Nonlinear Dyn
DOI 10.1007/s11071-014-1432-z
ORIGINAL PAPER
A chaotic stream cipher based on symbolic dynamic
description and synchronization
N. W. Abderrahim · F. Z. Benmansour ·
O. Seddiki
Received: 25 September 2013 / Accepted: 21 April 2014
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
Abstract In the present paper, we propose a new
chaos-based stream cipher, by exploiting the simplicity
of symbolic dynamic description and synchronization.
The main contribution of this work is the pseudo-
random numbers generator, which is based on the
discretization of chaotic sequences generated from one-
dimensional chaotic maps, satisfying uniform distrib-
ution. The originality of our keystream generator lies
in the appropriate mixture of chaotic maps dynamic
behaviors and their perturbation, in order to enhance
its complexity and the secret key space, which cor-
responds to the chaotic systems control parameters.
Thus, the pseudo-random sequences produced from
our keystream generator have adequate cryptographic
properties in terms of randomness quality, where their
validity is proved through NIST statistical tests. Fur-
thermore, the application of our keystream generator
in the proposed cryptosystem provides a satisfactory
security efficiency report, by insuring a good encryp-
tion effect with high resistance to known attacks, and a
robust synchronization to noise and malicious inter-
ceptions, achieved via the symbolic dynamic-based
method.
N. W. Abderrahim (B) · F. Z. Benmansour · O. Seddiki ·
Telecommunications Laboratory of Tlemcen (LTT),
Faculty of Technology, Tlemcen University, BP. 230,
13000 Tlemcen, Algeria
e-mail:wa_abderrahim@mail.univ-tlemcen.dz
Keywords Cryptography · Chaos · Synchronization ·
Pseudo-random numbers generator
1 Introduction
The increasing evolution of telecommunications net-
works has contributed significantly to the development
of cryptographic mechanisms which become indis-
pensable to store and transmit data securely. This mech-
anisms offer different security services including con-
fidentiality which is maintained via encryption algo-
rithms.
There exist a variety of proposed encryption algo-
rithms in the literature, some of them have been stan-
dardised and incorporated in different security pro-
tocols. They are classified, according the encryption
process structure, into block and stream ciphers, para-
meterized by symmetric or asymmetric keys, where
their security resides mainly in the privacy and the keys
length. The block ciphers, such as IDEA [1] and AES
[2], are based on substitution and transposition com-
binations according to certain operative modes. They
achieve a high security level in comparison to stream
ciphers, which are more vulnerable to statistical and
algebraic attacks, due to the linearity and the weak
complexity of their pseudo-random numbers genera-
tors (PRNG). But on the other hand, the simple designs
of stream ciphers (e.g., RC4 [3] and A5/1 [4]) are much
efficient and practical than block ciphers, notably for
applications that require a low cost encryption, like
mobile communication networks.
123

