Discrete Physics: a new way to look at cryptography

Abstract

This paper shows that Physics is very close to the substitution-diffusion paradigm of symmetric ciphers. Based on this analogy, we propose a new cryptographic algorithm. Statistical Physics gives design principles to devise fast, scalable and secure encryption systems. In particular, increasing space dimension and considering larger data blocks improve both speed and security, allowing us to reach high throughput (larger than 10Gb/s on dedicated HW). The physical approach enlarges the way to look at cryptography and is expected to bring new tools and concepts to better understand and quantify security aspects.