Scrambled Encryption Approach for Color Images Based on 9-D Chaotic Systems with 3-D Substitution Bit Levels

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the need for robust and secure communication has grown exponentially, particularly in image transmission over networks. This is due to the increasing reliance on digital technologies. This work demonstrates a novel "Scrambled Encryption Approach" that leverages the inherent unpredictability. To this end, nine-dimensional chaotic systems are combined with the innovative technique of 3-D substitution bit levels to verify strengths such as the confidentiality and integrity of visual data while maintaining fast encryption and decryption processes. This has the drawback of being vulnerable to known plaintext attacks and performing more sophisticated calculations than simpler encryption approaches. So, the proposed technique first separates the color input image into 24 bits to be categorized into 8 bits for each color channel (red, green, and blue). Then, 3-bit levels are used with position sequences for substitutions taken from the 9-D Lorenz chaotic system. After that, a multilayer differentiation technique produces three key matrices, which are then used to diffuse the scrambled components and produce the color cipher image. The simulation results show that our method has a high visual quality of decrypted images as well as high protection against brute force attacks because we have a large key space used for encryption data. Moreover, our proposed technique achieves more security against statistical attacks, including histogram analysis, information entropy, and correlation coefficients between pixels. Finally, the proposed encryption technique achieves a more secure transmission than state-of-the-art encryption approaches to guarantee integrity, privacy, and efficiency through global networks.