Int. J. Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, Vol. 12, No.

1, 2014

Securing multimedia colour imagery using multiple

high dimensional chaos-based hybrid keys
Musheer Ahmad* and Tanvir Ahmad
Faculty of Engineering and Technology,
Department of Computer Engineering,
Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi-110025, India
E-mail: musheer.cse@gmail.com
E-mail: tanvir.jmi@gmail.com
*Corresponding author
Abstract: The rapid exchange of multimedia data over worldwide available
internet and shared networks has encouraged its unauthorised access, illegal
usage, disruption, alteration. Therefore, it demands efficient methods to provide
security to multimedia contents for ensuring authorised access, preventing
illegal disruption, alteration, etc. To meet the aforesaid needs, the authors
propose an efficient encryption method to secure the multimedia colour
imagery. Complex dynamic responses of multiple high-order chaotic systems
are utilised to carry out image pixels shuffling and diffusion processes under
the control of secret key. The pixels diffusion is done by randomly picking the
actual encryption keys out of nine hybridised keys that are extracted from
complex sequences of Chen, Rossler and Chua chaotic systems. Eventually, a
high encryption effect is turned up in the encrypted multimedia colour images.
Moreover, the shuffling and diffusion processes are made plain-image
information dependent to resist the potential chosen-plaintext, chosen-ciphertext
and known-plaintext attacks. The simulation results validate that the proposed
method has great encryption performance and practicableness.
Keywords: multimedia security; chaotic systems; shuffling; diffusion; image
encryption.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Ahmad, M. and Ahmad, T.
(2014) Securing multimedia colour imagery using multiple high dimensional
chaos-based hybrid keyse, Int. J. Communication Networks and Distributed
Systems, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp.113128.
Biographical notes: Musheer Ahmad received his BTech and MTech degrees
from Department of Computer Engineering, ZH College of Engineering and
Technology, AMU, India in 2004 and 2008, respectively. He joined the
Department of Computer Engineering, AMU, India as a Faculty in 2006.
Currently, he is with Department of Computer Engineering, Jamia Millia
Islamia, New Delhi, India, as an Assistant Professor. He has published about 20
research papers in refereed academic journals and international conference
proceedings. His areas of research interest include multimedia security,
chaos-based cryptography, image processing and soft computing techniques.
Tanvir Ahmad did his BE in Computer Engineering from Bangalore University
and MTech from IP University, New Delhi, in 2006. Presently, he is with
Department of Computer Engineering, Jamia Millia Islamia as an Associate
Professor and pursuing his PhD in the area of frequent and sequential pattern
mining. He joined the Department of Computer Engineering, JMI in 2004 as a
Lecturer and was promoted to the post of Reader in 2006. He has published
Copyright 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

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M. Ahmad and T. Ahmad

about ten research papers in journals and conferences of national/international
repute. His areas of research interest include fuzzy database, text mining,
sequential mining and multimedia security methods.
This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled Multiple 3D
chaotic systems based approach for visual multimedia content protection
presented at International Conference on Recent Trends in Computing,
Communication and Information Technologies [ObCom-2011], VIT
University, Vellore, TN 632014, India, 911 December 2011.

