Secret Key Optimization for Secure Speech Communications

This paper answers three essential questions for audio speech cryptosystems in time and discrete transform domains. The first question is, what are the best values of sub-keys that must be used to get the best quality and security for the audio cryptosystem in time and discrete transform domains. The second question is the relation between the number of sub-keys, the number of secret keys used, and the audio speech signal block’s size. Finally, how many possible secret keys can be used to get the best quality and security results for the audio speech cryptosystem in time and discrete transform domains. An audio cryptosystem discussed before in recent research is applied to answer the three previous inquiries. Accurate simulation results and analysis answer all three questions; first, there is no specific, well-defined format or rule for sub-key values that must be used to get a better cryptosystem. For the second question, yes, there is a direct relationship between the number of applicable keys, number of available sub-keys, and block size of speech audio signal and formulated into a first-order equation. For the third question, each discrete transform domain has a specific acceptable range of sub-keys that imply a particular number of keys that can be used to get a better cryptosystem.