Baptista-type chaotic cryptosystems: problems and countermeasures

In 1998, M.S. Baptista proposed a chaotic cryptosystem, which has attracted much attention from the chaotic cryptography community: some of its modifications and also attacks have been reported in recent years. In [Phys. Lett. A 307 (2003) 22], we suggested a method to enhance the security of Baptista-type cryptosystem, which can successfully resist all proposed attacks. However, the enhanced Baptista-type cryptosystem has a non-trivial defect, which produces errors in the decrypted data with a generally small but non-zero probability, and the consequent error propagation exists. In this Letter, we analyze this defect and discuss how to rectify it. In addition, we point out some newly-found problems existing in all Baptista-type cryptosystems and consequently propose corresponding countermeasures. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.