Introduction

The modern technological advancements have evolved the internet from fundamental
e-mail communication task to a plateform where computing resources along with data are
made available for the end users. Green clouds emphasise the deployment and
energy-efficient utilisation of underlying computing resources available over the clouds.
Such an environment requires increased sharing and exchange of computing resources
and sensitive data. This brings new challenges to design security methods that are
credential enough to provide the sufficient privacy to the important data shared over the
cloud, which can protect the data from unauthorised access and usage. At the same time,
due to advancements in the telecommunications technologies the multimedia-based
communication has become essential in everyones life. The rapid and frequent exchange
of multimedia data via internet and clouds has encouraged copyright frauds, unauthorised
access, illegal usage and uncontrollable distribution of multimedia content (Izquierdo
et al., 2003). The efforts have been done by researchers, academicians and practitioners
for enforcing security, providing protection, establishing ownership rights, ensuring
authorised access, preventing illegal replication, facilitating content authentication of
multimedia content (Kundur and Karthik, 2004). In order to deal with the technical
challenges pertinent to multimedia content, two major techniques are applied: multimedia
watermarking and encryption (Furht and Kirovski, 2005). Multimedia watermarking
techniques are applied to achieve copyright protection, ownership trace and
authentication. However, multimedia encryption techniques are applied to provide endto-end security when distributing digital content. Multimedia encryption techniques
transform the visual content of multimedia into an unintelligible form that can be
recovered with the correct secret key. The authorised customer who owns the key can
successfully recover the content (Lin et al., 2005). Thus, the strength of such techniques
lies in the secret key. The key space of the technique should be large enough to resist the
brute-force attack. The encryption technique should be cryptographically strong enough
to withstand the conventional and other types of cryptographic attacks (Schneier, 1996).
Hence, secure multimedia communication demands new encryption techniques that may
handle the multimedia data efficiently. Due to the inherent features of multimedia
data like: their bulk data capacity, high spatial and temporal redundancy, etc., the
conventional cryptographic techniques such as DES, triple-DES, RSA, IDEA, AES are
computationally inefficient in dealing with huge multimedia data. In the past one and half
decade, the chaotic systems are explored for the design of security methods which can
fulfil the need of secure communication over the attack-prone networks (Ahmad and
Farooq, 2010, 2011; Chen et al., 2010; Corron et al., 2010; Dang and Chau, 2000;

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115

Deepthi et al., 2009; Francia et al., 2009; Fu et al., 2007; Hamdi and Boudriga, 2008;
Hasimoto-Beltrn, 2008; Lian, 2009; Tong and Cui, 2009; Sadhasivam and Jini, 2010;
Silva et al., 2009; Watfa et al., 2009; Zhang and Liu, 2009; Zhou et al., 2008). This is
because, the chaotic signals are blessed with features such as high sensitivity to initial
conditions/parameters, long periodicity, high randomness and mixing, which can be
exploited to employ in a cryptographic system. These characteristics make chaos-based
multimedia encryption methods excellent and robust against statistical attacks. In chaosbased image encryption methods, chaotic sequences are pre-processed to implement the
image pixels confusions and diffusions. Fu et al. (2007) proposed an image encryption
scheme by implementing simultaneously the pixels permutation and their diffusion using
3D Lorenz chaotic systems. Kanso and Ghebleh (2011) suggested an efficient algorithm
by applying the phases of confusions and diffusions using a single 3D Arnold cat map,
which provides resistant to the existing attacks. The features of fourth-order
hyper-chaotic system are improved and explored by Zhu (2012) for designing a new
method of image encryption. In Francois et al. (2012), a new image encryption scheme
based on coupling of chaotic function and XOR operator is provided. The scheme has the
features of high security, sensitivity and randomness. Hongjun and Xingyuan (2010)
designed a stream-cipher algorithm based on one-time keys and robust chaotic maps in
order to get high security and improve the dynamical degradation, where the initial
conditions are generated by the MD5 of mouse positions. This makes the algorithm
robust against noise and makes known attacks unfeasible. In Zhang et al. (2010), the
authors proposed a novel image encryption algorithm by exploring the combined features
of DNA computing and chaotic logistic function.
In this paper, the authors propose multimedia colour imagery encryption method by
exploiting the complex dynamic responses of multiple high-order chaotic systems. The
complex orbits of each chaotic system are recorded as real valued chaotic sequences to
carry out the image pixels shuffling and diffusion operations. The generated chaotic
sequences are pre-processed and quantised to extract the intermediate keys. To strengthen
the diffusion process of the proposed method, the keys are hybridised using XOR
operation to produce a number of encryption keys. The actual encryption of plain-images
is performed with their random selection in diffusion process. In addition, the shuffling
and diffusion of image pixels are made image dependent to resist the cryptographic
attacks. Rest of this paper is organised as follows: the proposed method is discussed in
Section 2, followed by the simulation results which are presented in Section 3. Finally,
the conclusion is drawn in Section 4.

