Abstract
Image encryption is a challenging task due to the significant level of sophistication achieved by forgerers and other cybercriminals. Advanced encryption methods for secure transmission, storage, and retrieval of digital images are increasingly needed for a number of military, medical, homeland security, and other applications. In this paper, we introduce a new digital image encryption algorithm. The new algorithm employs multiple chaotic systems and cryptographic primitive operations within the encryption process, which are efficiently implemented on modern processors, and adopts round keys for encryption using a chaotic map. Experiments conducted show that the proposed algorithm possesses robust security features such as fairly uniform distribution, high sensitivity to both keys and plainimages, almost ideal entropy, and the ability to highly de-correlate adjacent pixels in the cipherimages. Furthermore, it has a large key space, which greatly increases its security for image encryption applications.