Protecting Private Data using Improved Honey Encryption and Honeywords Generation Algorithm

Received: 14 August, 2018 Accepted: 02 October, 2018 Online: 14 October, 2018 Nowadays, many companies and organizations use various encryption techniques to secure their private data before send it through the unsecure network. However, many attackers try to store private data by using various attacks. Most of the organizations use password based encryption algorithm (PBE) to protect their private data. However, the existing PBE methods are vulnerable in brute-force attacks because of user-generated weak or repeated passwords. The problem of weak password based encryption algorithm prompted us to introduce honey encryption (HE). Honey encryption and honeywords help to minimize this vulnerability of password based encryption algorithm and they can prevent the text based messages from brute face attacks in order to make messaging communication more secure and efficient. However, the conventional HE has message space limitation in Distribution Transforming Encoder (DTE) process and storage overhead problem in honeywords generation process. Therefore, our proposed honey encryption algorithm uses discrete distribution function in DTE process to solve message space limitation instead of using cumulative distribution function. Storage overhead and typo safety problem can overcome by using our proposed honeywords generation method in honey encryption algorithm. Furthermore, we also propose hashing and salting algorithm for securing password and key expansion. In this paper, we describe the case studies as a calculation of DTE and hashing and salting algorithm. And then, we design and implement the improved honey encryption mechanisms and honeywords generation algorithm in message transmission process. Finally, we show the comparison results using mathematical model in DTE process and security analysis of our syste