A Comparative Study between the Dynamic Behaviours of Standard Cellular Automata and Network Cellular Automata Applied to Cryptography

AbstractThe dynamical behavior of cellular automata CA transition rules are objects of study for different knowledge fields. This paper is about the development of cryptographic methods using CA-like transition rules. We investigate the dynamic behavior of rules that are not able to propagate a perturbation inserted in the initial lattice considering variations of the regular connection structure of CAs that are akin to the small-word network construction process. Extensive experimental results indicate that such modifications in the CA connection structure will produce large changes in the dynamic behavior of the evaluated rules, suggesting that it is possible to increase considerably the space of possible cryptographic keys to methods based on CA rules, provided a different topological construct for the CA lattice is considered.