Received October 25, 2019, accepted November 11, 2019, date of publication November 27, 2019,

date of current version December 13, 2019.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2956385

Construction of Cryptographic S-Boxes Based

on Mobius Transformation and Chaotic
Tent-Sine System
SAJJAD SHAUKAT JAMAL 1 , AMIR ANEES2 , MUSHEER AHMAD 3,

MUHAMMAD FAHAD KHAN 4 , AND IQTADAR HUSSAIN 5

1 Department of Mathematics, College of Science, King Khalid University, Abha 62529, Saudi Arabia
2 Victorian
Institute of Technology, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia
3 Department of Computer Engineering, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi 110025, India
4 Department of Software Engineering, Foundation University Islamabad, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan
5 Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Physics, Qatar University, Doha 2713, Qatar

Corresponding author: Muhammad Fahad Khan (fahad.khan@fui.edu.pk)

This work was supported by the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Khalid University through the Research Groups Program under
Grant R.G.P 2/58/40.

ABSTRACT Over the last few decades, different mediums of secure communication use chaos which
is demonstrated by some nonlinear dynamical systems. Chaos shows unpredictable behavior and this
characteristic is quite helpful in different encryption techniques and for multimedia security. In this work,
the chaotic behavior of the improved Tent-Sine map is conferred and ultimately a new method to construct
substitution-boxes is proposed. This new method explores the features of chaos through TSS map and
algebraic Mobius transformation to generate strong S-boxes. The S-boxes are assessed using standard tests
suit which includes nonlinearity, strict avalanche criterion, bit independence criterion, linear approximation
probability and differential uniformity. Moreover, the proposed S-boxes show excellent statistical properties
under majority logic criterions such as correlation, homogeneity, energy, entropy, contrast. The statistical
encryption results are demonstrate the better performance of the proposed S-boxes when compared with
some of state of the art S-boxes including AES, Gray, APA S8 AES, Skipjack and validate the suitability of
anticipated method.

INDEX TERMS Substitution-box, block cipher, improved chaotic map, nonlinearity.

I. INTRODUCTION but the difference lies in applying different methods. In these

The rapid increase in international networking provides many two methods, the basic purpose is to obscure the original
new options for the design and presentation in the form of information. Interestingly, the method adopted in both multi-
digital data. This easy access and disposal to digital data media security techniques, steganography and watermarking
which includes audio, video, electronic libraries, electronic is the same but they vary in purposes. Hiding of digital content
advertising, web designing, and digital repositories develop in images is the goal of steganography whereas watermarking
the concern of security. The protection while transferring or helps in declaring right ownership [1]–[4]. In symmetric-
saving data is indispensably important. For ensuring the secu- key cryptography, block cipher has a very important role
rity of such digital data and information, a specific field which to play in encrypting the information. By keeping the same
is named as secure communication plays its vital role to dimensions, block cipher converts plaintext data into cipher-
counter this major problem. Secure communication can fur- text data with the assistance of a user-provided an undis-
ther be categorized into three main categories which include closed key [5], [6], [29]. By following the reverse pattern on
cryptography, watermarking and steganography. The basic ciphertext data, decryption of the whole process is performed
purpose of both steganography and cryptography is similar provided that secret keys of the process remain unchanged.
The above-mentioned procedure is adopted in Advanced
The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and Encryption Standards (AES) [7]. It is considered as one of the
approving it for publication was Aneel Rahim . strong cryptosystems which encrypt the plaintext and ensure

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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FIGURE 1. Bifurcation diagram (first row) and Lyapunov spectrum (second row) of chaotic (a) Tent
map, (b) Sine map, and (c) TSS map versus parameter τ , α, and σ for (0, 4], respectively.

FIGURE 2. Flowchart of proposed S-box design method.

secure communication. The whole procedure consists of highlights the importance of S-box in the encryption proce-
four steps. In the very first step byte substitution which is dure. It is the only nonlinear component and this byte substi-
also named as substitution step, is done with the help of tution step creates confusion in the plaintext data that can be
the substitution-box (S-box). This is the step that actually seen in encrypted data. Different applications of substitution

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FIGURE 3. Bifurcation diagrams of chaotic TSS maps in (a) equation (6), (b) equation (7), (c) equation (8), and
(d) equation (9), respectively.

