Enhancing security in instant messaging systems with a hybrid SM2, SM3, and SM4 encryption framework

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Cybersecurity
• Applied Cryptography

Background:

• Instant Messaging Systems (IMS) are increasingly vital in critical sectors, necessitating robust security measures.
• Existing IMS security often relies on vulnerable centralized systems and single-layer encryption.
• There's a need to explore hybrid cryptographic approaches for enhanced IMS security.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a hybrid encryption security framework for IMS leveraging SM2, SM3, and SM4 algorithms.
• To address the limitations of current IMS security solutions, including single-point failures and susceptibility to attacks.
• To evaluate the performance and security advantages of a decentralized, client-side encryption approach.

Main Methods:

• Developed a decentralized IMS security framework integrating SM2, SM3, and SM4 cryptographic algorithms.
• Implemented certificateless authentication and client-side encryption/decryption.
• Enforced an encrypt-before-store policy for data at rest.
• Utilized SM2 for key exchange/authentication, SM4 for message encryption, and SM3 for integrity verification.

Main Results:

• The framework demonstrated strong security performance and communication efficiency.
• SM2 showed significant speed improvements in key generation and decryption over RSA-3072.
• SM3 and SM4 offered enhanced hashing and encryption efficiencies compared to SHA-256 and AES-256, respectively.
• The system effectively countered Man-in-the-Middle attacks and other vulnerabilities.

Conclusions:

• The proposed hybrid framework provides a practical and efficient multi-layer defense mechanism for IMS.
• Decentralized, client-side processing mitigates single-point failure risks inherent in centralized systems.
• The integration of SM2, SM3, and SM4 algorithms offers superior security and performance for real-time IMS applications.