Throughput Optimized Reversible Cellular Automata Based Security Algorithm
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In this manuscript, the authors presented a throughput optimized block encryption technique which uses reversible cellular automata.
According to the following paragraph in the paper,
"The shortcomings of previous algorithms are more complex processes, lack of effective parallel computation and use of many keys. Private key cryptography is used in the suggested algorithm. This algorithm uses two pairs of keys Key-1 and Key-2 with its reversible keys. Both Key-1 and Key-2 are private and mutually shared with the senders and receivers. This algorithm is based on encryption of 128 bits blocks of data but, it can be easily extended to higher numbers of bits which is a multiple of 2. The usage of a 128-bit random number, which may be produced by any efficient random number generator, is the most significant component of this technique."
one concludes that the proposed algorithm has less complex processes, yields a more effective parallel computation, and needs less keys. Here, there are two questions:
Q1- the authors did not review the previous works so it is not obvious with which papers the proposed method is compared?
Q2- How the proposed algorithm provides these advantages? Note that there is no formal proof of the claims. Besides, the numerical results section is too simple. The proposed algorithm is compared with only two other algorithms one from 2005, and the other one another work of the authors.
Other comments:
- The manuscript lacks a related work section (the introduction briefly introduces some previous works though) and the references are not adequate.
- The algorithms (both encryption and decryption) are straightforward and lacks novelty.
- Section 3 is short and does not discuss the algorithms clearly.
- There is no formal analysis of the proof of correctness of the algorithms.
- The block diagrams are not clear and their resolution is low.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for giving us the chance to revise our manuscript. Furthermore, the comments were essential to improve the quality of the paper. We have revised the current research article in the vision of your useful suggestions and comments. We hope our revision has enhanced the worth of the paper to a level of your satisfaction. Number-wise answers to their specific comments/suggestions/queries are given in the attached file.
Sincerely.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is well-organized, and its paragraphs are brief, coherent, and clear.
• The methodology and result analysis sections are clearly presented.
• All references are relevant.
• The conclusion section is briefly and clearly written
• In the introduction section, second paragraph: Since authors wrote about the related work, they used past sentences in some parts and present sentences in others. In my opinion, they should use either past or present sentences in the whole paragraph.
• Section 3.1.1 needs to be changed to 3.2 as the author mentioned before.
• In the result analysis section: the authors mentioned their previous algorithm; however, they did not cite the algorithm’s paper.
• Figures No. 4 and No. 6 are not clear and they are cited after the appearance of the figures.
• Figure No. 7 is also cited after its appearance and needs more explanation in the text.
• The proposed algorithm is compared with an algorithm proposed in 2005, Does that mean there is no recent algorithm that can be compared with the proposed algorithm?
• In the conclusion section, the authors mentioned that their proposed algorithm is scalable, however, this is not supported in the result section.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for giving us the chance to revise our manuscript. Furthermore, the comments were essential to improve the quality of the paper. We have revised the current research article in the vision of your useful suggestions and comments. We hope our revision has enhanced the worth of the paper to a level of your satisfaction. Number-wise answers to their specific comments/suggestions/queries are given in the attached file.
Sincerely.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This work designs a new algorithm based on the Cellular Automata technique. The method is clear and makes sense. However, the motivation of why this method is designed and some key evaluation is missing. The detailed comments of mine are provided in the following.
1. There are several spelling and grammar errors that should be improved. For example, in Abstract Line 14, “…. we design …” here w should be capital.
2. The motivation of this work is not clear. As the author listed in the second paragraph, there are many encryption algorithms with good performance, so why the author provides a new algorithm. So here I suggest the author to add deep analysis of current algorithms especially the scenarios and drawbacks, and then elicit the motivation and the reason that they need to design algorithms.
3. The category of this work is not clear. There are a lot of layers of security, for example, application layer, transport layer, network layer, link layer and physical layer. It is not clear what layer this work belongs to.
4. There is a lack of potential attack schemes to validate the proposed encryption algorithm.
5. The simulation part is not complete. Only showing the proportions of 1-bit and 0-bit is not enough, other randomness metric should be used, e.g., NIST randomness test.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for giving us the chance to revise our manuscript. Furthermore, the comments were essential to improve the quality of the paper. We have revised the current research article in the vision of your useful suggestions and comments. We hope our revision has enhanced the worth of the paper to a level of your satisfaction. Number-wise answers to their specific comments/suggestions/queries are given in the attached file.
Sincerely.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
I'm satisfied with current version