The need for optimal solutions has led researchers to
find new alternatives able to improve the cryptosystems
strength, by exploiting nonlinear phenomena, in partic-
ular chaos theory, which has attracted much attention in
various real world applications. Indeed, the extensive
studies of chaotic systems in the last decades demon-
strate that their dynamic behavior has attractive prop-
erties for modern cryptography. Although this nonpe-
riodic behavior seems completely random, its evolu-
tion is perfectly deterministic, so that it can be repro-
duced identically in emission/reception. However, the
chaotic systems sensitivity to slight variations causes
the so called “butterfly effect” [5], that means the unpre-
dictability of their evolution in long term. These two
characteristics make the chaotic systems an ideal ran-
domness source of cryptographic quality, described by
simple mathematical equations. Thus, the parameters
and initial conditions defining these equations can play
the role of secret key, for designing new cryptosystems
according to several methods in analog or digital form
[6]: additive masking, chaotic switching (chaotic shift
keying), or parametric modulation.
Unlike the conventional cryptography, which rises
from discrete mathematics and algorithmic, the origi-
nality of chaos encryption generation lies mainly in the
use of chaotic signals for data encryption in analog form
directly, without a need to digitize them. This is possi-
ble through the chaotic synchronization mechanisms,
where various chaos synchronization techniques have
been proposed and exploited for this purpose, following
the primary contribution of Pecora and Carroll in 1990
[7–10]. Their performing consists to coupling the inter-
locutors based chaotic systems (transmitter/receivers),
in suitable manner by means of the synchronization sig-
nal, for unify their behaviors generated from different
initial conditions.
Although, the encryption techniques by chaotic sys-
tems synchronization have the advantage of being
implemented using very simple telecommunication
components, and the ability to achieve high throughput
with convenient performance for real time transmis-
sions [11–13], their safety does not match that of con-
ventional encryption standards, as most of them have
common drawbacks and share the same realisation dif-
ficulties [14–17]:
– Low confidentiality level: various attacks could be
conducted by exploiting the synchronization sig-
123
N. W. Abderrahim et al.
nal, which comprises useful informations about the
chaotic systems used in encryption process;
– Degradation of chaotic systems properties: syn-
chronization robustness to initial conditions and
chaotic systems parameters uncertainties reduces
chaotic systems sensitivity to variations. This allows
an unauthorized receiver to synchronize and extract
confidential information, without prior knowledge
of the chaotic systems parameters which are usually
considered as secret key;
– Low robustness to noise: the synchronization per-
formance of chaotic secure transmissions degrades
rapidly in noisy environments. These transmissions
require generally a greater SNR compared to their
traditional analogous, to maintain the same error
rate;
– No compatibility of chaotic signals to current
telecommunications infrastructure: the complex
dynamic nature of chaotic signals requires a chan-
nel with infinite capacity, which is impossible to
satisfy in practice.
Consequently, the use of chaotic encryption techniques,
based on such synchronization mechanisms in secure
transmissions that require a high confidentiality level
and robustness, is not feasible.
However, some works show that the discretization
of chaotic signals using the symbolic dynamic frame-
work offers a new opportunities to exploit their com-
plex behavior in secure transmissions [18–20], with
a judicious synchronization in terms of noise robust-
ness and low interception probability. This simple dis-
cretization method of chaotic signals motivates the
design of new encryption algorithms, including stream
ciphers that know a standards lack.
In this paper we are interested in exploiting sym-
bolic dynamic representation of chaotic systems to cre-
ate a new stream cipher, with original chaotic keystream
generator, based on the integration of one-dimensional
chaotic maps. The structure adopted for our keystream
generator provides high security insures resistance to
various attacks and extreme sensitivity to chaotic sys-
tems parameters which constitute the secret key of our
cryptosystem. The rest of the paper is organized as fol-
lows: the second section begins with the introduction of
chaotic maps selected for our keystream generator, and
then we explain the exploitation of symbolic dynamic
sequence dependence on initial condition to achieve
the symbolic dynamic-based method synchronization
Symbolic dynamic description and synchronization
(SDM). In the third section we describe the chaotic
keystream generator used for the encryption/decryption
process. The security analysis with simulations that
confirm the robustness of our cryptosystem are dis-
cussed in the fourth section. Finally, we conclude the
paper in section five.
2 Symbolic dynamic-based method
synchronization
2.1 Preliminary
The choice of chaotic systems is crucial for crypto-
graphic applications, so that it is recommended to use
good chaotic generators, with desirable statistical prop-
erties, for safely designing cryptosystems [21]. In order
to optimize our cryptosystem in terms of efficacy and
security, we have chosen to use the tow discrete chaotic
systems: Bernoulli map [22] and Skewed Tent map
[23]:
f (xi ) = ( p × xi ) mod 1 (1)
 xi
p if xi < p
f (xi ) = 1−x (2)
1− p if x i ≥ p
i
These one-dimensional maps belong to the family of
piecewise linear markov maps (PWLM), which pos-
sess interesting features for cryptographic applications
[24–26]:
– The chaotic sequences generated from these maps
are very sensitive to the chaotic system parameters
and initial states. This implies the uniqueness of
their dynamical evolutions, expressed by the one-
to-one correspondence between the initial condi-
tion and its chaotic sequence;
– Chaotic behaviors of these maps are preserved over
all useful intervals of control parameters, since their
lyapunov exponents are positive for most possible
parameters values;
– Their symbolic dynamic sequences are easy to gen-
erate from the real-valued chaotic states, which
optimize their exploitation by digital components;
– The PWLM maps are modeled by mathematical
equations based on simple arithmetic operations
that are very easy to build and fast to run, on both
software and hardware.
Bernoulli map(1) and Skew Tent map(2) are among
the simplest kind of PWLM maps that can behave
chaotically with good statistical properties, for the most
parameter values in their useful intervals. They behave
chaotically in [0, 1] with critical parameters: p ≥ 2
and p ∈ [1/2, 1], respectively. The chaotic sequences
generated by the two maps and the simulation of their
states distributions are presented in Fig. 1. We can see
clearly that the histograms of the chaotic sequences
generated by the two maps satisfy uniform distribu-
tion. This property is very interesting for a pseudo-
random numbers generator applied to encryption. It
expresses the generator ability to provide strong con-
fusion, required to hide clear data distribution and
redundancy. Moreover, the evaluation of their statis-
tical properties, including the autocorrelation and the
power spectral density (PSD) analysis [27,28], proves
their convenient for pseudo-random numbers gener-
ators. The symbolic description of such chaotic sys-
tems consists to convert the infinite real-valued states of
chaotic orbits x1 , x2 , . . . , xn , . . . generated from (1) or
(2) into simple symbols sequences s1 , s2 , . . . , sn , . . .,
by partitioning phase space into regions: S = Ci ,
i = 1, . . . , N that satisfy:

