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Journal of the Optical Society of America A

Discussion on comparative analysis and a new attack on optical asymmetric cryptosystem

Areeba Fatima, Naveen Kumar Nishchal

Published Sep 15, 2016• 20 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This paper presents two different aspects of cryptanalysis of the optical phase-truncated Fourier transform (PTFT)-based cryptosystem. In the first part, a comparative study is carried out for a specific attack on the PTFT-based scheme in different optical transformation domains. In the second part, a new attack algorithm is proposed. The existing attack algorithms devised for the PTFT-based cryptosystem require knowledge of both the encryption keys for successful retrieval of phase through phase-retrieval algorithms to extract information about the plaintext. The proposed new attack method eliminates the requirement of one of the encryption keys to carry out the attack on the PTFT-based scheme. The numerical results support the proposed method.

DOI
10.1364/josaa.33.002034

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This paper presents two different aspects of cryptanalysis of the optical phase-truncated Fourier transform (PTFT)-based cryptosystem. In the first part, a comparative study is carried out for a specific attack on the PTFT-based scheme in different optical transformation domains. In the second part, a new attack algorithm is proposed. The existing attack algorithms devised for the PTFT-based cryptosystem require knowledge of both the encryption keys for successful retrieval of phase through phase-retrieval algorithms to extract information about the plaintext. The proposed new attack method eliminates the requirement of one of the encryption keys to carry out the attack on the PTFT-based scheme. The numerical results support the proposed method.
In this paper, the security of the cryptosystem based on phase-truncation Fourier transform (PTFT) and Gerchberg-Saxton (G-S) algorithm is analyzed. In this cryptosystem, the phase key generated using phase-truncated (PT) operation is bonded with the phase key generated in G-S algorithm to form the first private key, which improves the complexity of the first private key. In addition, since the second private key is generated using the G-S algorithm, the number of known constraints decreases compared to the traditional PTFT-based cryptosystem, which will lead the non-convergence of special attacks. However, it has been found that two private keys generated in the cryptosystem based on PTFT and G-S algorithm are related to one phase key generated in the G-S algorithm, which provides an additional constraint to retrieve the other private key when one private key is disclosed. Based on this analysis, two iterative processes with different constraints are proposed to crack the cryptosystem based on PTFT and G-S algorithm. This is the first time to report the silhouette problem existing in the cryptosystem based on PTFT and G-S algorithm. Numerical simulations are carried out to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of our analysis and proposed iterative processes.
In this paper, the security of a cryptosystem based on phase-truncated Fourier transforms (PTFTs) and a random amplitude mask (RAM) is evaluated. In the cryptosystem, fake keys used as encryption keys in the second PTFT-based structure are generated by the first PTFT-based structure in which the RAM is encoded by random phase masks (RPMs) used as public keys. Compared to the classical PTFT-based encryption scheme, the security level of the cryptosystem is improved by using cascaded PTFTs to encode the encryption keys and the plaintext simultaneously. However, it is found that a known plaintext-ciphertext pair can provide enough constraints in the iterative process to retrieve the fake keys, which then can be used to retrieve unknown arbitrary plaintext from the corresponding ciphertext. Based on the analysis, we propose a specific attack based on hybrid iterative processes to break the cryptosystem. Two iterative processes with different constraints are involved in the proposed attack. The first known-plaintext-attack (KPA)-based iterative process is used to retrieve two fake keys with the help of two public keys and a known plaintext-ciphertext pair, while the second amplitude-phase retrieval algorithm-based iterative process with a median filter is employed to retrieve the plaintext from the corresponding ciphertext using two retrieval fake keys. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that the cryptosystem is attacked by the KPA-based iterative algorithm successfully. Numerical simulation results validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed attack.
We propose an improved method of attack on an asymmetric cryptosystem based on a phase-truncated Fourier transform. With the proposed method of attack, an attacker is able to access the exact decryption keys and obtain precise attack results. The method is based on a novel median-filtering phase-retrieval algorithm. Compared with existing attacks, the proposed attack has the following advantages: (1) exact information of the original image can be obtained in gray-scale and binary forms; (2) better computing efficiency; (3) more robust against noise and occlusion contaminations. Numerical simulation results show the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method. Based on the proposed method of attack, we further propose a new cryptosystem, which not only enhances the security of the system but also does not require truncated phases.
In this paper, the security of a cryptosystem based on phase truncation and a designed amplitude modulator (AM) is evaluated. In the cryptosystem, an undercover AM used as an additional key is added to modulate the amplitude information of the spectrum in the Fourier plane. Compared to the conventional phase-truncated Fourier transform (PTFT)-based cryptosystem, the security of the cryptosystem is improved by increasing the number of unknown keys. However, it is found that the designed AM is irrelative to the plaintext, and one of the parameters in the designed AM contributes less to the security enhancement of the cryptosystem due to low key sensitivity. Based on the analysis, a special attack containing two iterative processes is proposed to crack the cryptosystem, in which the known-plaintext-attack-based iterative process I with a specific normalization operator is used to retrieve the designed AM and the amplitude-phase-retrieval-technique-based iterative process II is used to retrieve the corresponding plaintext from the arbitrarily given ciphertext with the help of the retrieved AM. In addition, an inherent drawback widely existing in PTFT-based cryptosystems is reported for the first time: most information of the original image could be retrieved using two correct phase keys (or only the first phase key) generated in the encryption process, even without the corresponding ciphertext in PTFT-based cryptosystems. To address this issue, a security-enhanced cryptosystem is proposed in this paper. Numerical simulation is carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed attack and cryptosystem.
We analyze and present an attack scheme of the asymmetric optical cryptosystem proposed recently based on coherent superposition and equal modulus decomposition [Opt. Lett.40, 475 (2015)OPLEDP0146-959210.1364/OL.40.000475]. We prove that the attacker can recover the original image with the ciphertext and public keys through the amplitude-phase retrieval algorithm by using two constraints. One constraint of the amplitude-phase retrieval algorithm is the public key and the other is obtained through the analysis of the cryptosystem. The simulation results demonstrate the feasibility of the attack method.