and permutation process on plain text data provide encrypted same AES algebraic operations are performed but with mod-
ciphertext data [8]–[10]. The value and capability of pro- ified affine transformation cycle. The obtained S-box found
ducing confusion are measured by variations in the output to have good cryptographic and algebraic features. Subse-
bit pattern. The selected S-box must be robust and shows quently, M-T Tran et al. utilized the gray codes to improvise
opposition against any attempt of cryptanalysis. Nonlinearity the S-box over algebraic coefficients in [15]. They added a
is considered as the foremost performing criterion of the preprocessing step to the structure of AES S-box by perform-
S-box in any encryption method. Over the years, researchers ing a gray-code transformation. In [16], Hussain et al. applied
are keen to get algebraically strong and cryptographically the algebraic permutation group S8 on the elements of AES
robust S-boxes. In addition to this, chaos-based S-boxes also S-box which enables them to construct sequentially as much
have their importance for secure communication of data. as 40320 S-boxes with similar performance strength as that of
These S-boxes exhibit different striking properties and offer AES S-box. The same researcher proposed another algebraic
interesting results to various ciphers. But the main focus method for S-box by applying the action of projective linear
is to improve the nonlinearity of these S-boxes [11], [12]. group on Galois field with a particular type of linear fractional
Mathematically, an S-box can be represented as: transformation in [17]. In [18], a powerful algebraic method is
suggested to construct 16 strong S-boxes built on the concept
S : GF(2a ) → GF(2b ) (1)
of Galois field extensions of order 256. The technique is
S-box holds one to one and onto relations which makes purely algebraic and has ability to construct 8 × 8 S-boxes
it a bijection mapping and hence its inverse is possible. of high cryptographic strengths. Farwa et al. in [19] used
A message symbol is replaced with one element of S-box. multiplicative cyclic group of associated Galois field for the
By equation (1), it is evident that an a × b S-box takes a bits construction of algebraic S-box. They carefully formulated a
as the input information and gives b bits as the output [13]. bijective nonlinear iterative algebraic map defined on GF(28 )
Due to the success of AES S-box, a number of proposals and the algebraic S-box provided acceptable properties for
have been put forward for the design of strong S-boxes using application in image encryption. A new S-box generation
Galois field based algebraic techniques. In [14], Cui et al. method based on both the algebraic and chaotic structures
proposed an affine-power-affine (APA) structure in which is proposed in [20]. Wherein, chaotic Chebyshev map and a

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TABLE 1. Chaotic S-box corresponds to the TSS by equation (4) for β = 1.

TABLE 2. Chaotic S-box corresponds to the TSS by equation (6) for β = 8/9.

special class of permutation subgroups of symmetric group between the random-based and algebraic methods. With the
S16 are explored for S-box construction. applied heuristics, many of the researchers have obtained
The available literature makes it evident that the S-box S-boxes better than random or chaotic S-boxes. But, the asso-
generation using any random approach, using chaos or some ciated demerit is that they are time consuming as the
other pseudo-random source, doesn’t found to have good optimization process takes significant time to get notable
cryptographic strengths compared to S-boxes generated via configuration of optimized S-box [24].
algebraic methods. The only merit with random S-boxes is In this work, combination of two 1D chaotic maps to
that it is quite easy to get a large quantity of S-boxes. How- improve their chaotic range is used to construct different
ever, cryptographically strong S-boxes are found to be eas- S-boxes. In addition, the group action of a projective general
ily obtainable through algebraic techniques [21]. But, many linear group is also performed on the elements of GF(28 ).
of them are keyless techniques and yields static S-boxes. Hence, an improved chaos-assisted search for strong S-boxes
In literature, some of the well-known S-boxes are AES [7], construction using the algebraic Mobius transformation is put
APA [14], Gray [15], S8 AES [16], S8-APA [22], [23]. The forward. The proposed method is key-dependent, means it
performance of optimization based S-box methods lies in also has its own set of key space. Our method is a blend

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TABLE 3. Chaotic S-box corresponds to the TSS by equation (7) for β = 4/5.