N
S= Ci and Ci ∩ C j = Φ, for i = j,
i=1
where each Ci is labeled with a distinct symbol,
according to the relative position of every xi with
respect to the critical state xc . In fact, the good sym-
bolic dynamic description is obtained from generat-
ing partition, which insures a one-to-one mapping
between every infinite real-valued state and its sym-
bolic dynamic description. This unique correspondence
lets to tracing back the initial condition value from its
symbolic dynamic sequence. Noting that Bernoulli and
Skew Tent maps are judicious choice for our cryptosys-
tem, since their generating partitions possess only two
intervals, at the unique critical point which is conve-
nient to the use of standard binary representation, fol-
lowing the coding function (3).

0 if xi ≤ xc
Θ(xi ) = (3)
1 if xi > xc
This simple discretization method of chaotic signals,
allows to better exploit their advantageous properties,
by considering each encoded symbol si = Θ(xi ) as
only information bit. Hence, facilitates their integra-
tion in secure digital transmissions, as a means of
pseudo-random numbers generation, including encryp-
123
 N. W. Abderrahim et al.

Fig. 1 Visualization of Bernoulli sequence Skew Tent sequence

chaotic sequences of length 1 1
106 generated by the two
maps and their states 0.8 0.8
distribution histograms,
using the same 0.6 0.6
IC = 0.372415 and
the critical parameters: 0.4 0.4
p1 = 2.9987938562 for
Bernoulli map, and 0.2 0.2
p2 = 0.6573629815 for
Skew Tent map 0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 0 50 100 150 200 250 300

4 Bernoulli sequence histogram 4

x 10 x 10 Skew Tent sequence histogram
6 6

5 5

4 4

3 3

2 2

1 1

0 0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1

tion, which needs a robust synchronization to noise and

malicious interceptions. 1

0.8
2.2 Initial condition estimation
0.6
The objective of chaotic synchronization mechanisms
is to render the trajectories of two chaotic systems, 0.4

generated from arbitrary initial conditions, identical.

