{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,30]],"date-time":"2026-07-30T14:07:10Z","timestamp":1785420430120,"version":"3.56.0"},"reference-count":47,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,3]],"date-time":"2025-09-03T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1756857600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004595","name":"Universiti Sains Malaysia, Research University Team (RUTeam)","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["1001\/PKOMP\/8580013"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["1001\/PKOMP\/8580013"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004595","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["JCP"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Although many chaos-based cryptosystems have been proposed over the past decade, they have yet to gain traction in real-world applications. A key reason for this is that most designs rely on security through obscurity, with unnecessarily complex structures that hinder cryptanalysis and formal evaluation. In this paper, we challenge this trend by showing that chaos-based ciphers can be constructed using conventional, well-understood cryptographic design paradigms without sacrificing performance. First, we present a minimalistic image encryption scheme based on the substitution\u2013permutation network (SPN), demonstrating that it satisfies widely accepted criteria for evaluating chaos-based ciphers. We further show that simple, low-dimensional chaotic maps are sufficient to eliminate statistical biases and that variations in the underlying map have a negligible impact. Second, we propose a chaos-based Feistel block cipher (CFBC) grounded in the generalized Feistel network, enabling standard security evaluation through differential cryptanalysis. As a direct comparison with existing chaos-based image ciphers, we apply CFBC in cipher block chaining (CBC) mode to image encryption. Experimental results show that CFBC achieves a statistical performance comparable to that of state-of-the-art image ciphers. Our findings reinforce the idea that chaos-based cryptosystems need not rely on overly complex constructions and can instead adopt established principles to become more analyzable and robust.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/jcp5030064","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,3]],"date-time":"2025-09-03T15:15:57Z","timestamp":1756912557000},"page":"64","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Towards Analyzable Design Paradigms for Chaos-Based Cryptographic Primitives"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"5","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6990-7351","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Abubakar","family":"Abba","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, Federal University of Education, FUE, Kaduna 1041, Nigeria"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5571-4148","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Je Sen","family":"Teh","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Deakin Cyber Research and Innovation Centre, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Geelong 3216, Australia"},{"name":"School of IT, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Geelong 3216, Australia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1410-0315","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mohd Najwadi","family":"Yusoff","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Gelugor 11800, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3916-1381","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Adnan","family":"Anwar","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Deakin Cyber Research and Innovation Centre, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Geelong 3216, Australia"},{"name":"School of IT, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Geelong 3216, Australia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,3]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"133","DOI":"10.5194\/npg-29-133-2022","article-title":"Control simulation experiment with Lorenz\u2019s butterfly attractor","volume":"29","author":"Miyoshi","year":"2022","journal-title":"Nonlinear Processes Geophys."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"218","DOI":"10.1177\/0092070394223003","article-title":"Chaos Theory and the Dynamics of Marketing Systems","volume":"22","author":"Hibbert","year":"1994","journal-title":"J. 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