An Image Encryption Method Based on Elliptic Curve Elgamal Encryption and Chaotic Systems

Due to the potential security problem about key management and distribution for the symmetric image encryption schemes, a novel asymmetric image encryption method is proposed in this paper, which is based on the elliptic curve ElGamal (EC-ElGamal) cryptography and chaotic theory. Specifically, the SHA-512 hash is first adopted to generate the initial values of a chaotic system, and a crossover permutation in terms of chaotic index sequence is used to scramble the plain-image. Furthermore, the generated scrambled image is embedded into the elliptic curve for the encrypted by EC-ElGamal which can not only improve the security but also can help solve the key management problems. Finally, the diffusion combined chaos game with DNA sequence is executed to get the cipher image. The experimental analysis and performance comparisons demonstrate that the proposed method has high security, good efficiency, and strong robustness against the chosen-plaintext attack which make it have potential applications for the image secure communications.