Proposed security method

The proposed method is based on the use of multiple three-order chaotic systems. The
one-dimensional chaotic system provides: low key space, their iteration operations
generate single sequence and they are weak against adaptive parameter synchronous
attack (Fu et al., 2007). Moreover, the usage of single chaotic system in an encryption
process fails in providing the sufficient security and large key space. To overcome the
limitations of low-dimensional and single chaotic systems, multiple three-dimensional
Chen, Rossler and Chua chaotic systems are employed in the design. The dynamics of
these systems are more complex and generate more unpredictable, distinct and stochastic
chaotic sequences as compared to low-dimensional systems. Eventually, high security,

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M. Ahmad and T. Ahmad

extremely large key space and high statistical properties are achieved. The state equations
describing the three chaotic systems are:

Chen system:
x1 = a1 ( x2 x1 )
x2 = ( c1 a1 ) x1 x1 x3 x2

(1)

x3 = x1 x2 b1 x3

Rossler system:
y1 = ( y2 + y3 )
y2 = y1 + a2 y2

(2)

y3 = b2 + y3 ( y1 c2 )

Chua system:
z1 = ( z2 z1 h ( z1 ) )
z2 = z1 z2 + z3
z3 = z2 z3
h ( z1 ) = m1 z1 + 0.5 ( m0 m1 ) ( z1 + 1 z1 1 )

(3)

where a1 = 35, b1 = 3, c1 = 27.7, a2 = 0.15, b2 = 0.20, c2 = 9.0, = 10, = 14.78,

= 0.0385, m0 = 1.27 and m1 = 0.68. The chaotic behaviour of 3D Chen system is
evident in phase plot shown in Figure 1. These 3D differential equations are solved using
fourth-order Runge-Kutta method with step size of h = 0.001. The ideal cryptographic
sequence should have good statistical properties. The pre-processing done in equation (4)
enhances the statistical properties of the chaotic sequences generated by the above
systems (Fu et al., 2007).

(i ) = (i) 105 floor ( (i) 105 )

(4)

where (i) = x1(i), x2(i), x3(i), y1(i), y2(i), y3(i), z1(i), z2(i) and z3(i) are real-valued chaotic
sequence generated by systems of equations (1), (2), (3) respectively in the ith iteration
and 0 < (i) < 1.
Figure 1

3D phase plot showing chaotic behaviour of Chen systems (see online version for
colours)

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117

The algorithmic steps of the proposed framework for securing multimedia colour images
are described as:
Step 1

Let PR, PG and PB be the R, G and B components of colour plain-image P to be

secured.

Step 2

Evaluate the image dependent parameters NR, NG and NB from image P using
XOR operation as:
N M

N R = 1 + PR (i, j )
j =1 i =1

N M

N G = 1 + PG (i, j )
j =1 i =1

N M

N B = 1 + PB (i, j )
j =1 i =1

where 1 NR, NG, NB 256.

Step 3 Take proper initial conditions for Chen, Rossler and Chua chaotic systems used
in the pixels shuffling.
Step 4 Execute the chaos systems of equations (1), (2) and (3) for NR, NG and NB times,
respectively.
Step 5 Iterate chaos systems of equations (1), (2) and (3) for = max{M, N} times. Save
the real values of chaotic variables and pre-process them according to equation
(4) to get nine processed vectors X1, X2, X3, Y1, Y2, Y3, Z1, Z2, Z3, for example:
X 1 = {x1 (1), x1 (2), , x1 ( )}.
Step 6

Truncate the following vectors if M N as:

if (M > N)
{Y3 = Y3(1 to N), Z2 = Z2(1 to N), Z1 = Z1(1 to N)}
else
{X1 = X1(1 to M), Y2 = Y2(1 to M), X3 = X3(1 to M)}

Step 7

Determine the indices permutation vectors from above vector(s) as: sort the
vector X 1 = {x1 (1), x1 (2), , x1 ( )} to get new
vector {x1 (1), x1 (2), , x1 ( )}. Find the position of values
{x1 (1), x1 (2), , x1 ( )} in {x1 (1), x1 (2), , x1 ( )} and mark down

these positions as VR = {v1, v2,, v}, where position vector VR would be a

permutation of vector {1, 2, 3,, }.
Step 8

Let VR, VG, VB, UR, UG, and UB be the position vectors obtained corresponding to
the processed chaotic vectors X1, Y2, X3, Y3, Z2, and Z1, respectively. Now,
permutation vectors VR, VG, and VB, are used to perform row-wise shuffling of
pixels in R, G and B components of image. Where as, vectors UR, UG, and UB are
used for column-wise shuffling of pixels.

