A new efficient lightweight and secure image cipher scheme

Abstract

The protection of multimedia content has become a key area of research, since very often a user's privacy and confidentiality can be at risk. Although a large number of image encryption algorithms have recently emerged, only a subset of these algorithms are suitable for real applications. These algorithms however use non-integer operations such as chaotic solutions that introduce a sizeable overhead in terms of latency and resources, in addition to floating-point hardware that is costly to implement. Designing an efficient, lightweight, and secure image encryption algorithm is still a hard challenge; yet, it is crucial to have in order to meet the demands of recent multimedia applications running on energy-limited devices. In this paper, an efficient image encryption scheme based on a dynamic structure is proposed. The structure of the proposed cipher consists of two different lightweight rounds (forward and backward chaining blocks) and a block permutation process. In addition, a key derivation function is proposed to produce a dynamic key based on a secret key and a nonce. This key, according to its configuration, can be changed for each validate time (session) or for each new input image. Then, based on this key, the cipher layers are produced, which are an integer or a binary diffusion matrix and a substitution table S-box, together with a permutation table P-box. The proposed dynamic cipher is designed to provide high robustness against contemporary powerful attacks, and permits reducing the required number of rounds for achieving the lightweight property. Experimental simulations demonstrate the efficiency and robustness levels of the proposed scheme.

Lightweight Stream Cipher Scheme for Resource-Constrained IoT Devices

“…Accordingly, a new paradigm emerged for cryptographic algorithms, which are referred to as "lightweight" since they exhibit low latency and overhead [5], [6]. Lightweight cryptographic algorithms that are based on the dynamic key approach have been proposed in [2], [7]- [9]. The cipher schemes described in [7]- [9] require two iterations of a round function, while [2] requires a single iteration of a round function, and it processes 2 blocks at a time, which makes it faster than the one in [7]- [9].…”

Statistical Analysis and Security Evaluation of Chaotic RC5-CBC Symmetric Key Block Cipher Algorithm

“…Due to the meaning and content, this correlation is usually high (close to 1) in the case of a natural image. However, this correlation must be broken (close to 0) when encrypting the image [4], [18]. Fig.…”

Efficient and secure cipher scheme for multimedia contents

“…Recently, two new lightweight cryptographic solutions were proposed, which are either based on a lightweight round function or on a small number of rounds by relying on the dynamic key approach [37,38], in order to reduce the required resources and latency [39,40,41]. These two recent dynamic key-dependent lightweight cipher schemes use a round function for two iterations (r = 2).…”

“…The round function of [37] consists of a dynamic substitution operation that uses a dynamic S-box followed by an integer matrix mixing for the diffusion operation. The cipher scheme of [37] is illustrated in Figure 1 and the architecture of [38] is similar compared to [37]. On the other hand, the cipher in [38], achieves a lower latency when compared to [37] since each round iteration applies only a single operation.…”

“…The cipher scheme of [37] is illustrated in Figure 1 and the architecture of [38] is similar compared to [37]. On the other hand, the cipher in [38], achieves a lower latency when compared to [37] since each round iteration applies only a single operation. In fact, the presented cipher in [38] applies the diffusion operation in the first round, the substitution operation in the second round and it uses binary diffusion operations instead of integer ones.…”