Encrypted Secret Image Research Articles

V-Net architecture based advanced visually meaningful image encryption technique

The visually meaningful image encryption (VMIE) technique is used to offer additional security to the noise-like encrypted image by implanting the secret image in the cover image. Generally, VMIE techniques follow two steps: pre-encryption and embedding. In this paper, an advanced V-Net architecture based VMIE technique is presented. V-Net architecture is based on a Convolution Neural Network (CNN) and offered medical image segmentation, that is utilized in the image into image steganography in the proposed work. In the proposed VMIE technique, the secret image is encrypted by utilizing the 5D chaotic map to provide high security, and the encrypted secret image is implanted into the cover image using a V-Net based embedding method. CNN-based image embedding methods offer high payload capacity and imperceptibility. In these methods, the encoder hides the secret image into the cover and the decoder reconstruct the secret image. Furthermore, a CNN-based efficient decoder is designed in the proposed method. Moreover, to validate the proposed method, standard evaluation parameters are analyzed.

Secret image encryption based on chaotic system and elliptic curve cryptography

The advent of internet has been a boon to society. It has helped in information retrieval and is a great help in communication. Nowadays, communication comprises digital information in images, videos, GIFs, and many other formats. Amongst the digital data, images are one of the most transmitted data. Therefore, the security of image data has gained the attention of researchers. This paper addresses the drawbacks of Abdelfatah's method, a block-based image encryption scheme based on a chaotic system and elliptic curve cryptography. One of the issues is caused when multiple pixels are grouped to form large integers, which turns out to be more than the modulo prime of the elliptic curve leading to incorrect decryption. Another issue is to transfer extra information for the number of pixels that are grouped. In order to overcome, an algorithm is proposed that uses the largest 512 bits elliptic curve prime modulo along with confusion and diffusion operation using a chaotic system. Security and statistical analysis are conducted to substantiate the strength of the proposed enciphering method.

Improve a secure blind watermarking technique for digital video

In recent years, digital watermark video has become increasingly popular in a range of industries, but because it is widely available on the Internet, it is simple to make unlawful copies and tamper with digital video. Watermarking digital video has become more popular as a method of detecting changes and preventing illegal duplication. This paper presents a video copyright protection system that is secure, blind, and robust. Two approaches that are resistant to diverse attacks are proposed in this research. The initial step is to encrypt a hybrid watermark (Message, Image) using two different encryption techniques (RSA and AES).The second is a steganography technique based on LSB-based robust watermarking, which embeds an encrypted secret bit Message and Image in key frames of an MP4 video file by utilizing the mean of the grayscale images that differ and take the most significant differences between the two images. The intensity of the histogram will become more consistent across all pixels as the encryption quality improves. For keyframe watermarking in the spatial domain, the proposed methods can maintain the watermarked information while achieving high imperceptibility and a Peak Single to Noise Ratio [PSNR] equivalent to more than 50 db, where quality measures (MSE, PSNR, and correlation coefficient) that calculate the levels of distortion caused by embedding a watermark in digital video produce good results.

Cryptogram steganography method using a JFT optical architecture

En los métodos ópticos para encriptación de imágenes, los criptogramas guardan el mismo patrón de las máscaras de encriptación y esto facilita su detección. Nosotros presentamos un método de encriptación que simultáneamente produce un criptograma estenograma. En las múltiples pruebas de validación de la técnica, incluso para la misma imagen secreta, nosotros obtuvimos estenogramas totalmente diferentes.

