A Hybrid Image Encryption Scheme for Color Images

Adnan Malik1,, Nisar Ahmedb,, Muhammad Ali1,∗

a Electrical Engineering Department, University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan
b Computer Engineering Department, University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan

Abstract
The usage of the internet as a communication medium imposes numerous security threats to the security of digital
images. It is desirous to compress the image to save bandwidth, but it is tough to do in an encrypted image with highly
random pixel values. This problem is solved by proposing a two-stage encryption method that is friendly to compression.
First, Chaotic maps are used to ensure high randomness, and then as a second step, the Singular value decomposition
(SVD) method is applied to deliberately bring some correlation in the encrypted version of the image so that compression
can be achieved. SVD also provides another layer of security as well. JPEG compression is applied to test the viability
of the method and high compression ratios are achieved. The performance of the devised algorithm is also analyzed by
determining various parameters.
Keywords: Encryption, Chaos theory, Color images

1. Introduction and hence requires more computational time. Secondly

Encryption is the transformation of information, using
a designed system or algorithm, to a random useless infor-
mation or unintelligent form, so that only a legit receiver
of information, possessing valid secret key, can retrieve it.
It hence provides a way for both retaining and transmit-
ting sensitive data over non-secure channels or mediums.
This encryption process of information is also regarded as
information cryptography. It does provide security for the
sensitive data, but hacking this information or in techni-
cal term, cryptanalysis, can be used to perform in depth
analysis for contravention of information. Data security is
necessary for several applications that are used over inse-
cure wireless and public networks that are susceptible to
eavesdropping and so the information security of data is
one of the vital issues addressed by researchers. Cryptog-
raphy has several areas of applications that need data pro-
tection. Some such application includes camera security,
securing multimedia database and online teleconferencing.
The research on cryptography has proposed many effective
data-protection schemes and algorithms. There are vast
kinds of data with their own characteristics and attributes,
requiring specific kind of cryptographic techniques for each
type of data. Standard modern algorithms such as DES,
IDEA, RSA, and AES are mainly designed for text data
and hence are not suitable for multimedia content.
There are mainly two reasons behind the fact that we avoid
the usage of traditional encryption schemes for image data.
Firstly, the size of image data is larger than textual data,
∗ Corresponding author
Email address: m.ali@uet.edu.pk (Muhammad Ali)
1 case of text data, image cryptosystem also requires a key.
Preprint submitted to Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation
the decrypted information in case of textual data should
be the exact reconstruction of the original plaintext infor-
mation whereas this is not a compulsory requirement in
image data. A close or near approximation to the plain-
text image is sufficient requirement for image encryption
scheme as this is due to the characteristics of human way
of perception. The value of nearby or adjacent pixels in
natural images can be fairly predicted because of high cor-
relation and data redundancy.
To add extra security features, hybrid encryption algo-
rithms are widely used. Such algorithms commonly in-
volve different encryption stages such as usage of chaotic
maps followed by any other encryption method. Thus,
hybrid encryption algorithms have gained high popularity
among researches in past years as they can provide both
security and other statistical properties required by any
good encryption scheme.
1.1. Image Cryptography
Just like the text data requires protection for the sake
of security, visual and image data are also needed to be
secured. This is evident from present-day technology
where the exchange of multimedia content is excessively
made over the internet and most of the channels used for
this purpose are unsecured. Unlike text data, image data
has its attributes and thus they require special treatment.
The basics for the image cryptography are the same as in
the case of text data, only here the visual information is
now being processed. The image that is to be encrypted
is referred to as plaintext image. The encrypted image is
called ciphertext. And just like the key is required in the
September 21, 2020