TABLE 4. Chaotic S-box corresponds to the TSS by equation (8) for β = 6/7.

of chaos-based random and algebraic techniques. Therefore, form a Tent-Sine system (TSS) which is used for the proposed
it holds the advantages of ease of constructing S-boxes with chaotic S-box method.
cryptographic strengths similar to AES and key-dependent.
The exhaustive comparison of S-boxes performance with a A. CHAOTIC TENT MAP
number of chaos-based., algebraic-based, and optimization- The Tent map is expressed as [25]:
based methods is also done to reflect the superiority of 
y 1
our method over many of the standing methods. Moreover, τ n
 yi <
an image encryption application of proposed S-boxes is also yn+1 = 2 2 (2)
(1 − yn ) 1
carried out to show their suitability to multimedia security. τ
 yi ≥
2 2
where, the range of parameter τ lies in the interval 0 < τ ≤ 4,
II. REVIEW OF VARIOUS CHAOTIC MAPS and state variable yn ∈ [0, 1]. It is obvious from bifurcation
In the literature, various chaotic maps have been applied diagram of chaotic tent map; the map name is due to its tent
for encryption, watermarking and steganography techniques. map like shape. The interval of chaotic behavior of tent map
Here, two chaotic maps i.e., Tent map and Sine map will is [2, 4]. The bifurcation diagram and lyapunov exponent are
be discussed and analyzed. The combination of these maps shown in Fig 1(a). The behavior of Tent map is chaotic for

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TABLE 5. Chaotic S-box corresponds to the TSS by equation (9), β = 10/9.

TABLE 6. Nonlinearity of proposed S-boxes.

the specific interval only as clear from Fig. 1(a) which shows range lies in between 0 to 1. The assimilation of param-
the limitations of this chaotic map. eters of both the chaotic maps, the expression is given in
equation (4).
B. CHAOTIC SINE MAP
yn+1 = F (yn , σ, β)
The chaotic behaviour of well-known Logistic map and Sine  y
map is somewhat similar to each other. This can be seen in (σ n + (4 − σ ) sin(πyβn )/4)mod1 yi < 1/2
=  2
 σ (1 − yn ) /2 + (4 − σ ) sin(πyβn )/4

both bifurcation and lyapunov exponent diagrams of Sine yi ≥ 1/2
map given in Fig 1(b). The Sine map has following governing
equation [26]. (4)

yn+1 = αsin (πyn ) /4, 0 < α ≤ 4; (3) where 0 < σ ≤ 4, β > 0 are two parameters and yn ∈ [0, 1]
is the state variable of the TSS chaotic system. The chaotic
Like Tent map, the state variable yn ∈ [0, 1] and α is system limit of the TSS system is increased remarkably well and the
parameter. Both the Tent map and Sine map have almost output sequences are distributed uniformly which can be seen
identical behavior and they have common problems as well. from its bifurcation and lyapunov exponent diagrams shown
The range of chaos in Sine map is also limited as depicted in Figure 1(c) for β = 1.
in bifurcation diagram. Moreover, the non-uniformity of its
trajectory-points combine with limited chaotic range makes III. PROPOSED METHOD
the application of Sine map limited. A. MOBIUS TRANSFORMATION BASED
CONSTRUCTION OF CHAOTIC S-BOX
C. CHAOTIC TENT-SINE SYSTEM The important step in any cryptographic technique is the
The short chaotic spread of both Tent map and Sine map appropriate selection of S-box. This careful selection also
demands a chaotic map whose chaotic spread is bigger than restricts the linear and differential attacks. With a higher
two seed maps. A unique nonlinear combination of these two chaotic range and complex properties, Tent-Sine system is
maps gives a chaotic Tent-Sine system (TSS). This arrange- considered for the structuring proposed S-boxes. The flow
ment of chaotic maps plays an extremely complicated chaotic chart in Fig. 2 shows that the primary input for the structure
role [27]. The mod1 operator is required to keep the output of S-box is taken from chaotic Tent-Sine map.

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TABLE 7. Comparison of different S-boxes performance features.

Moreover, the mathematical foundation of the proposed as follows:

method is defined by the concept of group action of
     
g : PGL(2, GF 28 ) × GF 28 → GF 28
a projective general linear group over a Galois finite
field GF(28 ) with the help of Mobius transformation. u1 × m + u2
g (m) = , 0 ≤ m ≤ 255 (5)
The group action and Mobius transformation is expressed u3 × m + u4

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FIGURE 4. Plain image and substituted images with proposed S-box 2 to S-box 5.

FIGURE 5. Histogram of Lena plain text image and substituted images with proposed S-box I to S-box V.

where, the four values u1 , u2 , u3 , and u4 are from a finite transformation g(m) has point of discontinuity at u3 × m +
field GF(28 ). The Mobius transformation has a combined u4 = 0. This point has to be avoided while using it to generate
effect of inversion, dilation, rotation and translation in the the output value g(m). The existence of discontinuity point of
Galois field domain. It also serves as one to one transformer Mobius transformation is carefully checked when generating
provided that its inherent conditions are satisfied. The Mobius the S-box elements during operation of proposed scheme.