Xilinx Zynq FPGA for Hardware Implementation of a Chaos-Based Cryptosystem for Real-Time Image Protection

This paper proposes a well-optimized FPGA implementation of a chaos-based cryptosystem for real-time image encryption and decryption. A highly sensitive Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG) based on the Lorenz chaotic system is designed to generate pseudo-random numbers. A high-quality encryption key is acquired by encrypting the numbers of a 128-bit counter using the PRNG. For image encryption, the image is first decomposed into 128-bit blocks. Then, the blocks are encrypted by XORing pixels with the key stream. [Formula: see text] cycles of encryption can be achieved to increase complexity. Finally, the blocks are concatenated to form an encrypted image. The algorithm is designed, implemented, and validated on the Xilinx Zynq FPGA platform using the Vivado/System Generator tool. The hardware design is well optimized for pipeline processing and low resource utilization. The experimental synthesis indicates that the provided architecture achieves high performance in terms of frequency and throughput. The encryption scheme is evaluated and analyzed by several tools and tests using different images. The experimental simulation results demonstrate that the hardware implementation is faster than a software implementation while maintaining the technique’s effectiveness. The proposed hardware implementation is extremely adopted for secret image encryption and decryption that can be used in real-time applications.

A Security Management Framework for Big Data in Smart Healthcare

Big Data analytics in the medical sector can assist medical professionals to facilitate improvement in healthcare. With the help of data analysis, clinical images of patients can be used to detect certain medical conditions. In the COVID-19 pandemic, many integrated technologies are being used to remodel the healthcare systems. The management of an integrated healthcare solution necessitates the need for security of the medical data. In this paper, we propose a security framework based on the Logistic equation, Hyperchaotic equation, and Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) encoding. Subsequently, a Lossless Computational Secret Image Sharing (CSIS) method is used to convert the encrypted secret image into shares for distributed storage in cloud-based servers. Hyperchaotic and DNA encryption is performed to improve the overall security of the system. Furthermore, Pseudorandom Numbers (PRN) generated by the logistic equation are XORed with the image sequence in two phases by changing the parameters slightly. Finally, the application of Secret Sharing (SS) generates completely noise-like cipher images that enhance the security of the cloud-based cryptosystem. The generated shares are small in size and require fewer resources like storage capacity and transmission bandwidth which is highly desirable in IoT-based systems. It is verified that the cryptosystem is highly secure against attacks as well as interferences and has a very strong key-sensitivity.

RETRACTED: A hybrid security strategy (HS2) for reliable video streaming in fog computing

Abstract Recently, digital communication and storage over the Internet through the cloud have increased in a rapid manner. Accordingly, data security becomes a vital issue as there are many hackers who want to steal or alter others’ private data. Fog computing comes to secure and facilitate the connection to the cloud. It works as an intermediary between the cloud and the peripheral devices. Accordingly, the channel between the fog and those devices must be secured against attacks. Many efforts have been done to secure the fog through the use of steganography to embed important data into a cover digital medium and cryptography to encrypt the data into a meaningless form. As steganography and cryptography have their own advantages, combining them into a hybrid system will certainly promote the security level. Video steganography uses video as a cover media for hiding secret data as video streaming over internet is very popular and common that cannot be doubted by intruders. The advantage of using video files as a cover is that they are more secure against hacker attacks due to their relative complexity compared to other multimedia types and the data redundancy which permits to embed large amount of secret data. In this paper a new hybrid security strategy (HS2) merging the advantages of both cryptography and steganography for securing the fog has been proposed. HS2 embeds a secret image into a video as the host medium. HS2 has two main contributions. The first is a new encryption technique that depends on α-blocks of linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs) merged with an adder/subtractor to generate a strong secret key for each block. All blocks outputs are combined using a nonlinear function to construct the final key. Such generated key will be XORed with the secret image to produce the encrypted secret image. The second contribution is a new steganography methodology based on an enhanced discrete wavelet packet transform (DWPT) to embed the encrypted secret image into a cover video. Experimental results and security analysis have shown that the proposed HS2 outperforms recent security strategies and resist common attacks when applied to the fog environment.

