Hyper-Chaotic Color Image Encryption Based on Transformed Zigzag Diffusion and RNA Operation

Abstract

With increasing utilization of digital multimedia and the Internet, protection on this digital information from cracks has become a hot topic in the communication field. As a path for protecting digital visual information, image encryption plays a crucial role in modern society. In this paper, a novel six-dimensional (6D) hyper-chaotic encryption scheme with three-dimensional (3D) transformed Zigzag diffusion and RNA operation (HCZRNA) is proposed for color images. For this HCZRNA scheme, four phases are included. First, three pseudo-random matrices are generated from the 6D hyper-chaotic system. Second, plaintext color image would be permuted by using the first pseudo-random matrix to convert to an initial cipher image. Third, the initial cipher image is placed on cube for 3D transformed Zigzag diffusion using the second pseudo-random matrix. Finally, the diffused image is converted to RNA codons array and updated through RNA codons tables, which are generated by codons and the third pseudo-random matrix. After four phases, a cipher image is obtained, and the experimental results show that HCZRNA has high resistance against well-known attacks and it is superior to other schemes.