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TABLE 8. Majority logic criterion results for plain and substituted images.

FIGURE 6. Lena plaintext image and its encrypted images with proposed S-boxes of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

The scheme proceeds further only if u3 × m + u4 6 = 0, else Step I: Initially, random values w1 , w2 , w3 , w4 are obtained
the scheme needs to loop back to avoid the possibility of this by iterating the TSS map F(y0 , σ, β) four times by using the
discontinuity. control parameter σ having interval [0,4] and the initial value
The choice of four u1 , u2 , u3 , and u4 values, allocated y0 ∈ [0,1].
to Mobius transformation is selected from chaotic Tent- Step II: The four values ui are calculated out of chaotic wi
Sine system. The products of the proposed method are for i = 1,2,3,4 obtained in Step I as:
chaotic S-boxes. The algorithm depicts that loop applied
ui = mod(floor(wi × 10000),256)
in it takes values of u1 , u2 , u3 , u4 and m from interval
0-255. The algorithm goes to the next step once it satis- If the resulting value of u1 × u4 − u2 × u3 is any number other
fies the condition of u1 × u4 − u2 × u3 is not equal to than zero, we will go to the next Step else we need to start
zero. This condition makes the transformation preclude the from Step I again.
possibility that Mobius transformation g(m) reduces to a Step III: Here,we generate a sequence m of length 256 from
constant. The operational steps of proposed method are the different entries of the finite field GF(28 ). This sequence
following. of 256 entries will be in ascending order.

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FIGURE 7. Histogram of Lena plain text image and encrypted images with proposed S-box 1 to S-box 5.
 y
(σ + (4 − σ ) sin(πyn/5 )/4)mod1
n 4
Step IV: We need to go back to step III provided that 

 2
u3 × m + u4 is equal to zero. If the result of the expression

yi < 1/2


is non-zero then we would take group action of the projective yn+1 =  4/5

general linear group PGL(2,GF(28 )) on the elements of m.


 σ (1 − yn ) /2 + (4 − σ ) sin(πy n )/4 mod1

This group action is defined in equation (5).

 yi ≥ 1/2
Step V: Lastly, by iterating the above-mentioned four steps (7)
will provide us the sequence S having 256 different entries.  y
n 6/7

(σ 2 + (4 − σ ) sin(πyn )/4)mod1


Transform its elements into 16 × 16 matrix. This matrix S is 

yi < 1/2

the proposed S-box. 
The flowchart of the proposed method using the TSS yn+1 =  6/7


 σ (1 − yn ) /2 + (4 − σ ) sin(πy n )/4 mod1
chaotic map and Mobius transformation is shown in Fig. 2. 


 yi ≥ 1/2
B. PROPOSED S-BOXES
(8)
S-boxes are constructed by using various powers β of chaotic  y
n 10/9

TSS map F(y0 , σ, β). The initial values for y0 = 0.7 and

 (σ + (4 − σ ) sin(πyn )/4)mod1

 2
σ = 3 with specified β is taken for simulation. The detailed yi < 1/2


description of the map relates to the first S-box for β = 1 yn+1 =  10/9


 σ (1 − yn ) /2 + (4 − σ ) sin(πy n )/4 mod1
is specified in equation (4) and the maps of rest of the four 


S-boxes are given in equations (8) to (11). The bifurcation
 yi ≥ 1/2
diagrams of different forms of TSS maps having different (9)
exponents are shown in Figure 3. The exponent β of TSS map
is used as a parameter for constructing different S-boxes. The IV. SUBSTITUTION BOXES ANALYSIS
tabular form of proposed chaotic S-boxes for β = 1, β = 8/9, The assessment of the S-box defines its further application
β = 4/5, β = 6/7, and β = 10/9 are provided in Tables (1) in various cryptographic schemes and multimedia secu-
to (5), respectively. The exponents used for the construction rity [28]–[30]. For this purpose, different theoretic and sta-
of these S-boxes are mentioned with Tables. tistical performance measures are being utilized to evaluate
 y the strength of S-boxes [31]. A comprehensive demonstration
(σ + (4 − σ ) sin(πyn/9 )/4)mod1
 n 8


 2 of such measures, involving differential characteristics of the
yi < 1/2

 block cipher is discussed in [32]. These types of attacks
yn+1 =  8/9

are used in block cipher-based S-boxes like DES and AES.