0.2
Since there exists one-to-one correspondence between
the initial condition of chaotic system and its symbolic 0
dynamic sequence [29], the synchronization problem
is mainly dependent on the initial condition estimation. −0.2
5 10 15 20 25
One of the successful methods that exploits the unique
correspondence between initial condition and its sym- Fig. 2 Symbolic dynamic sequence associated to the chaotic
bolic dynamic sequence to achieve robust synchroniza- orbit of the Skew Tent map, generated from p = 0.5927 and IC
tion is the symbolic dynamic-based method (SDM) = 0.4158
[29,30]. This method is very practical for chaotic sys-
tems that admit a generating partition composed of two
symbols partitions Ci , i = 1, 2 . By assuming that For example, let
f i the restriction of f on Ci monotonic and invert-
S(n) = {0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0,
ible, thus f i−1 , the inverse mapping of f i , can be (4)
1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1}
defined and iterated backward (in the reverse direc-
tion) in order to estimate the unknown initial condi- be the symbolic dynamic sequence associated to the
tion of any symbolic dynamic sequence. This process chaotic orbit of the Skew Tent map plotted in Fig. 2. To
results in the unique initial condition x0 that belongs to estimate the initial condition generating this sequence,
N −i
i=1 f (si ), according to the generating partition. using the symbolic dynamic-based method, we need to

123
Symbolic dynamic description and synchronization
iterate backward the inverse mapping of the Skew tent
map (5), from a random initialization (x0 = 0.7500),
guided by the last symbols of the symbolic dynamic
sequence (4).

p ∗ xi−1 if si = 0
f −1 (si ) =  ))
1 − ((1 − p) ∗ xi−1 if si = 1
0.7500 → 0.6945 → 0.4116 → 0.2440 → 0.1446 →
0.0857 → 0.9651 → 0.6069 → 0.3597 → 0.8535 →
0.5059 → 0.7940 → 0.4706 → 0.2789 → 0.8864 →
0.5254 → 0.3114 → 0.8732 → 0.6444 → 0.3819 →
0.8444 → 0.6561 → 0.7328 → 0.7015 → 0.4158
(5)
The observation of the resulting values from the back-
ward iterations process shows that the initial condition
estimation converges successfully (x0 = 0.4158). This
synchronization method ensures the initial condition
sharing so efficiently, making the exact reconstruction
of desired chaotic sequence, regardless of its length,
possible. Noting that the precision recovery of the ini-
tial condition determines the synchronization success,
which is proportional to the symbol number M, with
an order accuracy of 21M [31]. Under the experimental
results in [32] a minimum of 25 symbols are needed to
be sent to the receiver for achieving perfect synchro-
nization.
3 Cryptosystem description
The interest of using chaotic systems in cryptographic
applications lies in their exploitation as pseudo-random
numbers generators. Although chaotic systems gener-
ate dynamic behaviors with good randomness proper-
ties but remain completely deterministic according a
mathematical development law. Thus, it is not enough
to base the cryptosystems only on the chaotic behav-
ior; it should rather exploit it with robust encryption
procedure and a suitable driving signal, to meet the
criterias of robustness and efficiency. The proposed
cryptosystem is a stream cipher, which exploits the
pseudo-random sequences produced by one Skew Tent
map and two Bernoulli maps, for maintaining the SDM
synchronization between transmitter and receiver, and
the keystream generation. The complete description
of our cryptosystem is divided into three stages as
follows:
Let f, g, and h be the first Bernoulli map, the sec-
ond Bernoulli map, and the Skew Tent map func-
tions; Pti denotes the plaintext, Ci the ciphertext, K i
the keystream and I C j the initial conditions, where
i = 1, . . . , N , j = 1, . . . , 3, and ⊕ means the bitwise
XOR.
3.1 Chaotic systems initialization
The proposed stream cipher takes as input a secret key:
{p1, p2, p3} and a randomly selected initial condition
IC. The Skew Tent map is chosen as a driving system,
which generates the synchronization vector from IC.
This vector of size M bits (25 < M < 50) is sent
directly via public channel for maintaining the SDM
synchronization at the receiver, as explained in the pre-
vious section. Once the synchronization established,
the chaotic maps initialization is realized by calculat-
ing three initial conditions (one for each chaotic map)
from the shared IC:
Chaotic maps initialization
Input: p1, p2, p3, IC
Output: IC1, IC2, IC3
IC1 ←− f (IC, p1)
IC2 ←− g(IC1, p2)
IC3 ←− h(IC2, p3)
3.2 keystream generation
The keystream generator structure is based on the com-
bination of three chaotic sequences generated from one
Skew Tent map and two Bernoulli maps, to produce a
random bit at each round following these steps:
One round of the keystream generator
Input: p1, p2, p3, IC1, IC2, IC3
Output: Ki
xi ←− f i (I C1, p1)
yi ←− g i (I C2, p2)
z i ←− h i (I C3, p3)
ki ←− s(xi ) ⊕ s(yi )
i f s(z i ) = 0 permute (z i , xi )
else permute (z i , yi )
The originality of our keystream generator lies in
the chaotic maps perturbation driven by the Skew Tent
map. It consists to permute Skew Tent map state with
123

