2012 Second International Conference on Instrumentation & Measurement, Computer, Communication and Control

The Research of Chaos-based SMS Encryption in

Mobile Phone
Jing Pan Qun Ding Na Qi
Heilongjiang University
Key Laboratory of Electronic Engineering College of Heilongjiang Province
Harbin, China
qunding@yahoo.cn, persainal@yahoo.com.cn

Abstract—This paper introduces a chaos-based S MS (S hort
Message Service) encryption scheme, and it combines with the
improved A5/1 algorithm. In this paper, the description of this
S MS (Short Message Service) encryption scheme in mobile
phone is proposed in details. Finally, we design a system like
common mobile phone to test the application of such
encryption scheme, and the test results show that this chaos-
based encryption scheme can encrypt short messages in mobile
phone.
and the A5/1 algorith m description. In Section 3, SMS mode
used in this paper is introduced and applies this encryption
scheme on mobile phone-like system on FPGA, and the
results are discussed later. Finally, Section 5 concludes the
paper.
II. CHAOT IC ENCRYPT ION A LGORIT HM

Keywords-SMS(Short Message Service) encryption; chaotic A. Logistic Mapping and Digital Logistic Sequences
sequences; A5/1 algorithm Logistic equation is shown in equation (1):

I. INT RODUCT ION xn 1   xn (1  xn )   (0, 4], xn  (0,1) 

Theories and experiments verify:

With the rapid development of technology and widely
spread of mobile phone, the security of SMS has become When 0    1 , xn  0 is the stable point;
increasing important. For the need of people about the
1
security of short messages in mobile phone, a lot of when 1    1  3 , xn  1  is the stable point. If
researchers devoted their efforts to studying the encryption 
method and focused on its application in mobile phone. 1    2  3.40224 periodic value is 2, and if
Since 1989, Pecora &Carroll rea lized chaotic 2    3  3.54408 periodic value is 4, if u continues
synchronization circuits, and chaos-based encryption became
a hot pot in research [1]. In 2011, Liu used chaotic increasing, the periodic value is 8, 16, 32…in turn. It is
encryption algorithm to make a video conference solution [2]. known that when the parameter increases, the system will
For SMS researches, in 2007 Hu proposed a short message have multiplied periodic value, when u is larger than the
encryption scheme based on the elliptic curve public key limit solution value 
 3.56994 , the system will get
encryption [3]. Meanwhile, Chen etc. proposed a design and into chaotic area, if 
   4 , there is a chaotic
implementation of SMS transmission system based on a
SIM300 in 2008 without encrypting short messages [4]. In
order to combine with them, in 2010 we us ed chaotic
encryption with A5/ 1 algorithm to design a short message
encryption transmission system based on GSM and FPGA
phenomenon, and in which the periodic value can also be 3,
5, 7 and so on, being very complex. This phenomenon can be
seen from Lyapunov exponent calculation [6]:
1 n 1
Le  lim  ln | f ' ( xi ) | 

n  n
[5]. i 0
As is known to all, logistic mapping can generate real
Based on the aforementioned research results, this paper value sequences and they need to be transformed to 0-1
introduces chaos-based SMS encryption scheme. The sequences for digital commun ication. We use the method
method of this scheme is described in details to verify its proposed by ourselves in 2008 to get digital 0-1 sequences
security. Then, it will be applied in a FPGA system like from logistic map [7], and it is shown in equation (3).
mobile phone for test. Based on the analysis, this chaos-
based SMS encryption scheme can realize the security of  2m 1
short message in mobile phone. 0 x ( n)  I 2mk
 k 0
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section T [ x(n)]   

2m 1
2, the chaos-based encryption scheme is proposed for later 1 x ( n)  I m
 2 k 1
application, and it shows the logistic sequence generation  k 0

