A Novel Approach to Secure Hashing: Implementing Chaotic Hash Functions for Enhanced Security

Abstract

This study introduces an innovative hash function based on a one-dimensional chaotic map, showcasing its strong security capabilities through extensive experimental validation. The development of hash functions has received increasing attention in recent years due to their crucial role in a wide range of information and computer science applications, such as cryptography, ensuring data integrity, and facilitating data indexing. Our chaotic map exhibits robust chaotic behavior, characterized by its high sensitivity to initial conditions and its inherent unpredictability, making it an ideal foundation for the hash function. This function is capable of effectively transforming variable-length input data into 256-bit hash values. It can be easily adapted for different output bit lengths with minimal adjustments to the algorithm's grouping length. Comprehensive security assessments, including rigorous testing against various potential attacks, have been conducted to confirm the hash function's resilience. The combined use of experimental and analytical evaluation methods has confirmed the exceptional security of our proposed hash function, highlighting its potential for critical applications in data integrity verification and encryption that demand high security.