Fig. 3 Schematic
description of the proposed
cryptosystem
that of first Bernoulli map if the driving bit = 0, or with
that of second Bernoulli map if the driving bit = 1.
The chaotic nature of this perturbation improves signif-
icantly the randomness of the chaotic sequences gen-
erated. Noting that all chaotic real-valued sequences
used in our keystream generator are converted in binary
ones (symbolic dynamic sequences) using the thresh-
old function (3), with critical state xc = p3 for the
Skew Tent map and xc = 1/2 for the Bernoulli maps.
3.3 Encryption/decryption process
The proposed cryptosystem is designed under the prin-
ciple of binary additive stream cipher, in which the
encryption process is performed using only “XOR”
operation between the confidential data and the
keystream. Decryption process is performed in a sim-
ilar manner, where the data bits stream are recovered
by the coherent decoding.
Ci = Pti ⊕ K i
Pti = Ci ⊕ K i
To achieve the SDM synchronization successfully,
the emitter/ receiver should use identical chaotic sys-
tems with the same parameters configuration, since
their parameters constitute the secret key of our
cryptosystem. After the initialization step, the entire
binary sequences generated at the transmitter can
be reproduced in synchronous manner without error
at the receiver. Thus, decryption can be progres-
sively achieved during the reception of the ciphertext,
by XORing the encrypted bits with the regenerated
keystream bits. The diagram in Fig. 3 illustrates the
complete cryptosystem structure.
123
N. W. Abderrahim et al.
4 Security evaluation
The security evaluation of secret key cryptosystems,
according to Kerchhoffs–Shannon principle, depends
on two essential factors: the secret key length and
the encryption process strength. In the case of stream
ciphers, the encryption security level is determined by
the statistical quality of the pseudo-random numbers
generator, which plays a crucial role in stream ciphers
implementation.
4.1 Statistical analysis
The most proposed attacks against stream ciphers aim
to detect and exploit statistical weakness of the pseudo-
random numbers generator, through keystreams analy-
sis. So it is necessary to evaluate the keystream genera-
tor quality by means of adequate tests. We have used the
NIST SP 800-22 standard tests, published by American
National Institution of Standard and Technology Infor-
mation [33], for this purpose. The tests were applied
on 100 pseudo-random sequences of 106 bits length,
generated from random initial conditions and para-
meters. The results given in Table 1 show that our
keystream generator passes all statistical tests success-
fully (all tests proportions exceed the confidence level
= 96 %). This implies that it possesses desired proper-
ties of pseudo-random generators. Moreover, the appli-
cation of the keystream generated using the secret key:
{p1 = 2.98145364517528; p2 = 3.73092518472690;
p3 = 0.67928153074916} and IC = 0.3725; in lena.jpg
image encryption, proves its perfect confusion effect,
where the encrypted image show a good randomness:
Symbolic dynamic description and synchronization