978-0-7695-4935-4/12 $26.00 © 2012 IEEE 497

501
DOI 10.1109/IMCCC.2012.124
 Where T [ x(n)] is the quantification function and it is
introduced to convert chaotic signals into binary stream
cipher, and m is an arbitrary integer m>0, and I 0m , I1m , I 2m ,
are 2 m continuous equal intervals in [0,1] . After converting
if the value is in the quantification interval whose beginning
is odd, then it will be converted into 1 of b inary sequences,
and if not, then it will be converted into 0. Because of the
good random statistical characteristics of chaotic signal, after
converting the binary sequences they also have balanced 0-1
sequences and the good related statistical properties. Fig.1
shows the flow chart of such quantization method given
before to get the binary sequences from logistic chaotic
sequences.
1. Quantization Process for Encryption Algorithm
function
using Digital Logic to transform 128 bits input to
48 bits output
shift left each 48 bits
input initial value x(1) and parameter 
start Logistic mapping
for i  1: n do
x(i  1)    x(i)  (1  x(i))
end
get the real sequence of Logistic map
convert output sequence to binary sequence by
using equation (3)
end
Fig.1 T he flow chart of the method to get the binary sequences
B. A5/1 Algorithm
The stream cipher of A5 series is used for GSM
encryption. It passed the whole statistic tests known by us
and has good efficiency on hardware encryption implement
with short time for encrypting delay. So far, there are t wo
versions of A5 algorithm: A5/ 1 and A5/2. The former limits
the export but has better security than the latter. Therefore,
we select A5/1 algorith m and its algorith m diagram is shown
in Fig.2.
 give the testing results in details.
Fig.2 T he algorithm diagram of A5/1
502
498
C. Chaotic Encryption Algorithm with A5/1
According to the algorithm g iven before, we use chaos -
based sequences with improve A5/1 algorithm, and the flow
chart of this chaotic encryption algorithm with A5/1 is as
follows shown in Fig.3.
Fro m the figure, we use logistic mapping as chaotic
sequences, and the logistic sequences are quantified to binary
sequences through the method given before in Section II. It
uses chaotic sequences as the initial key, and under the clock
signal control they input to the shift register bit by bit. Then,
put them into three linear feedback shift registers (LFSR) to
initialize. The number after LFSR in figure means the
capacity of each LFSR for processing. Finally, let the last bit
of each LFSR and the chaotic sequences do XOR algorith m,
and get the stream cipher. Meanwhile, ext ract an arbitrary b it
in each LFSR for control unit, and after some logic
operations it outputs three control signals to control the shift
condition of each LFSR respectively.
Seed Key
Chaotic module
Shift register
(Serial data to Parallel data)
Data[6...0] Data[8...0] Data[10...0]
LFSR 7 LFSR 9 LFSR 11
XOR
Algorithm
Stream cipher output
Fig.3 T he flow chart of chaotic encryption with A5/1
The stream ciphers generated through such encryption
algorithm can pass the three random axio ms for pseudo
random cycle sequences proposed by Golo mb. In balance
tests, we choose different lengths and different initial value
to test, and the results show that the number of 0 and 1 is
nearly same and it is balance of such sequences. In run test,
the testing results show that the actual characteristics are
similar to the ideal characteristics in run test analysis. In
addition, the sequences also have good performance in the
correlation analysis. For the limits of this paper, we don ’t
 III. THE A PPLICAT ION IN SMS ENCRYPT ION B. Encryption Application Tests
In this paper, we design the system like mobile phone on
A. SMS Mode in Mobile Phone FPGA to realize our chaos-based SMS encryption scheme,
SMS transmission in mobile phone usually has two and the whole design diagram is shown in Fig.4.
modes: TEXT mode and PDU mode [8]. PDU mode is more
complex than TEXT mode because it can send both English Encryption module
and Chinese messages. Therefore, we mainly introduce PDU Computer
Decryption module
mode to design SMS encryption system like mobile phone.
PDU mode: Serial Port

