Public-channel cryptography based on mutual chaos pass filters

TL;DR

This paper explores a cryptographic scheme using mutually coupled chaotic lasers that achieve synchronization, enabling secure message exchange with high fidelity, while unidirectionally coupled lasers cannot decode the message, enhancing security.

Contribution

It introduces a novel cryptographic method based on mutual chaos pass filters with experimental and numerical validation, leveraging the advantage of mutual coupling for security.

Findings

Mutually coupled chaotic lasers synchronize under certain parameters.

The scheme allows high-fidelity message recovery between legitimate parties.

Unilateral attackers cannot decode the message even with signal amplification.

Abstract

We study the mutual coupling of chaotic lasers and observe both experimentally and in numeric simulations, that there exists a regime of parameters for which two mutually coupled chaotic lasers establish isochronal synchronization, while a third laser coupled unidirectionally to one of the pair, does not synchronize. We then propose a cryptographic scheme, based on the advantage of mutual-coupling over unidirectional coupling, where all the parameters of the system are public knowledge. We numerically demonstrate that in such a scheme the two communicating lasers can add a message signal (compressed binary message) to the transmitted coupling signal, and recover the message in both directions with high fidelity by using a mutual chaos pass filter procedure. An attacker however, fails to recover an errorless message even if he amplifies the coupling signal.