Text Encryption with Improved Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Abstract

The security of data encrypted with an encryption algorithm should be guaranteed such that it is never easy for a third party to recover the message from the encrypted data. To this effect, ECC has been a reliable option. However, the base equation that defines the security of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is in the form of a linear equation with one unknown which is easy to solve. The ease with which this equation can be solved is a weak point in the algorithm. Thus, the aim of this research work is to improve the security of ECC by improving the nature of its base linear equation.
 Elliptic curve arithmetic was used to develop the improved model. The encryption process was specifically targeted and improved from single to double encryption using separate encryption constant for each round of encryption. Simulation was done using a 256 bits key size on selected number of character inputs. Java programming language was used to simulate the model on Net Beans IDE. Results of the research show that despite a longer key size of 256 bits and double encryption process, the improved ECC performed better than the existing ECC model in both encryption and decryption times, but compared to RSA, the encryption is higher while the decryption time is lower. Generally, this shows that the improved ECC out – performed the existing systems and is therefore better.