A modulation-based encryption framework integrating channel and artificial noise for DNA storage.

Area of Science:

• Biotechnology
• Information Technology
• Cryptography

Background:

• DNA data storage offers a scalable solution for long-term archiving.
• Ensuring data confidentiality in DNA storage is a significant challenge.
• Channel errors in DNA storage can be exploited for encryption.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a modulation-based encryption framework for DNA data storage.
• To enhance data confidentiality by leveraging inherent channel noise and injected errors.
• To evaluate the security and feasibility of the proposed encryption method.

Main Methods:

• A modulation-based encryption framework was designed.
• Inherent channel noise and injected indel errors were utilized for security.
• Simulations assessed decoding accuracy and resistance to various attacks.
• Intra-cluster entropy and KL divergence were used for security interpretation.
• A wet-lab experiment validated the framework in a synthesis-sequencing workflow.

Main Results:

• Simulations showed high authorized decoding accuracy under realistic noise conditions.
• The encryption demonstrated resistance to brute force, ciphertext-only, chosen-plaintext, and partial key-leakage attacks.
• Security analysis confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
• Proof-of-concept experiments validated the framework's feasibility in a real-world DNA synthesis-sequencing process.

Conclusions:

• The proposed modulation-based encryption framework provides a practical and achievable method for securing data in DNA storage.
• This approach effectively enhances data confidentiality by utilizing inherent channel characteristics and controlled error injection.
• The study demonstrates a viable solution for secure long-term data archiving using DNA storage technology.