 σ (1 − yn ) /2 + (4 − σ ) sin(πyn )/4 mod1


 The cipher can be scrutinized by using information theory
 yi ≥ 1/2 approach [31]. Different tests like nonlinearity score, strict
(6) avalanche criteria (SAC), bit independent criterion (BIC),

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TABLE 9. Majority logic criterion analyses for plain and encrypted images (AES algorithm).

linear and differential approximation probabilities. The all images. The parameters µ and σ are the variance and stan-
eight nonlinearity scores of proposed five S-boxes are given dard deviation respectively.
in Table 6. The minimal score of nonlinearity is also shown to
highlight that proposed S-boxes have high score of minimal B. ENTROPY
nonlinearity and capable to mitigate the minimal nonlinear- The magnitude of the improbability of a random variable to
ity based attack. Moreover, the cryptographic performance become the part of a random process is done in entropy. This
features of proposed five S-boxes are also compared with analysis is used to depict the randomness of digital images.
an exhaustive list of state of the art S-boxes in Table 7. It can be defined as:
We selected those S-boxes whose average nonlinearity score X
is about 106 for comparison in Table 7. From comparison C =− p(xi )log2 p(xi ) (11)
Table, it is clear that the proposed S-boxes (preferably the where, probability of random variable is given by p(xi ).
S-box-3, Sbox-4 and S-box-5) have remarkably better per-
formance compared to almost all of the S-boxes (includ- C. CONTRAST
ing recent ones) listed in the comparison Table. They show Contrast analysis facilitates the user to see objects vividly to
exhibits similar strengths and features as that of AES, APA, identify the texture of an image. The general value of contrast
Gray, S8-AES S-boxes. is given by:
X
V. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS C= |i − j|2 p(i, j) (12)
To analyze the quality of the S-box constructed with the
help of chaotic tent-sine system, the Lena plaintext image is D. HOMOGENEITY
substituted with five different proposed S-boxes. Moreover, The nearness of the distribution in the gray level
we used our proposed S-boxes in the encryption technique co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) to GLCM diagonal is mea-
(encryption technique of AES is followed). Fig. 4 gives the sured in homogeneity analysis. This matrix shows the cal-
pictorial representation of the Lena plain-image and substi- culations of combinations of pixel brightness outcomes in
tuted images using proposed S-boxes. While Fig. 5 shows tabular form. It can be given as:
the corresponding histograms of plain-image and substituted X p(i, j)
images. The plain-image Lena and its encrypted images using Hom = (13)
1 + |i − j|
proposed S-boxes in the AES encryption scheme are shown
in Fig. 6. The histograms of the original and encrypted E. ENERGY
images are given in Fig. 7. To show the strength of our In a digital image, squaring and taking the sum of gray pixels
technique, some statistical analyses under Majority Logic give the energy of the image. It is defined as:
Criteria (MLC) [56] are described below. X
E= p(i, j)2 (14)
A. CORRELATION
These different MLC analyses are performed to assess the
Correlation is considered as one of the basic methods to
best suited S-box for encryption techniques and multimedia
calculate the similarity between two images. The correlation
security purposes. The comparison of the results of these
is given by:
X (i − µi) (j − µj) p (i, j) analyses on the proposed technique with S-boxes such as
Corr = (10) AES, APA, S8 AES, Gray, and Skipjack are also performed.
σi σj The MLC results after performing substitution operation
where, p(i, j) indicates the pixel value and i represent the are listed in Table 8 for proposed S-boxes and AES, APA,
position of row and j indicates its column value of digital S8-AES, Gray and Skipjack S-boxes as well. The results
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indicate that the proposed S-box offers better statistical visual [10] M. Khan, T. Shah, and S. I. Batool, ‘‘A new approach for image encryption
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S. S. Jamal et al.: Construction of Cryptographic S-Boxes Based on Mobius Transformation and Chaotic TSS

