Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Visual image encryption scheme based on vector quantization and content transform

  • Published:
Multimedia Tools and Applications Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The security issues of outsourced storage make it challenging to protect the privacy of image contents. The noise-like encrypted image generated by traditional image encryption schemes are easy to attract the interest of attackers, courting malicious attacks and analysis on it. In this paper, a novel visual image encryption scheme is proposed to encrypt original image into a visually meaningful camouflaged image, thereby not only protects original images in an encryption way, but also provides an additional visual protection to avoid the risk of being attacked. The original image is first subjected to vector quantization (VQ) encoding, and then visually encrypted by content transform based on discrete wavelet transform (DWTCT) to generate the camouflaged image. The experimental results show that the size of camouflaged image is the same as original image, thereby maintaining the storage efficiency in the outsourced cloud environment. Compared with existing visual image encryption schemes, the proposed scheme shows outstanding performance on both storage and camouflage characteristics of the encrypted images.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Ab Rahman NH, Cahyani NDW, Choo KKR (2017) Cloud incident handling and forensic-by-design: cloud storage as a case study. In: Concurrency & Computation Practice & Experience

    Google Scholar 

  2. Agrawal V (2017) A comparative study on information security risk analysis methods. Journal of Computers

  3. Ahmad M, Farooq O (2011) Secure satellite images transmission scheme based on chaos and discrete wavelet transform. In: High Performance Architecture and Grid Computing, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 257–264

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Al-Dhuraibi Y, Paraiso F, Djarallah N, Merle P (2018) Elasticity in cloud computing: state of the art and research challenges. IEEE Trans Serv Comput 11(99):430–447

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Bao L, Zhou Y (2015) Image encryption: Generating visually meaningful encrypted images. Information Sciences 324:197–207

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  6. Chang V, Wills G (2016) A model to compare cloud and non-cloud storage of big data. Futur Gener Comput Syst 57:56–76

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Chen TS, Chang CC (1998) A virtual image cryptosystem based upon vector quantization. IEEE Trans Image Process 7(10):1485–1488

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  8. Cheng L, Dongen BFV, Aalst WMPVD (2020) Scalable discovery of hybrid process models in a cloud computing environment. IEEE Trans Serv Comput 13(2):368–380

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Dang PP, Chau PM (2000) Image encryption for secure internet multimedia applications. IEEE Trans Consum Electron 46(3):395–403

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Fan H, Li M, Liu D, An K (2018) Cryptanalysis of a plaintext-related chaotic rgb image encryption scheme using total plain image characteristics. Multimedia Tools & Applications 77:20103–20127

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Gu G, Ling J (2014) A fast image encryption method by using chaotic 3D cat maps. Optik - International Journal for Light and Electron Optics 125(17):4700–4705

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. He J, Huang S, Tang S, Huang J (2018) JPEG image encryption with improved format compatibility and file size preservation. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia 20(10):2645–2658

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Hoang T, Yavuz AA, Merchan JG (2019) A secure searchable encryption framework for privacy-critical cloud storage services. IEEE Transactions on Services Computing (99):1

  14. Jia K, Wang X, Tang X (Feb, 2013) Image transformation based on learning dictionaries across image spaces. IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell 35(2):367–380

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Kanso A, Ghebleh M (2017) An algorithm for encryption of secret images into meaningful images. Optics Lasers Eng 90:196–208

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Kwon H, Hahn C, Kim D, Hur J (2017) Secure deduplication for multimedia data with user revocation in cloud storage. Multimed Tools Appl 76(4):5889–5903

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Li C, Shujun L, Muhammad A, Juana N, Gonzalo A, Guanrong C (2009) On the security defects of an image encryption scheme. Image & Vision Computing 27(9):1371–1381

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Lin CC, Liu XL, Yuan SM (2015) Reversible data hiding for VQ-compressed images based on search-order coding and state-codebook mapping. Information ences 293:314–326

