APT-A Novel Symmetric Key Cryptographic Algorithm for Securing VPNs

This paper proposes a novel symmetric key cryptographic algorithm-Advanced Polynomial Transformation (APT) for securing the Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). VPNs allow users to communicate and access information over the public Internet and other IP-based networks. Secure virtual connections or 'tunnels are established to overcome the security threats in VPN. This paper focuses on the Encryption 'tunnels' by proposing a novel 96-bit symmetric key cryptographic algorithm that uses APT (Advanced Polynomial Transformation). APT is a Block- Cipher that operates on 64-bit plain-text blocks. It makes use of algebraic polynomial functional mappings for the plaintext to cipher transformation by poly-alphabetic substitution. It transforms plain text to 64-bit ciphers achieving an input-output bit conversion ratio of 1:1.