A New Cryptographic Algorithm for Encryption and Decryption: Cylindrical Agile Cipher (CAC)

A novel symmetric crypto algorithm is proposed here where key agility is a design criterion. Unlike conventional schemes where extensive recomputation is involved for rekeying, quick key turn-around with efficient initialization is enabled by cylinder wrapping transformations with iterated substitutions and binary coding. Lightweight operations prevail in design to enable low computational overhead with smooth integration into standard cryptographic libraries as well as protocols. A reference implementation demonstrates competitive throughput for processing small- to medium-sized data block size with low processor footprint and considerable delay reduction occurring during key rollover occurrences. Analytical treatment to security enforces defense against brute-force-based attacks as well as substitution-based attacks with operational resilience to practical threat profiles. Comparisons against prevailing industry standard indicate that agility as well as processing is achieved with our algorithm to be viable for practical applications for secure communications even under resource-constrained scenarios. Integration guidelines with future extension to scope to envision a framework towards crypto-hybrid systems constitute paper's concluding part.