Cellular Automata Based Hashing Algorithm (CABHA) for Strong Cryptographic Hash Function

Cryptographic hash functions play a crucial role in information security. Cryptographic hash functions are used in various cryptographic applications to verify the message authenticity and integrity. In this paper we propose a Cellular Automata Based Hashing Algorithm (CABHA) for generating strong cryptographic hash function. The proposed CABHA algorithm uses the cellular automata rules and a custom transformation function to create a strong hash from an input message and a key.

I. Introduction

Cryptographic hash functions are an important part of modern cryptography. The hash functions took an important role in computer security with the development of MD5 algorithm having digest size of 128bits [1]. Although now considered an insecure hashing algorithm, SHA1 laid the foundation of further SHA based algorithms. SHA2 and SHA3 are considered extremely secure and are widely used in SSLs. Cellular Automata [2], [3] are relatively old concept and there have been numerous researches on its applications in cryptography from encryption algorithms to hash algorithms. M. R. Z. Baraa Tareq Hammadet al presented a hashing algorithm used in cellular automata (Rule 30 and Rule 134) along with a custom Omega-Flip Network [4]. This explored the potential of the use of hybrid Cellular Automata rules along with Omega-Flip networks which could help achieve a strong avalanche effect among the bits. Further in 2016, Parashar et al [5] proposed a Cellular Automata based hashing algorithm which worked serially working on blocks of bits along with bit rotation to develop a strong hash. The proposed algorithm in this paper uses the concepts of cellular automata along with bit shuffling and logical operations to form an extremely random hash which would make it computationally infeasible to get back to the original input, as well as byte collision resistance for highly secure hashing algorithm.