All the digital data stored, copied and distributed on the network have their own unique information, and especially, digital images, as one of the fastest multimedia formats that can deliver their information in visual way, have a lot of information.
Most of the digital images transmitted through the network are private and, especially, digital images with sensitive information, such as medical diagnostic images, can lead to irrevocable disaster when they are disclosed to be abused. Therefore, it is very important for digital images to be digitally secured.
In general, digital images, when compared to text data, have characteristics of very large capacity, high overlap and strong correlation between adjacent pixels. In the meanwhile, digital image data require strong real-time property in communication, storage and distribution. Hence, it requires fast and secure image encryption algorithms. From this necessity, many previous researchers have proposed improved chaotic maps and applied them to various image encryption algorithms.
Chaotic map is generally classified into one-dimensional and high-dimensional ones. The former has advantages of simple structure, easy hardware and software implementation and low computational cost, while it has disadvantages of narrow chaotic behavior and non-uniform distribution of output chaotic sequences. The latter is difficult to implement in hardware and software due to its complex structure and multi-control parameters, and it also has computational complexity. In recent years, one-dimensional or multidimensional chaotic maps with good chaotic characteristics are proposed by combining the existing 1D chaotic maps that are fast and easy to implement in software and hardware.
Based on the analysis of the prior works, Pak Chan Il, a section head at the IT Institute, has designed a two-dimensional chaotic map with better chaotic performance than the prior ones and built a simple and fast pixel-level image encryption algorithm.
To start with, he configured a new 2D-ICCM (2D Infinite Collapse Coupling Map) with better chaotic performance by combining two 1D infinite collapse maps which have the best chaotic characteristics of all previous 1D chaotic maps. He confirmed through various experiments that the proposed 2D-ICCM has better chaotic performance than previous 2D chaotic maps.
Next, he proposed a new pixel-level image encryption algorithm which combined simple-structured pixel-level permutation and diffusion, and tested the performance by applying the proposed 2D-ICCM. The simulation and experimental results showed that the proposed image encryption scheme has excellent performance against various cyberattacks.
If further information is needed, please refer to his paper “A new image encryption algorithm using 2D infinite collapse coupling map” in “Multimedia Tools and Applications” (SCI).
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