[36] M. Khan and T. Shah, ‘‘A construction of novel chaos base nonlinear AMIR ANEES received the B.S. degree in elec-
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2014. ila Cantt, Pakistan, in 2011, the M.S. degree in
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vol. 99, no. 1, pp. 213–226, 2018. nology, Pakistan, in 2014, and the Ph.D. degree
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systems,’’ Neural Comput. Appl., vol. 31, no. 8, pp. 3317–3326, 2019.
Melbourne, Australia, in 2019. His research inter-
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Duffing chaotic system and O-shaped path scrambling,’’ Nonlinear Dyn.,
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MUSHEER AHMAD received the B.Tech. and
‘‘A group theoretic approach to construct cryptographically strong substi-
tution boxes,’’ Neural Comput. Appl., vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 97–104, Jul. 2013. M.Tech. degrees from the Department of Com-
[44] S. S. Jamal, T. Shah, and A. Attaullah, ‘‘A group action method for puter Engineering, Aligarh Muslim University,
construction of strong substitution box,’’ 3D Res., vol. 8, no. 2, p. 12, 2017. India, in 2004 and 2008, respectively. He has
[45] A. Razaq, A. Yousaf, U. Shuaib, N. Siddiqui, A. Ullah, and A. Waheed, been an Assistant Professor with the Department
‘‘A novel construction of substitution box involving coset diagram of Computer Engineering, Jamia Millia Islamia,
and a bijective map,’’ Secur. Commun. Netw., vol. 2017, Nov. 2017, New Delhi, since 2011. He has published over
Art. no. 5101934. 70 research articles in refereed journals and
[46] L. Shuai, L. Wang, L. Miao, and X. Zhou, ‘‘S-boxes construction based conference proceedings of international repute.
on the Cayley graph of the symmetric group for UASNs,’’ IEEE Access, His areas of research interests include multime-
vol. 7, pp. 38826–38832, 2019. dia security, chaos-based cryptography, cryptanalysis, and optimization
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chaos and genetic algorithm,’’ HKIE Trans., vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 53–58, 2012.
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pp. 572–580, Jan. 2015.
[51] A. A. Alzaidi, M. Ahmad, H. S. Ahmed, and E. Al Solami, ‘‘Sine- MUHAMMAD FAHAD KHAN is currently an
cosine optimization-based bijective substitution-boxes construction using Assistant Professor with Foundation University,
enhanced dynamics of chaotic map,’’ Complexity, vol. 2018, Dec. 2018, and also a Ph.D. Scholar with the Department
Art. no. 9389065. of Computer Science, Quaid-i-Azam Univer-
[52] T. Farah, R. Rhouma, and S. Belghith, ‘‘A novel method for designing
sity Islamabad. He is the author of more than
S-box based on chaotic map and teaching-learning-based optimization,’’
30 research articles. His research interests include
Nonlinear Dyn., vol. 88, no. 2, pp. 1059–1074, 2017.
[53] H. A. Ahmed, M. F. Zolkipli, and M. Ahmad, ‘‘A novel efficient steganography, cryptograph, and multimedia
substitution-box design based on firefly algorithm and discrete chaotic communication.
map,’’ Neural Comput. Appl., vol. 31, no. 11, pp. 7201–7210, 2019, doi:
10.1007/s00521-018-3557-3.
[54] T. Zhang, C. L. P. Chen, L. Chen, X. Xu, and B. Hu, ‘‘Design of highly
nonlinear substitution boxes based on I-Ching operators,’’ IEEE Trans.
Cybern., vol. 48, no. 12, pp. 3349–3358, Dec. 2018.
[55] A. A. Alzaidi, M. Ahmad, M. N. Doja, E. Al Solami, and M. M. Beg,
‘‘A new 1D chaotic map and β-hill climbing for generating substitution-
boxes,’’ IEEE Access, vol. 6, pp. 55405–55418, 2018.
[56] A. Ullah, S. S. Jamal, and T. Shah, ‘‘A novel scheme for image encryption
using substitution box and chaotic system,’’ Nonlinear Dyn., vol. 91, no. 1,
pp. 359–370, 2018.
IQTADAR HUSSAIN received the Ph.D. degree in
SAJJAD SHAUKAT JAMAL received the Ph.D. mathematics, specializing in the area of algebraic
degree in mathematics from Quaid-i-Azam Uni- cryptography, in 2014. He is currently an Assis-
versity, Islamabad, Pakistan. He is currently an tant Professor with Qatar University. His current
Assistant Professor with the Department of Math- research interests include the applications of math-
ematics, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi ematical concepts in the field of secure communi-
Arabia. His research interests are number the- cation and cybersecurity, where he has published
ory, cryptography, digital watermarking, and 63 articles in well-known journals. His H-index
steganography. score is 23 and i-10 index score is 34. His articles
have 1320 Google scholar citations.

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