Table 1 The results of

Statistical test p value Pass rate (%) Result
NIST SP800-22 statistical
tests Frequency 0.455937 100 Success
Block frequency (m =128) 0.657933 99 Success
Cumulative sums Forward 0.075719 100 Success
Cumulative sums Reverse 0.334538 99 Success
Runs 0.062821 99 Success
Long runs of on’s 0.437274 100 Success
Binary Matrix Rank 0.455937 99 Success
Spectral DFT 0.816537 100 Success
No overlapping templates (m = 9) 0.983453 100 Success
0verlapping templates (m = 9) 0.474986 98 Success
Universal (L = 7, Q = 1280, K = 141577) 0.637119 99 Success
Approximate entropy (m = 10) 0.816537 100 Success
Random excursions 0.867692 100 Success
Random excursions variant 0.897763 100 Success
Serial (m = 16) p value1 0.699313 99 Success
Serial (m = 16) p value2 0.851383 100 Success
Linear complexity (M = 500) 0.574903 99 Success

– High entropy value = 7.9992; 4.3 Known-plaintext attacks

– Very low correlation coefficient between the origi-
nal and the encrypted image = 5.52e−004;
– Uniform distribution of the encrypted image his-
togram (Fig. 4) which is significantly different from
that of the original image.
4.2 Secret key space estimation
The secret key length is directly related to the desired
security level of the cryptosystem, so it is necessary
to use a large key space (typically > 2128 ) to prevent
brute force attacks. The integration of three chaotic
maps with different control parameters in the pro-
posed cryptosystem is to enhance the quality of the
keystream generator and to increase the secret key
space, which corresponds to the three control para-
meters of the chaotic systems. With a precision of
252 ≈ 2×1016 for each parameter, the key size exceeds
2150 . This is large enough to resist brute force attack.
Furthermore, these secret parameters are independent
from each other, so the partial knowledge of the key
should never imply the knowledge of the rest of para-
meters.
A serious drawback of stream ciphers is the weakness
against known-plaintext attacks, where the cryptana-
lyst can obtain multiple keystreams by simply XOR-
ing plaintext/ciphertext pairs. As for chaotic cryptosys-
tems, it is possible to exploit the relationship between
consecutive values of discrete chaotic sequences con-
stituting the keystream, by means of nonlinear estima-
tion techniques and statistical tools, especially when
the keystream corresponds to direct output of chaotic
generator. Indeed, this kind of attacks allows to identify
the secret parameters and the initial values, from only
observation of few chaotic sequences samples [34,35],
and then becomes possible to break the cryptosys-
tem completely, by reconstructing the entire chaotic
sequences used in encryption. The proposed struc-
ture for our keystream generator lays many difficulties
against its exploitation under know-plaintext attacks:
– All chaotic sequences used in our keystream gener-
ator are discretized into symbolic dynamic
sequences, which reveal partial information about
the real-valued chaotic states;
– The keystream generated depends on the dynam-
ics of two Bernoulli maps, perturbed chaotically
according to the Skew Tent map. This mixing of

