Variable-length Hill Cipher with MDS Key Matrix
Kondwani Magamba, Solomon Kadaleka, Ansley Kasambara

TL;DR
This paper proposes a strengthened Hill cipher that uses variable-length key matrices derived from an MDS master matrix to improve security against known-plaintext attacks.
Contribution
It introduces a novel method of encrypting plaintext with variable-length MDS-derived key matrices, enhancing the classical Hill cipher's security.
Findings
Increased resistance to known-plaintext cryptanalysis.
Effective use of MDS matrices for key diversification.
Enhanced security without significant performance loss.
Abstract
The Hill Cipher is a classical symmetric cipher which breaks plaintext into blocks of size m and then multiplies each block by an m by m key matrix to yield ciphertext. However, it is well known that the Hill cipher succumbs to cryptanalysis relatively easily. As a result, there have been efforts to strengthen the cipher through the use of various techniques e.g. permuting rows and columns of the key matrix to encrypt each plaintext vector with a new key matrix. In this paper, we strengthen the security of the Hill cipher against a known-plaintext attack by encrypting each plaintext matrix by a variable-length key matrix obtained from a Maximum Distance Separable (MDS) master key matrix.
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Taxonomy
TopicsCoding theory and cryptography · graph theory and CDMA systems · Cryptographic Implementations and Security
