BioSystems 159 (2017) 51–63 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect BioSystems jo ur nal home p age: www.elsevier.com/locate/biosystems DNA based random key generation and management for OTP encryption Yunpeng Zhang a,∗ , Xin Liu b , Manhui Sun c a Department of Information and Logistics Technology, University of Houston, TX 77024, USA b Department of Computer Science, University of Houston, TX 77204, USA c Institute of Computer Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 14 February 2017 Received in revised form 4 May 2017 Accepted 5 July 2017 Available online 18 July 2017 Keywords: DNA cryptography One-time pad (OTP) Random key generation OTP key transmission a b s t r a c t One-time pad (OTP) is a principle of key generation applied to the stream ciphering method which offers total privacy. The OTP encryption scheme has proved to be unbreakable in theory, but difficult to realize in practical applications. Because OTP encryption specially requires the absolute randomness of the key, its development has suffered from dense constraints. DNA cryptography is a new and promising technology in the field of information security. DNA chromosomes storing capabilities can be used as one-time pad structures with pseudo-random number generation and indexing in order to encrypt the plaintext messages. In this paper, we present a feasible solution to the OTP symmetric key generation and transmission problem with DNA at the molecular level. Through recombinant DNA technology, by using only sender-receiver known restriction enzymes to combine the secure key represented by DNA sequence and the T vector, we generate the DNA bio-hiding secure key and then place the recombinant plasmid in implanted bacteria for secure key transmission. The designed bio experiments and simulation results show that the security of the transmission of the key is further improved and the environmental requirements of key transmission are reduced. Analysis has demonstrated that the proposed DNA-based random key generation and management solutions are marked by high security and usability. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. 1. Introduction Information security is one of the great challenges for mod- ern computing systems because of advances in the internet and network technology as well as the explosive growth of comput- ing power and storage capability. One-time pad (OTP) encryption enforces total privacy, at least in theory (Stallings, 2011). However, OTP encryption requires the absolute randomness of the secure key, so the implementation of the OTP encryption scheme has suffered from dense constraints. But, fortunately, the vast storage capability (Alberts et al., 2002) offered by DNA provides a new approach to the OTP security key problem. Adleman (Adleman, 1994) first introduced DNA computing, which uses DNA to solve a directed Hamiltonian path problem. Ashish Gehani et al. (Gehani et al., 2004) established the founda- tion of DNA cryptography by using a molecular approach and the concept of one-time pad. Three properties of DNA chromosomes can be utilized by a cryptography algorithm: vast storage space, ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: poweryp@gmail.com (Y. Zhang). parallel computational power and the generation of cryptographic keys from long DNA sequences. DNA based encryption algorithms are often proposed, including recent research to incorporate DNA encoding methods into image encryption (Wu et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2016; Jain and Rajpal, 2015; Norouzi and Mirzakuchaki, 2016; Guesmi et al., 2015) and channel coding (Jiron et al., 2016). Those DNA based cryptographic schemes are based on the assumption of pure randomness of DNA sequences. In this paper, we address the difficulty of generating such pure random sequences as well as the management of these secure keys (to transmit and store them securely). There are two working environments with DNA: at the molec- ular level with biological DNA in a laboratory and with digital DNA using available genetic databases. Monica E. Borda et al. (Borda et al., 2013) described the method to generate random binary sequences based on genetic databases to solve the problem of gen- eration and distribution of the random long secure keys of OTP ciphers. The advantage of this method is that a binary random sequence of any length can be easily generated from public or pri- vate genetic databases. An unlimited number of distinct random sequences can be obtained by multiplexing, shifting or concate- nating sequences from different DNA species. To solve the major http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystems.2017.07.002 0303-2647/Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.