Step 9

Perform row-wise shuffling of pixels in R, G and B components of image in ith

row using permutation indices vector VR, VG and VB by shifting pixels from
position k to new position VR(k), VG(k), VB(k). Do it for all M rows, 1 i M.

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Step 10 Perform column-wise shuffling of pixels in R, G and B components of image in

jth column using permutation indices vector UR, UG and UB by shifting pixels
from position k to new position UR(k), UG(k), UB(k). Do it for all N columns,
1 j N.
Step 11 Let S be the resultant shuffled colour image. Reshape the R, G and B
components of shuffled image S to 1D vectors SR, SG and SB each of length
M N. Perform initial diffusion of each components with their self as:
for k = M N to 2
SR(k 1) = SR(k 1) SR(k)
SG(k 1) = SG(k 1) SG(k)
SB(k 1) = SB(k 1) SB(k)
end

Step 12 Take properly another set of initial conditions for Chen, Rossler, and Chua
chaotic systems utilised in diffusion process, and CR(0), CG(0), CB(0). Let t = 1.
Step 13 Again, iterate the chaos systems of equations (1), (2) and (3) to obtained chaotic
variables x1(t), x2(t), x3(t), y1(t), y2(t), y3(t), z1(t), z2(t), z3(t) and pre-process them
according to equation (4).
Step 14 Perform 8-bit quantisation (G = 28) of the pre-processed chaotic variables as:

1,2,3 (t ) = ( floor ( x1,2,3 (t ) 1014 ) ) mod(G )

1,2,3 (t ) = ( floor ( y1,2,3 (t ) 329 ) ) mod(G )

1,2,3 (t ) = ( floor ( z1,2,3 (t ) 716 ) ) mod(G )

Step 15 Generate hybridised keys from the quantised 8-bit variables obtained in previous
step according to the rules given below:

(1) = 1 (t ) 2 (t ) 3 (t )
(2) = 2 (t ) 3 (t ) 1 (t )
(3) = 3 (t ) 1 (t ) 2 (t )

(4) = 2 (t ) 1 (t ) 3 (t )

(5) = 3 (t ) 2 (t ) 1 (t )
(6) = 1 (t ) 3 (t ) 2 (t )

(7) = 1 (t ) 1 (t ) 1 (t )

(8) = 2 (t ) 2 (t ) 2 (t )
(9) = 3 (t ) 3 (t ) 3 (t )
Step 16 Evaluate the indices i, j, k, l, m and n of hybridised keys from the pre-processed
chaotic variables obtained in step 13.

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119

i = { floor ( x1 (t ) 108 ) floor ( y 2 (t ) 108 ) )} mod(9) + 1

j = { floor ( x3 (t ) 106 ) floor ( z2 (t ) 107 )} mod(9) + 1

k = { floor ( y3 (t ) 107 ) floor ( z1 (t ) 105 )} mod(9) + 1

l = { floor ( z3 (t ) 103 ) floor ( x2 (t ) 107 )} mod(9) + 1
m = { floor ( y1 (t ) 107 ) floor ( z2 (t ) 106 )} mod(9) + 1
n = { floor ( x3 (t ) 105 ) floor ( y3 (t ) 106 )} mod(9) + 1

Step 17 Select lines s0, s1 and s2 decide the actual encryption keys KR, KG and KB used to
mask the pixels of multimedia colour image components.
s0 = lsb ( 1 (t ) ) lsb ( 2 (t ) ) lsb ( 3 (t ) )

s1 = lsb (1 (t ) ) lsb ( 2 (t ) ) lsb (3 (t ) )

s2 = lsb ( 1 (t ) ) lsb ( 2 (t ) ) lsb ( 3 (t ) )

Step 18 Random selection of actual encryption keys KR, KG and KB is made through
following if-else rules:
if (s0 = = 0)
KR = (i)
else

if (s1 = = 0)
else

KR = (j)

if (s2 = = 0)

KG = (k)

KB = (m)
else

KG = (l)

KB = (n)

Step 19 Encrypt the pixels of SR, SG and SB components of self-diffused shuffled image S
obtained after step 11 to get pixels of cipher-image C, in CBC mode as:
CR (t ) = K R {S R (t ) + K G + K B } mod(G ) CR (t 1)

CG (t ) = K G {SG (t ) + K R + K B } mod(G ) CG (t 1)
CB (t ) = K B {S B (t ) + K G + K R } mod(G ) CB (t 1)

Step 20 Set t = t + 1 and repeat steps 13 to 19 for M N times to encrypt all the pixels of
image S.
Step 21 Reshape the 1D vectors CR, CG and CB of length M N into 2D grey-value
matrices each of size M N and combine the colour components to get final
encrypted colour image C.
The decoding of encrypted image is performed by applying the above steps of encryption
process in reverse order, except that the following formulation is used for decrypting the
pixels of self-diffused components SR, SG and SB of shuffled image S.
S R (t ) = { K R CR (t ) CR (t 1) + 2 G K G K B } mod(G )
SG (t ) = { K G CG (t ) CG (t 1) + 2 G K R K B } mod(G )
S B (t ) = { K B CB (t ) CB (t 1) + 2 G K G K R } mod(G )

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Simulation results

In this section, a number of simulation analyses: histogram analysis. Chi-square test,

pixels correlation test, entropy test, net pixels change rate test, key space analysis and
resistance to CPA/KPA/CCA are performed to assess the encryption effect
delivered by the proposed security method. The secret key of the encryption process are
initialised with values as: ICs = {x1(0) =7.561, x2(0) = 3.097, x3(0) = 13.71,
y1(0) = 5.352, y2(0) = 1.632, y3(0) = 2.533, z1(0) = 9.16, z2(0) = 2.7, z3(0) = 1.31},
ICd = {x11(0) = 10.058, x22(0) = 0.368, x33(0) = 37.368, y11(0) = 3.491, y22(0) = 7.523,
y33(0) = 17.039, z11(0) = 10, z22(0) = 0.6, z33(0) = 0.1} and CR(0) = CG(0) =
CB(0) = 127. To report the effectiveness, the proposed design is experimented with six
colour plain-images: Cattle-driver [A painting by Stefan Norblin, photo courtesy of the
organisers The National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi (Stefan, 2011)], Barbara,
Airplane, Peppers, Baboon and Parrots of size 512 512 3, which are shown in
Figure 2. The shuffled and final encrypted colour images obtained with proposed method
are provided in Figures 3 and 4, respectively. It is desired that the encrypted images
should be greatly distinct from their original ones. As clear that encrypted images are
completely indistinguishable, highly distorted and appear like noise images. The images
are successfully recovered with correct secret key. Encrypted colour images are examined
under the following simulation analyses to justify that the proposed method imparts high
security to the multimedia imagery.
Figure 2

Colour plain-images of, (a) cattle-driver (b) Barbara (c) airplane (d) peppers
(e) baboon (f) parrots (see online version for colours)

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

Securing multimedia colour imagery

Figure 3

121

Shuffled colour images of, (a) cattle-driver (b) Barbara (c) airplane (d) peppers
(e) baboon (f) parrots (see online version for colours)

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

As evident from Figure 6 that the pixels distributions in R, G and B components of

encrypted Cattle-driver image are fairly uniform and much different from the histograms
of R, G and B components of corresponding plain-image shown in Figure 5. The
statistical properties of colour plain-images are changed absolutely in such a manner that
encrypted images have good balance property. To quantify the balance property of
encrypted images, the mean grey values of plain-images and encrypted images are
evaluated and listed in Table 1. It is clear from the mean of grey values measures that no
matter how grey values of plain-images are distributed, the mean grey values measures of
encrypted images come out close to 127.5 (ideal value for an 8-bits grey-scale perfect
white noise image). This shows that the encrypted images do not provide any information
regarding the distribution of grey values to the attacker.
Table 1

Mean grey values of pixels in original and encrypted images

Test image

Original
R

Encrypted

Cattle-driver

102.94

86.44

14.39

127.64

127.36

127.67

Barbara

130.57

101.08

92.57

127.41

127.54

127.35

Airplane

177.57

177.85

190.21

127.22

127.71

127.21

Peppers

149.82

115.56

66.53

127.40

127.60

127.45

Baboon

137.39

128.86

113.12

127.41

127.51

127.31

Parrots

130.79

120.60

81.94

127.27

127.64

127.66

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M. Ahmad and T. Ahmad

Figure 4

Encrypted colour images of, (a) cattle-driver (b) Barbara (c) airplane (d) peppers
(e) baboon (f) parrots (see online version for colours)

