[Retracted] A Secure Environment Using a New Lightweight AES Encryption Algorithm for E-Commerce Websites

Abdul Hussien, Farah Tawfiq; Rahma, Abdul Monem S.; Abdul Wahab, Hala Bahjat

doi:https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/9961172

Security and Communication Networks

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Abstract Introduction Related Works Materials and Methods Results Conclusions Data Availability Conflicts of Interest References Copyright Related Articles

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Research Article | Open Access

Volume 2021 | Article ID 9961172 | https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/9961172

[Retracted] A Secure Environment Using a New Lightweight AES Encryption Algorithm for E-Commerce Websites

Farah Tawfiq Abdul Hussien,¹Abdul Monem S. Rahma,¹and Hala Bahjat Abdul Wahab¹

Academic Editor: Muhammad Arif

Received16 Nov 2021

Revised06 Dec 2021

Accepted13 Dec 2021

Published24 Dec 2021

Abstract

Providing security for transmitted data through the e-commerce environment requires using a fast and high secure encryption algorithm. Balancing between the speed and the security degree is a problem that many of the encryption algorithms suffer from. Increasing the security degree requires increasing the level of complexity which results in increasing encryption time. On the other hand, increasing the algorithm speed may reduce the complexity degree which affects the security level. This paper aims to design an encryption algorithm that balances time and complexity (speed and security). This is done by suggesting a security environment that depends on creating and providing an agent software to be settled into each customer device that manages the purchase and security process without customer interference. The suggested encryption algorithm is applied within this environment. Several modifications are performed on the AES encryption algorithm. The AES was chosen due to its performance (security and speed), which makes it suitable for encrypting transmitted data over the Internet. These modifications involve adding preprocessing steps (padding and zigzag), eliminating Sub Byte step, and reducing the number of rounds. The experimental results showed that the suggested algorithm provides more security and speed in the encryption and decryption process. The randomness degree has increased by 29.5%. The efficiency is increased because the encryption and decryption times are reduced, as is the CPU usage. The throughput for the suggested algorithm is increased by 10% for the encryption process and is increased by 9.3% for the decryption process.

1. Introduction

The huge amount of transmitted data over the e-commerce systems makes them exposed to different types of attacks [1, 2]. Therefore, providing security for these applications becomes an important issue [3, 4]. Different types of approaches have been used for this purpose; one of them is encryption algorithm [5, 6]. Providing security over the Internet requires using a fast and high secure encryption algorithm [7–9]. Creating a fast and high secure encryption algorithm requires to balance between speed and complexity due to the inverse relationship between them [10–13]. Increasing the security of any encryption algorithm requires increasing the degree of complexity through adding some additional processes, complex operations, increasing the number of rounds, and so on [14–17]. This will increase the encryption process time which leads to reduce the algorithm speed [18–20]. On the other hand, increasing the encryption process speed requires reducing complexity degree which in turn affects the security level [3, 21]. For e-commerce applications, the balancing between speed and security level is an important issue that must be considered [22].

AES is one of the most powerful encryption algorithms which is used to provide security over the Internet [23]. However, the AES has a limitation; that is, the huge calculations may reduce the algorithm speed [24]. Because of its simplicity and effectiveness, AES is one of the most widely used encryption algorithms [25–27]. However, compared to other algorithms [28–31], it consumes more computing power. Add Round Key, Sub Bytes, Shift Rows, and Mix Columns are the four transformations used in AES, and the Mix Columns transformation has the highest computational burden of the four. There are two arithmetic operations in Mix Columns: multiplication and addition [32–35]. Because of the complicated mathematical processes that require computing resources in a software implementation of AES [36–38], it is a costly transformation that slows down the encryption process [39].

This paper suggests a modified AES encryption algorithm that aims to solve the problem of balancing between the speed and complexity; this is done by employing several operations as a preprocessing step before starting encryption (zigzag and padding), removing Sub Byte operation, and reducing the number of rounds.

The main contributions of the proposed environment and algorithm are as follows:(1)To increase the security degree for the fixed form using a padding and zigzag pattern as preprocessing to increase the record form’s character separation, which increases confusion and diffusion.(2)To reduce encryption time by reducing the total number of AES rounds and eliminating some of the operations (Sub Bytes) for each round to consist of only three operations, except the last round consists of two operations.(3)The algorithm performs a new form of shift columns instead of shift rows to increase the confusion and diffusion degree. The structure of the plaintext and the suggested security framework consider the fixed structure of the transmitted data and, thus, provide the required degree of security according to this fact.(4)Creating a secure environment by providing a software agent that is settled into the customer’s device. This agent is responsible for purchasing and security management without interfering with the customer.

The rest structure of this study is organized as follows. Section 2 presents related works. Section 3 presents materials and methods. Section 4 describes the results and discussion. Finally, the conclusion of the proposed approach is concluded in Section 5.

In today’s resource-constrained situations, the emphasis is shifting toward lightweight cryptographic algorithms. Many lightweight cryptographic algorithms have been created, as well as existing methods that have been tweaked to accommodate resource constraints.

Reference [40] discussed data security and compression using the advanced encryption standard (AES). They proposed increasing the number of rounds (Nr.) of the AES algorithm's encryption and decryption processes to 16, which increased the system’s security. The initial key has been generated from the Polybius square. The encryption process undergoes the Sub Bytes, Shift Rows, Mix Columns, and Add Round Key operations. This article is based on enhancing security by increasing the number of rounds, which takes more time to calculate (time-consuming). There are no changes to the original work of the AES only increasing the number of rounds to increase complexity which increases security and at the same time increasing execution time.

This initiative, led by [41], focused on data security and compression using advanced encryption standards (AES). In our project, we increase the number of rounds (Nr) in the AES algorithm’s encryption and decryption processes to 16, resulting in increased system security. This article is based on enhancing security by increasing the number of rounds, which takes more time to calculate (time-consuming). There are no changes to the original work of the AES only increasing the number of rounds to increase complexity which increases security and at the same time increasing execution time.

Reference [42] established a redesigned scheme for the encryption/decryption method by changing the Mix Columns stage. The goal of the new method is to use IV vectors, which are based on a real random number generator, to enhance the speed of the encryption/decryption process while retaining the design complexity. Such a system keeps the suggested scheme's security level as high as feasible. The Mix Columns step is replaced by an XOR operation between the input state and a random vector named IV. Then, the algorithm is executed in 16 rounds. Permutation does not offer a great deal of complexity. The complexity is reduced so much which affects the security that is reduced in turn. So, this paper increased encryption speed but reduced the security.

In [16], the advanced encryption standard is changed in the study to solve its high computing demand, which is caused by the complicated mathematical processes in Mix Columns transformation, which slows down the encryption process. Because bit permutation is simple to perform and does not require any sophisticated mathematical computation, the updated AES utilized it to replace the Mix Columns transformation in AES. The encryption time is lowered in this study. Furthermore, the complexity is reduced too much. Pit permutation is used to increase the encryption speed, but it reduced the complexity too much because the complexity of the AES depends on the Mix Column.

In the cipher round, new primitive operations, such as exclusive OR and modulo arithmetic, were added to address the poor diffusion rate in the early rounds, according to [20]. The key scheduling technique was also enhanced using byte substitution and round constant addition. To assess diffusion and confusion properties, the modified AES was compared to the regular AES using the avalanche effect and frequency test. The difficulty in this study is based on increased computations, which resulted in a longer encryption time than normal AES. The AES algorithm itself is not modified, but the key scheduling technique is made more complex which produced more complexity.

The paper in [43] used the “advanced encryption standard” (AES) algorithm and the flower pollination algorithm; this study proposes a novel method for generating the key (FPA). Modified AES is the name given to this combination (MAES). This method starts with a 128-bit plain string as its input. This text has been converted to encrypted text. The “S-Box” generation is dependent on the key generation (substitution box). The FPA is used to generate the keys for the planned task. This procedure is done to build the keys in such a way that the S-difficulties Box’s are increased. This improves the security of the proposed work for data transmission over the Internet. Then, encryption is done. The next step is decryption. Finally, at the receiver’s end, the 128-bit plaintext is obtained. In this paper, the AES has not modified itself, but the technique of generating the encryption key is changed depending on the flower pollination algorithm, which consumes additional time and increases only the S-Box complexity, not the entire algorithm. Another study by [44] proposed and implemented an enhanced modification for the advanced encryption standard (AES) algorithm using an additional key generated using a linear feedback shift register (LFSR), which provides an efficient technique for pseudorandom number generation, as well as a reduction in the number of rounds. The algorithm complexity depends on key generation using LFSR. No additional randomness is shown. There are no modifications on the AES algorithm but only change in the key scheduling and generating. This study [45] proposes a secured modified advanced encryption standard algorithm that reduces the number of rounds in the advanced encryption standard (AES) to 14 to reduce encryption and decryption process time while also enhancing data security. In this study, the encryption time is reduced, but the complexity is reduced too much. It is obvious from the previous papers that all of them failed to achieve the balance between speed and security.

3. Materials and Methods

The e-commerce system has witnessed huge extensions in recent years due to the massive and various Internet technologies. This in turn led to great expansions in the size and type of transmitted data across the Internet. Some of the data contain sensitive information that may be exposed to different types of attacks, especially payment information. Therefore, security must be provided for the transmitted data. As mentioned before, this is about the e-commerce environment, where the transmitted data are characterized with the following features:(1)The information contains financials (from which it gains importance); therefore, it must be protected against any possible intruders and attacks.(2)Transmission security is a responsibility of the e-commerce system, and the security framework is created and managed by the e-commerce system. This is the reason for using symmetric encryption.(3)The transmitted data have a fixed structure.

The transmitted data are arranged and packed into a record called a record form, which is described in Table 1. The e-commerce website generates a secure environment for data transmission depending on an agent structure that is responsible for two tasks: purchase management and encryption management. An agent is settled into a customer’s device by his agreement to manage the purchase process and provide security without customer interference. The proposed agent can be described in Table 1.

The e-commerce website generates a secure environment for data transmission depending on an agent structure that is responsible for two tasks: purchase management and encryption management. An agent is settled into a customer’s device by his agreement to manage the purchase process and provide security without customer interference. The proposed agent is shown in Figure 1.

This agent is responsible for the data transmission management between the customer’s device and the e-commerce website. This means that the record form is generated and encrypted by the agent and then sent to the commercial website. These operations are managed and achieved under the agent’s control and according to the e-commerce site policies to provide the required security. The encryption process is performed according to the proposed encryption algorithm.

The proposed algorithm, which is called lightweight AES, is used to transfer data between customers and e-commerce systems over the Internet. It is used to transfer purchase information (not payment) to prevent any manipulation that can be done by an intruder during transmission. The AES algorithm is usually used for encrypting data transmission due to its secrecy, complexity, strength, and performance. However, it struggles with huge calculations. Reducing these calculations requires a long time and increases performance and security without reducing the algorithm efficiency. A modification has been made to the standard algorithm, which will be explained in the following sections, but first, there will be some preliminary steps before starting the encryption process.

3.1. The Plaintext Contents

The plaintext that will be encrypted is a record that is referred to as a form record, as shown previously in Table 1 in Section 3.

This contains the purchase information that will be sent from the customer’s computer to the e-commerce site after being encrypted by an agent that is inserted into the customer’s computer according to his agreement. The whole process of encryption can be described in Algorithm 1.

