Hyper-chaotic color image encryption based on 3D orthogonal Latin cubes and RNA diffusion

This paper presents a new image encryption algorithm based on hyper-chaotic system, three-dimensional (3D) orthogonal Latin cube transformation and RNA diffusion, which is so-called HCLRNA. The HCLRNA consists of three main steps. First, a 6D hyper-chaotic system is utilized to produce two chaotic matrices for scrambling and diffusion. Second, the plaintext image is transformed into cubes for 3D orthogonal Latin cubes transformation scrambling. Finally, the scrambled pixel values are converted into RNA codons and diffused over two rounds to obtain the cipher image. Experiments and simulations were conducted on images of sizes 256 x 256 x 3 and 512 x 512 x 3 to evaluate key space, key sensitivity, histogram, etc. The results indicate that the proposed HCLRNA satisfies the requirements of different evaluation indicators, which proves that HCLRNA can resist common attacks effectively. Moreover, compared with other studies, the HCLRNA performs significantly better in resisting differential attacks.

Automated summary

This paper presents a new image encryption algorithm called HCLRNA, which is based on a hyper-chaotic system, three-dimensional orthogonal Latin cube transformation, and RNA diffusion. It consists of three main steps: generating chaotic matrices using a 6D hyper-chaotic system, scrambling the plaintext image using 3D orthogonal Latin cube transformation, and diffusing the scrambled pixel values using RNA codons. Experimental results show that HCLRNA meets the requirements of different evaluation indicators, effectively resists common attacks, and performs significantly better in resisting differential attacks compared to other studies.