Leveraging a Randomized Key Matrix to Enhance the Security of Symmetric Substitution Ciphers

Abstract: An innovative strategy to enhance the security of symmetric substitution ciphers is presented, through the implementation of a randomized key matrix suitable for various file formats, including but not limited to binary and text files. Despite their historical relevance, symmetric substitution ciphers have been limited by vulnerabilities to cryptanalytic methods like frequency analysis and known plaintext attacks. The aim of our research is to mitigate these vulnerabilities by employing a polyalphabetic substitution strategy that incorporates a distinct randomized key matrix. This matrix plays a pivotal role in generating a unique random key, comprising characters, encompassing both uppercase and lowercase letters, numeric, and special characters, to derive the corresponding ciphertext. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology in enhancing the security of conventional substitution methods for file encryption and decryption is supported by comprehensive testing and analysis, which encompass computational speed, frequency analysis, keyspace examination, Kasiski test, entropy analysis, and the utilization of a LLM.