(1) If at  cmgl  0 , then turn to (b),

(2) Use the string “phone” to express the processing of Control module Control module
mobile numbers:
a. Remove the symbol “+” in mob ile phone
numbers, and if the length of numbers is odd, Encryption
core
Decryption
core
then add “F” at the last bit, (eg.
phone  " 8613766810471" , its number is odd
Other Other
and turns it to be phone  "8613766810471F " ). Encrypted
SMS
Common
SMS
function of
mobile
function of
mobile
Common
SMS
Encrypted
SMS
phone phone
b. Exchange the odd position and even position,
(eg. phone  "8613766810471F " turns it to
phone  "683167860174F1" ). Multiplexer Multiplexer

(3) Use the string “msg” to express the processing of SMS:

a. Convert string chars into Unicode word, (eg. the Mobile phone module (SIM300)
Unicode of “ Ꮉ ԰ ᛝ ᖿ ” is
5DE54F 5C61095FEBFF 01 ).
Antenna
b. Div ide the length of “msg” by two, and reserve it
by two hexadecimal nu mbers, (eg. the length of Fig. 4 T he whole design diagram of our system
5DE54F 5C61095FEBFF 01 is 20, and 20 / 2  10 ,
In this system we only use the chaos -based encryption
the hexadecimal nu mber is 0A , then add “msg” with improved A5/1 algorith m to encrypt and decrypt short
and it turns to message, and we know in SMS, it contains AT instruction
msg  "0 A5DE54F 5C61095FEBFF 01" ). set and short messages. In order to identify by Base Station
in SMS transmission, we don’t change AT instruction set.
(4) Combine them: Therefore, the chart of this chaos -based encryption scheme
a. Add the string "11000D91" before phone numbers, in mobile phone is shown in Fig.5.
where 1100 is fixed, 0D is the length of phone
numbers and 91 means sending to mobile phone. AT Instruction Set

(eg. it means that phone  11000D91  phone , and Convert serial

Input data to parallel
Convert parallel
the result is "11000D91683167860174 F1" ). data Let Order data to serial data
Output

b. Add "000800" and “msg” behind phone numbers,

Short message
Set and
Encrypted
(eg. it means that phone  phone  000800  msg , XOR Short
message
phone  "11000D91683167860174F10008000 A5DE Initial key together

54F 5C61095FEBFF 01" ). generates stream

c. Div ide the length of mobile phone numbers by two,
and format it into two decimal nu mbers. (eg. the
length of phone numbers above is 50 , and let
50 / 2  25 , so 25 is the result).
(5) Input AT  CMGS  k  Enter  ; and  addr  phone
 Ctrl  Z  Send  .
cipher Encryption
core
CPU and Clock
Control
Fig.5 T he chart of encryption scheme in mobile phone
This mobile phone-like system can help us test the effects
of the chaos-based SMS encryption with improved A5/1
algorithm scheme. Meanwhile, this system has the software
testing platform so that we can get the testing results through

503
499
the computer and it is very convenient to operate. Here we
give some testing results in Fig.6.
Fig.6 T he SMS encryption testing results
scheme is combined chaotic sequences with A5/1 algorithm
to realize encryption of short messages. In this paper, it gives
the chaotic logistic mapping and its quantization method for
getting binary sequences and the principle of the A5/1
algorithm, and also gives the method of the chaotic
encryption with improved A5/1 algorithm. Then, it
introduces the SMS mode used in mobile phone and applies
this encryption scheme in the mobile phone-like system
designed on FPGA for test. According to the analysis, this
chaos-based SMS encryption scheme can realize the security
of short message in mobile phone.

In Fig.6, it shows that only if the key is the same that the
encrypted short messages can be decrypted correctly.
Therefore, it realizes the security of SMS in mobile phone. A CKNOWLEDGMENT
Table I shows some technical indexes of this hardware This work is supported by the National Natural Science
system. Foundation of China (no.61072072) and Students Academic
Science and Technology Innovation Funding Projects of
Heilongjiang University.
T echnical index PRO PERTY
HARDWARE PART
SIM300 Frequency Band ESM900, DCS1800
GSM Type Small Mobile Basestation
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