged into packets and sent to the receiver. A secure and efficient mechanism is provided to convey the information that is necessary for obtaining the original data at the receiver-end from its parts in the packets, that is, for solving the "jigsaw puzzle". The algorithm is designed to provide information-theoretic (that is, unconditional) security by the use of a one-time pad like scheme so that no intermediate or unintended node can obtain the entire data. A parallelizable design has been adopted for the implementation. An authentication code is also used to ensure authenticity of every packet.