A Novel Grayscale Image Steganography Scheme Based on Chaos Encryption and Generative Adversarial Networks

This article proposes a novel grayscale image steganography scheme that is capable of hiding an encrypted secret image into a cover image of the same size. The secret image is encrypted using the chaos encryption technology before being hidden. The encrypted image and cover image are then transformed into the steg image by a convolutional neural network (CNN). Also, a generative adversarial network (GAN) is adopted to produce a more realistic steg image, whose appearance is difficult to distinguish from the cover image. The steganography scheme is composed of three CNNs which are regarded as hiding network, discriminative network, and extracting network, respectively. Additionally, a new weight allocation mechanism is introduced to ensure the balanced training procedure of hiding-extracting networks. The obtained experimental results show that the proposed scheme not only solved the problems of secret information leakage and color distortion of the current mainstream methods but also maintain high embedding capacity. Compared with other methods, the average values of the PSNR and SSIM of our steg images can reach 0.987 and 42.3, respectively. And the quality of the reconstructed secret images is also advantageous.

A hybrid security strategy (HS2) for reliable video streaming in fog computing

Recently, digital communication and storage over the Internet through the cloud have increased in a rapid manner. Accordingly, data security becomes a vital issue as there are many hackers who want to steal or alter others’ private data. Fog computing comes to secure and facilitate the connection to the cloud. It works as an intermediary between the cloud and the peripheral devices. Accordingly, the channel between the fog and those devices must be secured against attacks. Many efforts have been done to secure the fog through the use of steganography to embed important data into a cover digital medium and cryptography to encrypt the data into a meaningless form. As steganography and cryptography have their own advantages, combining them into a hybrid system will certainly promote the security level. Video steganography uses video as a cover media for hiding secret data as video streaming over internet is very popular and common that cannot be doubted by intruders. The advantage of using video files as a cover is that they are more secure against hacker attacks due to their relative complexity compared to other multimedia types and the data redundancy which permits to embed large amount of secret data. In this paper a new hybrid security strategy (HS2) merging the advantages of both cryptography and steganography for securing the fog has been proposed. HS2 embeds a secret image into a video .mp4 as the host medium. HS2 has two main contributions. The first is a new encryption technique that depends on α-blocks of linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs) merged with an adder/subtractor to generate a strong secret key for each block. All blocks outputs are combined using a nonlinear function to construct the final key. Such generated key will be XORed with the secret image to produce the encrypted secret image. The second contribution is a new steganography methodology based on an enhanced discrete wavelet packet transform (DWPT) to embed the encrypted secret image into a cover video. Experimental results and security analysis have shown that the proposed HS2 outperforms recent security strategies and resist common attacks when applied to the fog environment.

A new fog based security strategy (FBS2) for reliable image transmission

Fog computing has become a fast intermediate between the cloud and the internet of things (IOT) devices. So, the communication channel between the fog and IOT devices must be secured against attacks. Both Cryptography and steganography are well-known techniques for data security. Each of them has its own advantages and strength points, hence, combining Cryptography and steganography in a hybrid system certainly promotes the system’s level of security. Although several hybrid security strategies have been proposed, they suffer from many drawbacks especially when they are applied in fog environments. Fog computing requires not only high security level but also a real time transmission. Hence, recent hybrid security strategies cannot be applied directly in fog environments as they suffer from long processing time. This paper introduces a new Fog Based Security Strategy (FBS2). FBS2 is a hybrid security strategy as it combines Cryptography and steganography techniques. The proposed Cryptography Technique (PCT) is divided into two phases, namely; confusion and diffusion. The former scrambles the secret image pixels, while the latter changes the pixels values using new confusion and diffusion methodologies respectively. Confusion divides the secret images into closed loops of pixels, then rearrange the pixels into straight paths, while diffusion employs a Programmable Linear Feedback Shift Register (PLFSR). On the other hand, the Proposed Steganography Technique is implemented using the discrete wavelet packet transform. Embedding process depends on a new matching procedure, which is based on the most significant bits of both the encrypted secret image and the corresponding employed cover image pixels. Least significant bits (LSBs) are used as indicators to the matching process. At first an intermediate code is derived from the matching process, then, it is encrypted to represent the LSBs of the stego-image. Experimental results have shown that the proposed FBS2 outperforms the previous counterparts in terms of efficiency, security, and processing time, which proves its suitability for application on the fog.

