A Secure Iris Image Encryption Technique Using Bio-Chaotic Algorithm

Due to dramatic enhancement in computers and communications and due to huge use of electronic media, security gains more and more importance especially in those organizations where information is more critical and more important. The older techniques such as conventional cryptography use encryption keys, which are long bit strings and are very hard to memorize such a long random numbers. Also it can be easily attacked by using the brute force attack technique. Instead of using the traditional cryptographic techniques, Biometrics like Iris, fingerprints, voice etc. uniquely identifies a person and a secure method for stream cipher, because Biometric characteristics are ever living and unstable in nature (with respect to recognition). In this paper we used the idea of bio-chaotic stream cipher which encrypts the images over the electronic media and also used to encrypt the images to store it into the databases to make it more secure by using a biometric key and a bio-chaotic function. It enhances the security of the images and it should not be compromised. The idea also gives birth to a new kind of stream cipher named bio-chaotic stream cipher. The paper also describes how to generate an initial key also called initial condition from a biometric string and how to encrypt and decrypt the desired data by using the bio-chaotic function.