# Using Echo State Networks for Cryptography

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel cryptography method using echo state networks, leveraging their memory properties to securely transmit data by training and sharing neural network states.

## Contribution

It proposes a new neural cryptography scheme based on echo state networks, enabling secure data transmission through shared network states.

## Key findings

- The method effectively encrypts various data types including text, images, and audio.
- Experiments show the scheme satisfies cryptographic properties of diffusion and confusion.
- The approach is simple, trainable, and applicable to arbitrary data formats.

## Abstract

Echo state networks are simple recurrent neural networks that are easy to implement and train. Despite their simplicity, they show a form of memory and can predict or regenerate sequences of data. We make use of this property to realize a novel neural cryptography scheme. The key idea is to assume that Alice and Bob share a copy of an echo state network. If Alice trains her copy to memorize a message, she can communicate the trained part of the network to Bob who plugs it into his copy to regenerate the message. Considering a byte-level representation of in- and output, the technique applies to arbitrary types of data (texts, images, audio files, etc.) and practical experiments reveal it to satisfy the fundamental cryptographic properties of diffusion and confusion.