Adaptive image camouflage using human visual system model

The development of image decryption techniques means that some current encryption techniques that turn a secret image into a meaningless image are no longer safe. Recently, encrypting an image into another meaningful image has opened a new route to transmit the secret image. This paper proposes an improved image encryption approach to camouflage the secret image into another host image. The visual quality of the final camouflage image has been significantly improved by using a human visual system (HVS) model. First, the secret image is pre-encrypted with a specific image encryption method, e.g., chaotic mapping method, then the host image is decomposed by a lifting wavelet transform (LWT) to generate integral wavelet coefficients. The encrypted secret image is then adaptively adjusted to a narrower range to guarantee that the final camouflage image is within a reasonable interval. Next, by using a HVS model, each modified image pixel is embedded into the corresponding detailed coefficients through an adaptive allocation strategy. Specifically, for pixels with extremely high or low intensity or high texture complexity, more bits of the modified secret pixels are allocated to substitute for the corresponding bits of coefficients. Then the modified coefficients are retransformed back to generate the final camouflage image. The secret image can be losslessly recovered through reversal procedures. The experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method.

Improved schemes for visual secret sharing based on random grids

Random grid (RG) is an alternative approach to realize a visual secret sharing (VSS) scheme. RG-based VSS has merits such as no pixel expansion and no tailor-made matrix requirement. Recently, many investigations on RG-based VSS are made. However, they need further improvements. In this paper, we obtain some improvements on RG-based VSS. Actually, two improved schemes are proposed, namely RG-based VSS for general access structure (GAS) with improved contrast and extended RG-based VSS with improved access structure. The first scheme can achieve better contrast than previous schemes. The second scheme reduces the chance of suspicion on secret image encryption by generating meaningful shares instead of noise-like shares in the first scheme, and improves the access structure from (k, k) to GAS while maintaining the property that the contrast of the recovered image is traded with that of share images by setting a certain parameter from small to large. Finally, theoretical analyses and experimental results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed schemes.

Efficient Quantum Information Hiding for Remote Medical Image Sharing

Information hiding aims to embed secret data into the multimedia, such as image, audio, video, and text. In this paper, two new quantum information hiding approaches are put forward. A quantum steganography approach is proposed to hide a quantum secret image into a quantum cover image. The quantum secret image is encrypted first using a controlled-NOT gate to demonstrate the security of the embedded data. The encrypted secret image is embedded into the quantum cover image using the two most and least significant qubits. In addition, a quantum image watermarking approach is presented to hide a quantum watermark gray image into a quantum carrier image. The quantum watermark image, which is scrambled by utilizing Arnold’s cat map, is then embedded into the quantum carrier image using the two least and most significant qubits. Only the watermarked image and the key are sufficient to extract the embedded quantum watermark image. The proposed novelty has been illustrated using a scenario of sharing medical imagery between two remote hospitals. The simulation and analysis demonstrate that the two newly proposed approaches have excellent visual quality and high embedding capacity and security.

Distortion less secret image sharing scheme for Internet of Things system

Secret image sharing is the study of sharing a secret image with several participants to prevent the malicious participant obtaining information about the secret image. Traditional methods generate meaningless shares, which are unintelligible and easily lead to suspicions of secret image encryption. Rather, sharing methods with steganography were studied. In this paper, a novel secret sharing scheme for image is proposed based on Shamir’s polynomials with steganography the Internet of Things (IoT) system, where IoT devices could share images seamlessly between them over cloud. In this proposed method, secret shares are generated from the cover image and secret information, and the shares of IoT services are embedded back to the cover image based on on $$2^{4}$$ -ary notational system, which creates stego-shadow images. Experimental results and analysis show that the proposed scheme can recover both the secret information and cover image lossless. Besides, it achieves high embedding capacity, obtains stego-shadow images of high quality and resists the histogram analysis.

Fault-Tolerant Visual Secret Sharing Schemes without Pixel Expansion

Visual cryptography encrypts a secret image into two meaningless random images, called shares, such that it can be decrypted by human vision without any calculations. However, there would be problems in alignment when these two shares are staked by hand in practice. Therefore, this paper presents the fault-tolerant schemes of stacking two shares that are acquired from secret image encryption without pixel expansion. The main idea of these schemes is to combine several pixels as a unit and then to encrypt each unit into a specific combination of pixels. Both theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed schemes.