	Input: Plaintext
	Output: Ciphertext
	Start
	Read the message to be encrypted
	Perform padding
	Perform zigzag
	Perform lightweight AES
	End

The input for Algorithm 1 is the order form which contains the details of the customer purchase order. This order contains UserId, AgentId, ProductId, Quantity, Address, Date, and Time. The plaintext is a sequence of characters (letters and numbers) that are converted to hexadecimal because it is the typical representation to be processed in AES processes.

3.2. Encryption Process

Before starting the encryption process, there are two steps, which are called preliminary steps. These steps involve the padding process and zigzag algorithm, which are performed on the sender side. These operations are considered preprocessing steps that reduce statistical relations among the string character before encryption.

3.2.1. Padding

This is the first process that is applied to the purchase order which is mentioned previously. The padding step aims to ensure that the string length is equal to 16, and it is multiple to be suitable for encryption because the message will be converted into a matrix of 4 ∗ 4 bytes.

This step can be described by Algorithm 2.

	Input: initial message (order form as string) as matrix of 4 ∗ 4 of bytes
	Output: Expanded message (the padded order form) as matrix of 4 ∗ 4 of bytes
	Start
	Read message (M)
	Compute message length (N)
	If N < 16 then
	The number of added characters (P) = 16 – N
	For I = P down to 1
	M = M concatenate I
	End

For example, suppose that we have the following string: “How are you today?”

Here, the string length is 14, and two characters need to be completed to reach the length of 16. Thus, a counter is used to specify the required number. Two characters are concatenated as expressed in the algorithm. The first one is “2,” the second one is “1,” and the result will be “How are you today 21.” Now, the string length is 16 characters and is suitable for the next step, the zigzag.

The complexity of the padding step is ((2⁸)ⁿ)^L, where 2⁸ is the length of each character, n represents the plaintext length, and L represents the number of times of repeating the padding process for each plaintext.

3.2.2. Zigzag Pattern

The padded string is used as input for this step which is represented as a matrix of size 4 ∗ 4 of bytes.

To increase confusion and diffusion, a zigzag pattern is applied, as shown in Figure 2.

The zigzag pattern can be described as a rearrangement of the characters inside the string to break the statistical relations among them. This pattern is used only one time before the encryption to compensate for the elimination of the substitution step (Sub Bytes) inside the modified AES algorithm, as will be described later.

The zigzag pattern can be described in Algorithm 3.

	Input: Expanded message (EM) as matrix of 4 ∗ 4 of bytes
	Output: Zigzagged EM as matrix of 4 ∗ 4 of bytes
	Start
	//For the first two column
	While (i − 2) > 0 do
	I = 3, J = 0
	a(i, j) = a(i − 1, j)
	a(i − 1, j) = a(i, j − 1)
	a(i, j − 1) = a(i − 1, j − 1)
	a(i − 1, j − 1) = a(i − 2, j)
	i−=2
	end while
	//For the last two column
	Count = 0
	While (i + 2 ≤ 3) do
	I = 0, j = 2
	a(i, j) = a(i + 1, j)
	a(i + 1, j) = a(I, j + 1)
	a(I, j + 1) = a(i + 1, j + 1)
	a(i + 1, j + 1) = a(i + 2, j)
	i+=2
	end while
	End

The output of this step is a matrix of 4 ∗ 4 size after performing zigzag for the whole plaintext (purchase order). The result is suitable to be encrypted by the AES algorithm. The complexity for the zigzag operation is ((2⁸)¹⁶)^L, where 2⁸ represents the length of each byte in the matrix of the zigzag, 16 represents the total number of cells in the matrix to perform zigzag on, and L represents the number of time of repeating the zigzag operation.

3.3. The Modified Encryption Algorithm

In modified AES, to reduce the execution time and the calculation time, several changes are made. First, the total number of rounds is reduced to 6 rounds. Inside each round, there are only three operations: Shift Column, Mix Column, and Add Round Key (except the final round, which has only two steps: Mix Column and Add Round Key). The Mix Column and Round Key are added in the same manner in standard AES. Mix Column operation costs a huge amount of time for the calculations, which is the most important operation that provides complexity and security. Reducing the number of rounds reduces the total time required to complete the encryption without affecting the security degree of the algorithm. Additionally, eliminating the substitution (Sub Byte) operation will save more time without affecting the AES performance. However, the zigzag method is used to provide confusion and diffusion because performing the encryption rearranges the characters of the text, but it will be performed only once before starting the AES operations, which means that it will not cost too much time. Performing the encryption process in this order using these steps provides a fast and secure encryption algorithm that is suitable for securely transforming the information over the Internet. Providing security and a fast processing time is the main goal of this paper, which is discussed in the experimental results.

3.3.1. The Shift Column Step

The shift row step is replaced by a shifting column to make it more difficult for a hacker to predict the manner of operations being performed.

Shift column is performed in the same manner as to shift row, but it is performing on columns instead of rows with some modification as described in Figure 3.

Each cell consists of bytes, so it is a matrix of 4 ∗ 4 of bytes. The first three columns are shifted in the same direction, while the last column is shifted in the reverse direction. This manner of shifting provides more confusion and diffusion. After the shift column process, the matrix will be as shown in Figure 4:

The shift column step can be expressed in Algorithm 4.

	Input: state matrix as matrix of 4 ∗ 4 of bytes
	Output: shifted state matrix as matrix of 4 ∗ 4 of bytes
	a[0, 0], a[0, 1], a[0, 2], a[0, 3] = a[3, 0], a[0, 0], a[1, 0], a[2, 0]
	a[0, 1], a[1, 1], a[2, 1], a[3, 1] = a[1, 1], a[2, 1], a[3, 1], a[0, 1]
	a[0, 2], a[1, 2], a[2, 2], a[3, 2] = a[2, 2], a[3, 2], a[0, 2], a[1, 2]
	a[0, 3], a[1, 3], a[2, 3], a[3, 3] = a[1, 3], a[2, 3], a[3, 3], a[0, 3]

The complexity of the shift column operation complexity is (2⁵)⁴, where 2⁵ represents the length of a complete column (number of bits to be shifted for each column) because each shift is performed for the whole column at a time, and 4 represents the number of columns to be shifted.

Figure 5 describes the details of the round in modified lightweight AES.

3.4. The Decryption Process

On the receiver side, the decryption process will be performed in reverse order using the same key as described in Algorithm 5.

	Input: encrypted message (the encrypted order form)
	Output: decrypted message (The decrypted order form)
	Start
	Read encrypted message
	Perform lightweight AES decryption algorithm
	Perform inverse zigzag algorithm
	Eliminate padding and extract the message

The decryption process is the same as encryption but in a reverse manner, as described in Figure 6.

In the decryption process, there must be an inverse process for the mix column step and an inverse process for the shift column step, which are performed in the same manner in a different order.

3.4.1. Inverse Shift Column

The inverse shift column is performed in the same manner as the initial shift column but in reverse order, as shown in Figure 7, and by using the resulting matrix shown in Figure 4.

After performing the inverse shift column, the matrix will be returned to its original order, as shown before in Figure 3. Algorithm 6 represents the inverse of the shift column step.

	Input: shifted state matrix of size 4 ∗ 4 of bytes
	Output: state matrix of size 4 ∗ 4 of bytes
	a[3, 0], a[0, 0], a[1, 0], a[2, 0] = a[0, 0], a[0, 1], a[0, 2], a[0, 3]
	a[1, 1], a[2, 1], a[3, 1], a[0, 1] = a[0, 1], a[1, 1], a[2, 1], a[3, 1]
	a[2, 2], a[3, 2], a[0, 2], a[1, 2] = a[0, 2], a[1, 2], a[2, 2], a[3, 2]
	a[1, 3], a[2, 3], a[3, 3], a[0, 3] = a[0, 3], a[1, 3], a[2, 3], a[3, 3]

3.4.2. Inverse Zigzag

Inverse zigzag is performed in the same manner as initial zigzag but in the reverse order, as shown in Figure 8.

The inverse zigzag algorithm can be described as follows in Algorithm 7.

	Input: Expanded message (EM) matrix of 4 ∗ 4
	Output: Zigzagged EM matrix of 4 ∗ 4
	Start
	//For the first two column
	While (i + 2 ≤ 3) do
	I = 0, j = 0
	a(i, j) = a(i + 1, j)
	a(i + 1, j) = a(I, j + 1)
	a(I, j + 1) = a(i + 1, j + 1)
	a(i + 1, j + 1) = a(i + 2, j)
	i+=2
	end while
	//For the last two column
	I = 3, j = 3
	While (i − 2) > 0 do
	I = 3, J = 0
	a(i, j) = a(i − 1, j)
	a(i − 1, j) = a(i, j − 1)
	a(i, j − 1) = a(i − 1, j − 1)
	a(i − 1, j − 1) = a(i − 2, j)
	i−=2
	end while
	End

4. Results and Discussions

Experimental results are used to prove the modified algorithm performance. These criteria involve the NIST test, encryption and decryption time, memory usage on file encryption, and file decryption. The files were encrypted to analyze the performance of the modified AES algorithm. During the experiments, different sizes of text files were tested for ten trials to get the average encryption time and CPU usage of the standard AES and modified AES. The standard and modified AES algorithms were both written in PHP Laravel Framework and simulated on Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6200U CPU @ 2.30 GHz, 2.40 GHz with 8 GB RAM and 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor, Windows 10 Pro.

4.1. NIST Test Suite

NIST is the most widely used test for utilizing encryption algorithms. Therefore, it is used here to compare the standard AES and the new block cipher algorithm. Specifically, three tests are used for comparison: approximate entropy, run test, and linear complexity. These tests provided randomness measures for the encrypted test resulting from both standard AES and the new algorithm. The results are shown in Table 2.

The results showed that the new method produced more randomness than the standard AES. It is shown that as average the modified AES is increased by 0.209125 in approximate entropy, 0.14425 in run test, and 0.29325 in linear complexity to the standard AES.

4.2. Encryption and Decryption

Encryption and decryption time analysis is an important feature to measure the encryption algorithm performance. Different file sizes are used to measure the execution time for both the encryption and decryption steps and then compared with the standard AES. The results in Table 3 and Figures 9 and 10 show that the new algorithm is faster. The main goal of the paper is to provide a faster encryption algorithm for encrypting and decrypting data that will be transformed over the Internet.

On average, the encryption time of lightweight AES is less than the standard AES by 2858 milliseconds, while the decryption process is less by 3225 milliseconds.

4.3. Memory Space Utilization

Analyzing CPU memory using different file sizes shows that the lightweight AES uses less memory than the standard AES during the encryption process. The analysis of memory usage is shown in Figure 11 and Table 4.

The CPU utilization is increased in the modified AES by 1297620 as average to the standard AES.

In addition, the memory space that is used during the decryption process in lightweight AES is less than that used by the standard AES. This is shown in Figure 12 and Table 5. The previous results showed that the lightweight AES is better at utilizing CPUs than the standard AES.

Table 6 shows the result of the avalanche effect of the standard and the modified AES. The tests were carried out by altering one bit of plaintext, either the last, first or middle bit. Although the avalanche effect of an encryption technique is dependent not only on the complexity of the algorithm but also on the key and plaintext, the modified AES created a stronger avalanche effect than the conventional AES, based on the results. The security level of the method is improved by a high avalanche effect. The results of the avalanche test result comparison between the standard and the modified AES are shown in Table 6.

It is obvious that the CPU utilization is increased in the modified AES by 961560 as average to the standard AES.

4.4. Avalanche Effect

The avalanche effect is a feature of encryption algorithms in which a change in one bit of plaintext causes several bits of the ciphertext to change. The avalanche effect is computed as follows:

4.5. Comparison Analyses

A comparison analysis is shown in Table 7 to characterize the features of the suggested system using several criteria to compare with the previous works. The features which are used in Table 7 are as follows:(1)Randomness which is taken from the NIST test(2)Speed which indicates the encryption and decryption process speed(3)CPU utilization refers to the memory space which is used during the encryption-decryption process(4)Application refers to the application in which the algorithm is implemented(5)Complexity indicates the degree of complexity to determine security level Increasing the complexity resulted in increasing the security(6)Throughput indicates the encrypted file size per unit of time(7)Avalanche test represents the feature of encryption algorithms in which a change in one bit of plaintext causes several bits of the ciphertext to change

The comparison analysis showed that some of the researches increase some features and reduced others which reflects the difficulty of balancing among the important features to generate an efficient algorithm. The proposed algorithm achieves the balancing among all features, especially complexity and speed which prove the efficiency of the proposed method.

The experimental results showed enhancements in the performance of the proposed method. But as seen in the discussion of the related works, reducing the number of rounds may reduce complexity and hence security which is considered as a limitation in the proposed method. This limitation is fixed by adding additional preprocessing operation that increases little bit the security of the algorithm and adding more randomness for the new method. Also, settling the software agent inside the customer device occupies additional memory space, which is considered as another limitation but it is acceptable because it enhances the e-commerce site by reducing the deadlock situation for which the proposed system is suggested originally.

5. Conclusions

The large volume of data transformed over the Internet has led to a strong need to protect data from theft and manipulation, especially sensitive and financial data. Encryption is one of the most important and most common methods used to protect data from theft, but encryption algorithms struggle with some problems, including the time required for encryption, as the data transmitted over the Internet must be encrypted at an acceptable speed. This paper presents a proposal to modify the AES algorithm to reduce the time taken for encryption while maintaining the level of complexity necessary to protect the data. In this algorithm, it was found that the Sub Byte operation that was being executed in all rounds was canceled and replaced by the zigzag algorithm, which was used once before starting the encryption process. Since the total number of cycles is 6 cycles, each cycle consists of three operations, which are Added Round Key, Mix Column, Shift Column, except for the last cycle, which consists of only two operations (Add Round Key and Mix Column). The modified algorithm increases the confusion and diffusion by employing the padding and zigzag patterns as preprocessing before the encryption process. Adding padding and zigzag algorithm adds more complexity to the algorithm. The performance is increased by decreasing the encryption and decryption time, which is considered a critical issue in real-time systems, such as e-commerce systems. It also requires fast processing without affecting the complexity level to support the security level. Reducing the number of rounds resulted in reducing the encryption and decryption processes which increase the modified algorithm speed. On the other hand to balance between the speed and complexity, two operations are added as preprocessing steps (padding and zigzag) before encryption to add more confusion and diffusion and add more complexity to the algorithm to keep the level of security acceptable. Experiments showed an increase in the efficiency of the algorithm in terms of reducing the encryption and decryption time, while improving the use of memory and CPU resources, maintaining the amount of complexity required to maintain data confidentiality, and increasing the avalanche percentage.

Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this study.

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Copyright © 2021 Farah Tawfiq Abdul Hussien et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Abstract

1. Introduction

2. Related Works

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. The Plaintext Contents

3.2. Encryption Process

3.2.1. Padding

3.2.2. Zigzag Pattern

3.3. The Modified Encryption Algorithm

3.3.1. The Shift Column Step

3.4. The Decryption Process

3.4.1. Inverse Shift Column

3.4.2. Inverse Zigzag

4. Results and Discussions

4.1. NIST Test Suite

4.2. Encryption and Decryption

4.3. Memory Space Utilization

4.4. Avalanche Effect

4.5. Comparison Analyses

5. Conclusions

Data Availability

Conflicts of Interest

References

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