123

Fig. 4 Histograms Original image
visualization of original and
encrypted image
1000
800
600
400
200
0 0
0 50 100 150
multiple chaotic systems does not allow to distin-
guish the symbolic sequences generated from each
one;
– The symbolic dynamic sequences of the three
chaotic maps are uncorrelated from each other and
uniformly distributed, making difficult to tracing
back their values from the keystream bits;
– The results of NIST tests confirm the high random-
ness of our keystream generator, which means that
no statistical prediction can take place.
Hence, the application of known-plaintext attack on
our cryptosystem is ineffective, since the observation
of keystreams used in encryption does not leak out any
information concerning the real-valued states, or the
chaotic systems parameters.
4.4 Differential attack
The differential cryptanalysis performs under a chosen-
plaintext attack, where the attacker applies a chosen
modification to the encryption process input and then
evaluates its impact on the output, in order to find
the most probable key that was used in encryption.
When the encryption process is independent from the
plaintext, as in the case of additive stream ciphers, the
focus of the differential analysis is about the keystream
generator. However this attack does not work against
123
N. W. Abderrahim et al.
Encrypted image
300
200
100
200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250
keystream generators that reflect a strong sensitivity to
small input changes, and which provide a high diffusion
level. The sensitivity analysis of our keystream gener-
ator is done by changing slightly the initial condition,
or one parameter value of the secret key and calculat-
ing the corresponding keystreams difference rate (Kdr),
according to the following formula [36]:
Diff(K , K 1) + Diff(K , K 2)
K dr (K ) = × 100 %,
2×N
(6)
where Diff(K,K1) and Diff(K,K2) are the different
bits numbers between the reference keystream K and
the modified ones K 1 and K 2 of size N = 106 .
We have used the IC = 0.2915683749 and the secret
key: { p1 = 2.9987938562; p2 = 3.0057031642;
p3 = 0.6573629815} for generating K , and different
initial conditions: IC + IC and IC − IC, or secret
key parameter: p1+p1 and p1−p1 for generating
K 1 and K 2 respectively, with IC = p1 = 10−15 .
For the proposed keystream generator, a slight vari-
ation in IC or any chaotic map parameter affects all
chaotic maps trajectories, which implies a significant
difference in the binary keystreams obtained, with
change rate K dr ≈ 50 %. Furthermore, the use of the
generated keystreams: K, K1, and K2 in lena image
(Fig. 4) encryption produces different outputs with
change rate: 99.6231 % for the variation of initial con-
Symbolic dynamic description and synchronization
Table 2 Correlation coefficients between the reference keystream and those generated using different IC and p1
Keystream length 10000
Different IC 0.0345
Different p1 0.0057
dition and 99.6276 % for the variation of secret key
parameter. This high impact of the keystream change
on the ciphertext makes the cryptosystem of high
security against statistical and differential attacks. The
correlation coefficients calculated between reference
keystream and modified ones, given in Table 2, confirm
also the strong sensitivity of our keystream generator
to an extremely small change. Noting that the corre-
lation becomes negligible when the keystream length
increases, so it is preferable to iterate the keystream
generator several times before using its output for
encryption, in order to insure an independent output as
possible from input, and avoiding such kind of attacks.
4.5 Resynchronization attack
This attack is based on the manipulation of synchro-
nization signal, which often reveals useful informa-
tion about the chaotic dynamics employed in encryp-
tion. The use of the symbolic dynamic-based method
synchronization in the proposed cryptosystem exploits
efficiently the two principal characteristics of chaotic
systems: sensitivity to initial condition and determin-
ism, against such attacks.
The synchronization vector generated from the
Skew Tent map serves to share the initial condition IC,
which is used to initialize the three chaotic maps in indi-
rect manner. So, even when an attacker intercepts this
vector, he cannot achieve successful synchronization
without an exact knowledge of chaotic maps parame-
ters.
However, the IC must be changed regularly, to
avoid malicious exploitation of synchronization vec-
tors and eliminate collision cases. The high sensitiv-
ity of chaotic systems to variations satisfies this con-
straint, since a change related to nearby initial condi-
tions values will generate a significant divergence in the
keystream, and thus prevents to predict many keystream
bits with reasonable probability, via statistical tools.
On the other hand, the deterministic nature of chaotic
systems allows the legitimate receiver to generate the
keystream needed for decryption in deterministic way,
100000 1000000
−0.0013 7.7887e−004
0.0013 3.6652e−004
which simplifies the resynchronization process in the
case of synchronization loss.
4.6 Analysis of sensitivity to change in the secret key
and noise resistance
In the proposed cryptosystem the first M symbols (bits)
Si , i = 1, . . . , M that correspond to the initialization
vector, should be transmitted directly to receiver, via
public channel, to maintain SDM synchronization. The
main advantage of the SDM synchronization is its high
quality of synchronization with low complexity, which
can be exploited in secure communication using con-
ventional digital transmission techniques. Even when
the received signal is corrupted by an additive white
gaussian noise: S(X ) = S(X + W ), the chaotic sym-
bolic sequence remains detectable, so that the received
initialization vector can be correctly estimated using an
conventional matched filter.
Once the initialization established, the legitimate
receiver generates the same keystream used at the emit-
ter, in deterministic way, where the timing of decryption
process is adapted by reference to the clock signal. This
kind of stream cipher is robust to transmission errors
propagation, and it offers a good performance even in
low SNR. Our cryptosystem performances in terms of
bit error rate (BER) and the cryptosystem in terms of bit
error rate (BER) and the correlation coefficients mea-
sured between the plain image (Fig. 4) and decrypted
ones, for different SNR are given in Table 3. However,
the decryption is impossible without the exact knowl-
edge of the initial condition and the critical parameters
of the three chaotic maps, constituting the secret key
of our cryptosystem. If we try to decrypt the encrypted
image of Fig. 4 with the same initial condition and
secret key used in encryption: IC = 0.3725 and {P1 =
2.98145364517528; P2 = 3.73092518472690; P3 =
0.67928153074916}, except a slight variation of 10−15
in either of the parameters (P2 = 3.730925184726901),
we obtain a highly uncorrelated output with the original
image (correlation coefficient = −0.0025), as shown
in Fig. 5.
123