Table 2

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

Chi-square values for original and encrypted images

Original

Test image

Encrypted

97,668.19

224,686.46

2,235,475.44

251.72

247.57

262.03

Barbara

90,310.73

151,450.03

131,300.43

274.59

292.79

285.42

Airplane

678,415.25

677,708.35

1,107,794.21

238.23

242.39

242.14

Peppers

213,187.22

318,382.93

491,428.18

305.82

256.28

255.25

Baboon

82,839.65

142,450.74

79,932.61

284.34

274.67

270.18

Parrots

251,997.08

147,892.24

350,855.42

236.88

241.79

240.79

Cattle-driver

3.1 Chi-square test

The performance of a security scheme is also estimated through chi-square test (Kwok
and Tang, 2007). It is a statistical test used to examine the variations of data from the
expected value. The chi-square parameter is defined as:

2 =

i =1

( Oi Ei )2
Ei

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123

where i is the number of grey values, Oi and Ei are observed and expected occurrence of
each grey value (0 to G 1), respectively. The less the value of chi-square 2 better will
be the encryption performance of the scheme. The values of chi-square for two set of
images are listed in Table 2. The chi-square values for encrypted images are extremely
low as compared to the values obtained for the original images. The extremely low values
of chi-square depict that the proposed method provides fairly high encryption effect.

3.2 Adjacent pixels correlation

The multimedia images have high correlations among their adjacent pixels. The aim of
shuffling and diffusion phases of the proposed method is to eliminate the correlations
among vertically, horizontally and diagonally adjacent pixels in images. The correlation
between two adjacent pixels P1 and P2 having grey values x and y is calculated as:
N

i =1

i =1

xi2

( x y ) x y

i =1

i =1

xi

i =1

i =1

yi2

i =1

yi

Two highly correlated patterns have a correlation coefficient of about +1 or 1. However,

the two highly uncorrelated patterns have a zero correlation coefficient. We randomly
select N = 5,000 pairs of vertically, horizontally and diagonally adjacent pixels to
calculate the correlation coefficients. In the proposed algorithm, the correlation
coefficient of 5,000 randomly selected pairs of adjacent pixels in R, G and B components
of plain-images/encrypted images are determined in three directions and their average
value is presented in Table 3. The values of correlation coefficients show that the
adjacent pixels in the plain-images are heavily correlated to each other, whereas the
values obtained for encrypted images are close to zero, thereby justifying that the
proposed encryption approach highly de-correlates the adjacent pixels in encrypted
images.
Figure 5

Pixels distributions in, (a) red (b) green and (c) blue components of cattle-driver
plain-image (see online version for colours)

(a)

(b)

(c)

M. Ahmad and T. Ahmad

124
Figure 6

Pixels distributions in, (a) red (b) green and (c) blue components of encrypted
cattle-driver image (see online version for colours)

(a)
Table 3

(b)

(c)

Average correlation among adjacent pixels of original and encrypted images

Original

Test image

Encrypted

Cattle-driver

0.974612

0.961335

0.811543

0.00510

0.00534

0.00889

Barbara

0.979240

0.978349

0.981297

0.00320

0.00291

0.00394

Airplane

0.966751

0.970289

0.947278

0.00011

0.00625

0.00349

Peppers

0.967209

0.983952

0.966568

0.00114

0.00402

0.00631

Baboon

0.874908

0.778703

0.886015

0.00443

0.00548

0.00880

Parrots

0.981942

0.974399

0.978606

0.00860

0.00213

0.00847

3.3 Shannon entropy test

The Shannon entropy defined in equation (5) (Shannon, 1948), gives a measure of
statistical randomness and distortion taken place in encrypted images. It is highly
desirable from security viewpoint that encrypted images should have their entropy
measures close to the ideal value. The entropy measures for the colour images under
experimentation are determined and provided in Table 4. The entropy measures for R, G
and B components of encrypted images are found very close to the ideal value 8. This
implies that the information leakage in the encrypted images is negligible and it can be
said that they are secure against entropy-based attack.
255