    Google Scholar 

  19. Linde Y, Buzo A, Gray R (1980) An algorithm for vector Quantizer design. IEEE Trans Commun 28(1):84–95

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Liu Z, Lie X, Ting L, Hang C, Pengfei L, Chuang L, Shutian L (2011) Color image encryption by using Arnold transform and color-blend operation in discrete cosine transform domains. Opt Commun 284(1):123–128

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Liu W, Sun K, Zhu C (2016) A fast image encryption algorithm based on chaotic map. Optics & Lasers in Engineering 84:26–36

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Luo Y, Du M, Liu J (2015) A symmetrical image encryption scheme in wavelet and time domain. Communications in Nonlinear Science & Numerical Simulation 20(2):447–460

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Mccormac A, Zwaans T, Parsons K, Calic D, Butavicius M, Pattinson M (2017) Individual differences and Information Security Awareness. Computers in Human Behavior 69(APR):151–156

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Rao L, Zhang H, Tu T (2020) Dynamic outsourced auditing services for cloud storage based on batch-leaves-authenticated Merkle hash tree. IEEE Trans Serv Comput 13(3):451–463

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Varghese, Blesson, Buyya, and Rajkumar, “Next generation cloud computing: new trends and research directions,” Future Generations Computer Systems Fgcs, 2018

  26. Wang Y, Li J, Gong Y (2015) Small-footprint high-performance deep neural network-based speech recognition using split-VQ. In: IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Google Scholar 

  27. Wang C, Xu C, Wang C, Tao D (2018) Perceptual adversarial networks for image-to-image transformation. IEEE Trans Image Process 27(8):4066–4079

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  28. Wu TY, Wang KH, Chen CM, Wu MT, Pan JS (2019) A simple image encryption algorithm based on logistic map. Proceedings of the Fifth Euro-China Conference on Intelligent Data Analysis and Applications:241–247

  29. Wu TY, Fan X, Wang KH, Pan JS, Chen CM (2019) Security analysis and improvement on an image encryption algorithm using Chebyshev generator. Journal of Internet Technology 20(1):13–23

    Google Scholar 

  30. Xia Z, Wang X, Zhang L, Qin Z, Sun X, Ren K (2016) A privacy-preserving and copy-deterrence content-based image retrieval scheme in cloud computing. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security 11(11):2594–2608

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Xu L, Jiang C, Wang J, Yuan J, Ren Y (2017) Information security in big data: privacy and data mining. IEEE Access 2(2):1149–1176

    Google Scholar 

  32. Zhang YQ, Wang X-Y (2014) Analysis and improvement of a chaos-based symmetric image encryption scheme using a bit-level permutation. Nonlinear Dynamics 77(3):687–698

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Zhang Y, He Q, Xiang Y, Zhang LY, Liu B, Chen J, Xie Y (2018) Low-cost and confidentiality-preserving data acquisition for Internet of multimedia things. IEEE Internet Things J 5(5):3442–3451

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Zheng S, Liu X, Chen R, Yuan S, Lin C LSB-Based Visual Image Encryption Scheme in Cloud Environment. In: 2019 IEEE intl conf on parallel & distributed processing with applications, big data & cloud computing, sustainable computing & communications, social computing & networking, Xiamen, China, vol 2019, pp 891–896

Download references

Funding

This paragraph of the first footnote will contain the date on which you submitted your paper for review. This work was supported in part by the fund of Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province, China (Grant No. 2021J01123), Social Science Planning Project of Fujian Province, China (Grant No. FJ2021BF048) and fund of scientific and technological innovation of Fujian agriculture and Forestry University (Grant No. KCX21F31A). Corresponding author: X. Liu.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer and Information Sciences, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, 350002, China

    Sifei Zheng, Chengyu Liu, Zijing Feng, Riqing Chen & Xiaolong Liu

Authors
  1. Sifei Zheng
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Chengyu Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Zijing Feng
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Riqing Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Xiaolong Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xiaolong Liu.

Additional information

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Zheng, S., Liu, C., Feng, Z. et al. Visual image encryption scheme based on vector quantization and content transform. Multimed Tools Appl 81, 12815–12832 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-022-12583-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-022-12583-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation