Abstract
Information security plays a vital role in almost every application that we handle in our day-to-day life since the communication needs to be protected in terms of the messages that we send and receive. Thus, cryptography the science of encoding the secret information provides security from being known by the unintended receivers. It ensured confidentiality, integrity, and authentication of messages. To simplify the methodology of traditional cryptography with the usage of genetic concepts lead to the field of DNA cryptography. This chapter gives an insight on various methods so far proposed related to DNA cryptography that involves the characteristics of DNA incorporating the traditional cryptographic techniques and a detailed comparison of these techniques thereby proposing the requirements for an efficient DNA-based cryptographic system. These techniques also include the area of steganography that conceals the message within a cover or a career media to eschew the attacks from the intruders.
TopBackground
Until today, there are so many DNA cryptosystems proposed either as an algorithmic approach or implemented as a part of an application to provide data confidentiality to the application data. Among algorithmic approach there are very few authors who incorporate both the biological and arithmetic operations to satisfy the optimality of the system (Hussain, 2015). Other than that, DNA cryptosystems are used for providing layered security in applications that also includes other cryptographic algorithms like traditional cryptosystems (Raju, 2015).
Key Terms in this Chapter
DNA Cryptography: DNA Cryptography is the cryptographic technique to encrypt and decrypt the original data using DNA sequences based on its biological processes.
Security: The concept of achieving confidentiality, integrity and availability of data protected from its issues.
Encoding: Encoding is the process of converting data into a defined data format for enabling secure transmission and storage of original data.
Confidentiality: The key feature of security to ensure the data or the information is accessed only by the authorized users.
Authentication: To ensure that the users are they who are claimed to be. It identifies and assures the origin of information.
Cryptosystem: It is a complete system that possesses the algorithms for key generation, encryption and decryption techniques to achieve confidentiality of data.
Steganography: The art of concealing the original data within another data that acts as the carrier.
Integrity: Integrity is to assure that the data is reliable, accurate and it remains in its original form from being modified by unintended users.
DNA Hybridization: It is process to anneal two double stranded DNA or RNA molecule that are complement to each other forming a single strand of DNA molecule.
Network Attacks: Network attacks are the methods like session hijacking, IP spoofing, denial of service, accessing the unintended data, etc., that exploit the vulnerabilities causing adverse effects in the network.