Block cipher’s nonlinear component design by elliptic curves: an image encryption application

Abstract

Due to less computational effort with strong security, Elliptic curve based cryptographic architectures are more reliable as compared to the existing cryptographic methods. In this manuscript, we have introduced an efficient cryptosystem based on elliptic curves for digital image encryption. The designed scheme is consisting of three steps. Initially, the system uses the special type of the isomorphic elliptic curves over a prime field and scrambles the pixel position of the plain image. Consequently, it disperses the intra-correlation among the pixels of the original image, and capable the scheme to be secure against statistical attacks. In the next step, the scheme generates multiple S-boxes with good cryptographic features by using isomorphic elliptic curves. The generated S-boxes are then used to substitute the scrambled data that produce optimum confusion in the ciphered data. Eventually, the encryption procedure generates pseudo-random numbers (PRNs) through the arithmetic operation of the elliptic curves instead of elliptic curve group law; the operation used in the scheme creates high randomness as a result our proposed scheme shows high security against classical attacks. The simulation results and performance analysis divulge that the proposed scheme has excellent encryption performance with less computational effort, which indicates that the scheme has effective potential in real-time image encryption application.