Novel SCAN-CA-based image security system using SCAN and 2-D von Neumann cellular automata

This paper presents a novel SCAN-CA-based image security system which belongs to synchronous stream cipher. Its encryption method is based on permutation of the image pixels and replacement of the pixel values. Permutation is done by scan patterns generated by the SCAN approach. The pixel values are replaced using the recursive cellular automata (CA) substitution. The proposed image encryption method satisfies the properties of confusion and diffusion as the characteristics of SCAN and CA substitution are flexible. The salient features of the proposed image encryption method are lossless, symmetric private key encryption, very large number of secret keys, key-dependent permutation, and key-dependent pixel value replacement. Simulation results obtained using some color and gray-level images clearly demonstrate the strong performance of the proposed SCAN-CA-based image security system. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.