A Multi Media Chaos-based Encryption Algorithm

In digitally modern world, the fundamental issue of multimedia data security (such as digital audio signals, images, and videos) is becoming a major concern due to the rapid development of digital communications and networking technologies. Traditional encryption schemes such as DES (Data Encryption Standard) and its equivalent perform poorly for multimedia data because of the large data size and high redundancy. Chaotic systems are extremely sensitive to control parameters and initial conditions. This feature has been found very effective in the field of cryptography. In this paper, a computer based system of encryption using chaotic time series is described. The system is used for encrypting audio and image files for the purpose of providing secure data bases and/or sending sensitive multimedia data over open networks (such as Internet). It uses data sorting and circular shifting processes in 2-D direction according to some secret computer-generated sequence of chaotic ordered numbers. Several experimental results on audio and image data encryption and decryption, key sensitivity tests, and statistical analysis show that the proposed approach for multimedia cryptosystems performs efficiently and can be applied for secure real time encryption and safe transmission of confidential data.