ISSN : 2368-1209
Sreejit Roy Chowdhury et al, American Journal of Advanced Computing, Vol. 1(1), 1-4
Image Encryption using pseudo random permutation
A realistic approach towards secured communication
Sreejit Roy Chowdhury
Department of Information Technology,
Institute of Engineering & Management, Kolkata, India
Email: src0108@gmail.com
Abstract—Data encryption is to conceal the information
content of secret data. It is different from data hiding where the
objective is to conceal the existence of secret data. A reversible
data encryption technique can extract intended information
content from the encrypted data without any loss of information.
The decryption process should be done at legitimate or authentic
receiver end. The encrypted data can be directly transmitted via
communication channels because it completely lost its
resemblance with the original information. Although it is
theoretically possible to break such security, but it is not feasible
by any known practical means and appear as a random-noise to
non-intended recipients or adversaries. To incorporate second
fold of security, a suitable data hiding method can be used to
embed the encrypted data. This paper proposes a new visual data
encryption method by shuffling pixel information randomly
within the image. The reformation of image using proposed
scheme completely looses the original characteristics. Our
experimental results show the proposed method can achieve the
claim.
Keywords—pseudo random permutation; encryption; lossless;
cryptography; diagonal scanning; zigzag scanning; spiral
scanning.
I. Introduction
The Internet and the World Wide Web have brought many
changes that provide huge benefits to the information and
communication systems for society. The global system is
intensifying with the increasing value and quantity of data that
is transmitted and stored. Unfortunately, these changes have
raised many new challenges in the security of computer
systems and the protection of information against
unauthorized access. Proliferation of computers, increased
computing power, interconnectivity, decentralization, growth
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Tapan Kumar Hazra
Department of Information Technology,
Institute of Engineering & Management, Kolkata, India
E-mail: tapankumarh@yahoo.com
Dr. Ajay Kumar Chakraborty
Department of Information Technology,
Institute of Engineering & Management, Kolkata, India
E-mail: akc_000@rediffmail.com
of networks and the number of users, as well as the
convergence of information and communications
technologies, while enhancing the utility of these systems, also
increase system vulnerability. Security of information and
communications systems involves the protection of the
availability, confidentiality and integrity of those systems and
the data that is transmitted and stored on them.
Data hiding conceals the existence of secret messages
while cryptography protects the content of messages for
secure communication in the presence of third parties (called
adversaries). The word steganography is derived from Greek
and it literally means “covered writing”; the art of hiding
information in ways that prevent detection. It includes a
variety of secret communication methods that can conceal the
existence of messages [1–3]. Information can be hidden in
many different ways. In order to hide information, a straight
message insertion may encode every bit of information in the
cover data or it may selectively embed messages in noisy
areas that generally draw less attention. Messages may also be
scattered randomly throughout the cover data. Least
significant bit (LSB) insertion is one of the common methods
of data hiding [4-6].
In the present paper we have considered the visual
information in a grey scale image and propose a new method
by shuffling pixel information randomly within the image. For
the purpose, two dimensional pixel grey values are scanned in
various ways like spiral , zigzag and diagonal ways and stored
in a linear array. The linear array is then reshaped to two
dimensional array, which became the encrypted image. This
way of shuffling pixel information within the image
dimension gives some sort of pseudo-random permutation and
also we can get back the original image exactly.
1
 Sreejit Roy Chowdhury et al, American Journal of Advanced Computing, Vol. 1(1), 1-4 ISSN : 2368-1209

A A A A A A A A A A
11 21 12 31 22 13 41 32 23 14

II. Pseudo random permutation C. Spiral encryption:

In the present work we distributed the information using three
In case of spiral encoding the image pixels are scanned in a
encryption techniques which are not a truly random
spiral way. The scanned image pixels are stored in a linear
permutation but they definitely give some pseudo randomness
array. The resultant encrypted image is obtained by reshaping
in distributing the information and we can get back the
the linear array into 2D array of same size as the original
original information in a reverse process.
image.
We worked on an image data and applied the proposed
techniques on to the pixel values. The secret message or image
is encrypted using this three techniques. The resultant
encrypted image in all the cases are pseudo random
permutations of the original one .All the encryption techniques
can be started with any one of the corner pixels of the image Table 3
depending on the user. A11 A12 A13 A14
The different scanning procedures that are expected to give
A21 A22 A23 A24
pseudo random permutation are proposed in this paper as
below: A31 A32 A33 A34
A41 A42 A43 A44
A. Diagonal encryption:
In case of diagonal encryption the image pixels are scanned in
Intermediate linear array:
a diagonal fashion as shown in table 1. After scanning, the A A A A A A A A A A
image data are stored in a linear array. After the completion of 11 12 13 14 24 34 44 43 42 41
the scanning process diagonally the resultant linear array is
reshaped into a 2D array using the same size of the original
image, thus we obtained an encrypted image of the same size D. hybrid encryption:
as that of the original image.
combinations of above three techniques in any order.
Table-1
A11 A12 A13 A14
A21 A22 A23 A24
A 31 A32 A 33 A 34 III. procedure
A 41 A 42 A 43 A44
We are hiding the image information by shuffling the pixel
information according to proposed pseudo random
Intermediate linear array: permutations. General algorithmic steps for encryption are
A 11 A 21 A 12 A 31 A 22 A 13 A 41 A 32 A 23 A 14
given below:

B. Zigzag encryption: Input:

A: original 2D image
In this case the image pixels are scanned in a zigzag fashion as Output:
shown in table 2. The pixel values are stored in a linear array. B: encrypted 2D image
The resultant image is obtained by reshaping the linear array Algorithm:
into 2D array of same size of original image. It is observed Step 1: read the image data into 2d array A [] []
that the resultant encrypted image is pseudo random Step 2: read array elements diagonally, zigzag,spiral according
permutation of the original image. to figure1 ,figure2,figure 3 respectively and store into linear
array C[].
Table 2
Step 3: reshape C [] into encrypted 2D image B [][]
A11 A12 A13 A14
Decryption algorithm is inverse operation and that exactly
A21 A22 A23 A24 retrieves the original image information.
A31 A32 A33 A34
A41 A42 A43 A44

Intermediate linear array:

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 Sreejit Roy Chowdhury et al, American Journal of Advanced Computing, Vol. 1(1), 1-4 ISSN : 2368-1209

IV. results
We observe that the encrypted image has no resemblance with
the original image. The images are shown in figure 1 to 4. The
decrypted image retrieves the original image information and
visually same as figure 1. The PSNR value is shown in table 4

Figure 4: Encrypted image using spiral scanning

PSNR:
It measures the quality of the decrypted image. It is basically a
performance metric and is used to determine perceptual
transparency of encrypted image with original image and
Figure 1: Original image decrypted image with original image.

Where, M and N are number of rows and columns in the input

image,

is the original image and

is the decrypted Image

Figure 2: Encrypted image using diagonal scanning Table 4

PSNR Diagonal zigzag spiral
Original with 11.5811dB 11.6018dB 11.5816dB
encrypted
image
Original with infinite infinite infinite
decrypted
image

Figure 3: Encrypted image using zigzag scanning

V. conclusion
As proposed by the paper the resultant encrypted image has
no resemblance so it reduce the chances of information
hacking by third party. The PSNR value of the decrypted
image shows that the total process is lossless and reversible.

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 Sreejit Roy Chowdhury et al, American Journal of Advanced Computing, Vol. 1(1), 1-4 ISSN : 2368-1209

References

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