Open Access

ARTICLE

Split-n-Swap: A New Modification of the Twofish Block Cipher Algorithm

Awny Sayed^1,2, Maha Mahrous³, Enas Elgeldawi^1,*
1 Computer Science Department, Faculty of Science, Minia University, Minia, 61519, Egypt
2 Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, Information Technology Department, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, 21589, Saudi Arabia
3 Computer Science Department, Faculty of Computers and Information, Minia University, Minia, 61519, Egypt
* Corresponding Author: Enas Elgeldawi. Email:

Computers, Materials & Continua 2023, 74(1), 1723-1734. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2023.032838

Received 31 May 2022; Accepted 04 July 2022; Issue published 22 September 2022

Abstract

Securing digital data from unauthorized access throughout its entire lifecycle has been always a critical concern. A robust data security system should protect the information assets of any organization against cybercriminal activities. The Twofish algorithm is one of the well-known symmetric key block cipher cryptographic algorithms and has been known for its rapid convergence. But when it comes to security, it is not the preferred cryptographic algorithm to use compared to other algorithms that have shown better security. Many applications and social platforms have adopted other symmetric key block cipher cryptographic algorithms such as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm to construct their main security wall. In this paper, a new modification for the original Twofish algorithm is proposed to strengthen its security and to take advantage of its fast convergence. The new algorithm has been named Split-n-Swap (SnS). Performance analysis of the new modification algorithm has been performed using different measurement metrics. The experimental results show that the complexity of the SnS algorithm exceeds that of the original Twofish algorithm while maintaining reasonable values for encryption and decryption times as well as memory utilization. A detailed analysis is given with the strength and limitation aspects of the proposed algorithm.

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Keywords

Twofish; advanced encryption standard (AES); cryptography; symmetric key; block cipher

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