A novel algorithm based on DNA coding for substitution box generation problem

Substitution boxes are very important for cryptographic structures. But getting an 8-bit strong s-box is a difficult problem. To address this problem, a new approach is proposed in this study. DNA chains are used in the proposed approach. First of all, a weak s-box is obtained with the help of a chaotic map. Then, a DNA chain is formed with the same chaotic map. In this study, 2000-long DNA chains were produced. Then, two random values consisting of four components are determined from these DNA chains, and these values are addressed to the s-box structure. By changing the places of these values, the s-box structure is improved up to a certain iteration. In this study, 10,000 iterations were examined, and three different strong s-boxes were obtained by using three different DNA chains. The nonlinearity values of these s-box structures were observed as 110.25, 110.5, and 110.75, respectively. The proposed study has proven to work effectively with effective results in three different chains. In addition, it has been proven as a result of the analysis that the proposed s-box structures also have other cryptographic features. The proposed algorithm has surpassed many s-box generation philosophies in the literature. In addition, the proposed algorithm will provide serious gains to cryptographic structures that will be developed in the future.