SECURING E-VOTING DATA USING PROPOSED LIGHTWEIGHT ARX BLOCK CIPHER ALGORITHM

The Internet of Things applications have developed fast, leading to the need to implement lightweight encryption schemes that can balance security with resources efficiency in resource-constrained environments. This paper suggests a lightweight ARX-based block cipher that combines dynamically generated substitution boxes based on a six-dimensional chaotic system with an adjusted key expansion algorithm based on AES. The plaintext is separated into two parallel streams, and the work of each round consists of key addition, nonlinear substitution by a dynamic S-Box, and ARX transformation in a symmetric Feistel-like network. The suggested key scheduling mechanism minimizes inter-key correlation and increases sensitivity to small key variations. The security evaluation methods used are entropy, Hamming distance, correlation analysis, NIST randomness tests, SAC and BIC tests. Experiments indicate that the proposed framework is highly diffusive, random, and efficient in encryption and decryption, thereby making it appropriate in protecting confidential database in a constricted environment.