A Cryptography Method Inspired by Jigsaw Puzzles.

Citation: Ling, MHT. 2018. A Cryptography Method Inspired by Jigsaw Puzzles. In Current STEM, Volume 1, pp. 129-142. Nova Science Publishers, Inc. ISBN 978-1-53613-416-2.

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Cryptography is a critical tool in safeguarding information from “unauthorized” view during the storage and transportation of data. Due to the one-to-one correspondence between plain text and cipher text, encryption algorithms can be seen as a transformation process. This is a deficiency as all information is present, though encrypted, in the cipher text. Inspired by Jigsaw puzzles, a new cryptography system, Jigsaw Encryption System (JES) is proposed where a single plain text file results in many cipher text files, resembling jigsaw pieces from a single image; thus, the loss of a small number of cipher text files may not compromise the entire contents in plain text. Each cipher text can be further processed for added security. This can result in larger permutations needed to decipher by brute force. Reference implementations of preliminary JES versions had been deposited into COPADS (Collection of Python Algorithms and Data Structures) repository (https://github.com/mauriceling/copads; File name: copads/jigsaw.py).