A New Block Cipher System Using Cellular Automata and Ant Colony Optimization (BC-CaACO)

The communication of private information is very dangerous, since unauthorized entities can intercept it. Thus, encryption is one of the principal information security solutions that helps keep information confidentiality. This latter can be satisfied by the use of various encryption techniques, namely block cipher. In this paper, the authors propose a novel block cipher using reversible and irreversible one-dimensional cellular automata (CA) with an ant colony optimization (ACO)-based S-box in order to establish more confusion. The obtained experimental results confirm that the designed cipher resists against statistical attacks, and it has both good confusion and diffusion comparing to the existent classical symmetric cryptosystems.