A Deep Learning Assisted Cryptographic Scheme Integrating Graph Neural Networks and Convolutional Autoencoders for Secure Data Transmission
Received: 6 February 2026 | Revised: 26 February 2026 and 15 March 2026 | Accepted: 26 March 2026 | Online: 6 April 2026
Corresponding author: A. V. Gahan
Abstract
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256) is a cryptographic algorithm that offers high confidentiality under standard security assumptions. However, structured data inherently possess correlations before encryption. This study proposes a structural and statistical pre-processing framework that uses Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) and Convolutional Autoencoders (CAEs) to transform the structured plaintext data before performing AES-256 encryption. The plaintext data are first converted into a graph structure to represent their inter-block relationships. The GNN learns the relational embeddings, which are further compressed by a CAE into low-dimensional latent spaces. These new spaces are subsequently encrypted using AES-256 without changing their internal architecture. The cryptographic security of the system is entirely inherited from AES-256, while the proposed learning-based module functions as a deterministic pre-processing transformation applied before encryption. The experimental results on computational complexity and statistical diffusion properties demonstrated consistency with statistical diffusion properties and computational efficiency, without compromising the security guarantees of AES-256.
Keywords:
secured cryptography, graph neural networks, convolutional autoencoders, deep learning–based security, intelligent encryptionDownloads
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Copyright (c) 2026 A. V. Gahan, Geetha D. Devanagavi

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