Table 3 Correlation coefficients between the plain image and
the obtained decrypted images for different SNR
SNR BER Correlation
coefficient
5 0.0376 0.8888
7 0.0125 0.9610
10 7.6625e−004 0.9975
12 3.1275e−005 0.9998
15 0 1
Fig. 5 Sensitivity to change in the secret key: decrypted image
with a slightly different secret key
4.7 Performance analysis
The encryption process of additive synchronous stream
ciphers is done usually by XORing the keystream bits
with the plaintext bits, and their performance in terms
of execution time depends on the initialization and
the keystream generation steps, either for encryption
or decryption.The chaotic systems initialization in the
proposed algorithm is based on single initial condi-
tion IC selected randomly and shared via the synchro-
nization vector. It is used to initialize the three chaotic
maps through a very simple initialization process as
explained in Sect. 3.1. This step does not influence the
algorithm speed, and it is clearly advantageous over
conventional stream ciphers, where their initialization
process are more complex and need a rigorous update
on several rounds before starting the bits stream pro-
123
N. W. Abderrahim et al.
duction, which penalizes their performance. Further-
more, the choice of simple chaotic maps that do not
require high computing power, and the combination of
their symbolic dynamic sequences by the XOR oper-
ator, make the keystreams generation very fast even
in double precision arithmetic. Our keystream genera-
tor can reach 10 Mbps, On an Intel Core i7 processor
clocked at 3.5 GHz, with 8G of RAM.
5 Conclusion
In this paper we have presented a new chaotic stream
cipher, based on symbolic dynamic sequences gener-
ated from one-dimensional chaotic maps, where their
parameters constitute the secret key of our cryptosys-
tem. The synchronization of emitter/receiver via the
symbolic dynamic-based method (SDM) can success-
fully decrypt data with high level of security and
robustness. Moreover, the combination of the chaotic
sequences in the proposed keystream generator is very
efficient and designed under the concept of a one-time
pad:
– The chaotic symbolic dynamic sequences are easy
to generate and synchronize, only few parameters
and functions are needed for generating keystreams
with desired length;
– Each chaotic system can generate an enormous
number of decorrelated sequences by simply chang-
ing its initial condition or critical parameter;
– The security evaluation shows that the proposed
keystream generator has good encryption effect,
and high sensitivity to small change in the secret
key.
Thus, it can be concluded that the exploitation of
symbolic dynamic description of the chaotic sys-
tems behaviors can create primordial contributions
in the design of stream ciphers, in accordance with
modern transmissions.
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