H (S ) =

p ( s ) ( log ( p ( s ) )
i

(5)

i =0

Table 4

Entropy measures of original and encrypted images

Test image
Cattle-driver
Barbara
Airplane
Peppers
Baboon
Parrots

Original

Encrypted

7.692186
7.662956
6.717770
7.338827
7.706669
7.423341

7.306129
7.468446
6.805542
7.496253
7.475279
7.538088

7.317564
7.538000
6.213994
7.058305
7.752245
7.292859

7.999307
7.999245
7.999345
7.999158
7.999218
7.999349

7.999319
7.999194
7.999334
7.999293
7.999244
7.999335

7.999279
7.999213
7.999333
7.999295
7.999255
7.999337

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125

3.4 Net pixels change rate

Net pixels change rate is another statistical measure used to assess the quality of security
provided by an encryption scheme. NPCR quantifies the sensitivity of encryption scheme
to a small change in the plain-image. For two encrypted images C1(i, j) and C2(i, j) whose
corresponding plain-images have only one-pixel difference, the net pixel change rate is
determined as:
NPCR =

i, j

D(i, j )

100%
M N
0 C1 (i, j ) = C2 (i, j )
where D(i, j ) =
1 C1 (i, j ) C2 (i, j )

To calculate the values of NPCR, the only one pixel of plain-image located at centre
position is changed. The NPCR obtained for set of C1(i, j) and C2(i, j) images are listed in
Table 5. The high values of NPCR confirm that the proposed method is highly sensitive
to a swift change in the plain-image and results into significant change in the encrypted
images C2(i, j).
Table 5

Net pixels change rate for C1 and C2 images

Test image

Cattle-driver

99.596

99.585

99.610

Barbara

99.613

99.564

99.607

Airplane

99.576

99.535

99.591

Peppers

99.558

99.621

99.583

Baboon

99.579

99.604

99.566

Parrots

99.613

99.589

99.540

3.5 Key space

Key space is the total number of possible keys that can be taken by an encryption
method. The key space should be large enough so that the encryption method can
withstand the exhaustive brute-force attack. In the proposed design, two distinct sets of
initial conditions are used in shuffling and diffusion phases. Therefore the key space
comes out to about [(1014)3(329)3(716)3]2 2767. Inclusion of system parameters of
equations (1), (2), (3) and CR(0), CG(0), CB(0), etc., further improves the size of key
space. Thus, the key space of the proposed security method is extensively large enough to
withstand the brute-force attack.

3.6 Resistance to CPA/KPA/CCA attacks

In the proposed method, the evaluation of permutation vectors for shuffling image pixels
is made plain-image information dependent. As a result, different permutation vectors are
generated in shuffling phase when different plain-images are encrypted. Moreover, the
way pixels of shuffled image are diffused in the CBC mode via keys KR, KG, KB, and
CR(0), CG(0), CB(0), complicates the work of cryptanalysts. Consequently, a totally

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different shuffling and diffusion of image pixels is resulted when different plain-images
are encrypted. Therefore, the known-plaintext (KPA), chosen-plaintext (CPA) and
chosen-ciphertext (CCA) attacks are become inapplicable. Hence, the proposed method
can resist the KPA/CPA/CCA attacks.

Conclusions

To rule out the shortcomings of single and low-dimensional chaotic systems, a multiple
high-order chaos-based multimedia colour image encryption method is presented. The
method constitutes the shuffling and diffusion phases. Theses phases are designed such
that any minor change in the plain-image leads to different image shuffling and diffusion.
The image-information dependent shuffling is performed to destroy the correlation
among the adjacent pixels and complicate the work of cryptanalysts. To further enforce
the security and statistical performance of the method, the shuffled image is diffused in
CBC mode using the encryption keys extracted from the complex dynamic responses of
multiple third-order chaotic systems. The encryption keys are randomly generated out of
numbers of hybridised keys to strengthen the encryption performance. The proposed
method is experimented on a number of standard multimedia colour images to highlight
the encryption performance. The method is resistant to the known cryptographic attacks.
Moreover, the statistical analyses confirm that the proposed method is highly effective,
secure and exhibits great encryption performance.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments
and suggestions which improved the quality of the paper.

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