Towards Shift Tolerant Visual Secret Sharing Schemes without Pixel Expansion

Naor and Shamir proposed the visual cryptography in 1995, they encrypted secret image into two meaningless random images, called shares, and it can be decrypted by human vision without any calculations. However, there would be problems in alignment when these two shares are staked by hand in practical. Therefore, this paper presents the fault-tolerant schemes of stacking two shares which are acquired from secret image encryption without pixel expansion. The main idea of these schemes is combining several pixels to be a unit, then encrypting every unit into a specific combination of pixels. It makes visual secret sharing scheme more practical.

A Zero-Watermarking Scheme using Discrete Wavelet Transform

Digital watermarking is an efficient technique to protect copyright and ownership of digital information. But in traditional methods of digital image watermarking, the texture of original image gets distorted more or less. In this paper, a zero-watermarking based copyright protection scheme is proposed. Watermark is not embedded in the host image rather it is encrypted with the host image. Two schemes are proposed, the basic idea behind both the schemes is making use of Discrete Wavelet Transformation and Singular Value Decomposition to extract robust features of host image. The first approach consists of dividing the host image into overlapping sub images of size 8 × 8. Each block is further decomposed up to level-one using Discrete Wavelet Transform followed by Singular Value Decomposition. In the second approach the image is first subject to DWT, then the approximation part is chosen and later it is divided into overlapping sub-images of size 4 × 4. The further steps are same for both the algorithms. The encryption of the secret image with the host image is done by generating two shares: the master share and the ownership share. The master share is generated by differential classification of features extracted. The ownership share is generated with the help of master share and secret image. The two shares separately do not give any clue of the secret image but when put together they reveal the encrypted secret image. Experimental results show how the proposed algorithm is successful in resisting some common image processing and geometrical attacks.

New Image Broadcasting based on Visual Cryptography and Steganography

This paper presents a new security system by combining cryptographic and steganographic Technique. The main idea behind the present work is to divide the participants into different security levels, determining which participant will be able to decrypt the secret image, and which participant will not be able to decrypt the secret image. A modified idea of traditional visual cryptography with pixel expansion will be introduced to encrypt the data. The hiding method is based on hiding the pixel of the encrypted secret image in a colored cover by altering the DCT coefficients of the cover image. Before the hiding process Arnold transformation is performed on the cover image. The results show that the stego-image is closed related to the original cover image, with good impressibility. General Terms Security

Halftone visual cryptography with minimum auxiliary black pixels and uniform image quality

In halftone visual cryptography scheme (HVCS), a secret image can be embedded into halftone shares with meaningful information of the cover images. Meaningful shares are significant since the efficiency of shares management will be increased and the suspicion of secret image encryption will be decreased. In this paper, we propose an HVCS construction method with minimum auxiliary black pixels (ABPs) distributed homogeneously, which is realized via embedding secret image into meaningful shares in the halftoned processing of the cover images by error diffusion. Secret information pixels (SIPs) are fixed in parallel and separated maximally from each other before the halftoned processing. The proposed scheme obtains admirable visual quality and some preferable advantages compared with related meaningful VC schemes (VCSs). Simulations and comparisons show the advantages and effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

An image copyright protection scheme by encrypting secret data with the host image

In this paper, a zero-watermarking based copyright protection scheme is proposed. The secret watermark image is not embedded in the host image rather it is encrypted with the host image. The proposed scheme is making use of discrete cosine transform and singular value decomposition to extract robust features of the host image. Further the selected robust features are used to encrypt the secret image. The secret image is encrypted with the host image by generating two shares namely master share and ownership share. The master share is generated by differential classification of features extracted. The ownership share is generated with the help of master share and the secret image. The two shares separately don't give any clue of the secret image but when stacked together the encrypted secret image is revealed. Experimental study is conducted to evaluate the robustness of the algorithm against various signal processing and geometrical attacks.