A content-adaptive joint image compression and encryption scheme

Abstract

For joint image compression and encryption schemes, the encryption power and compression efficiency are commonly two contradictory things. In this paper, we propose a new joint image compression and encryption scheme based on a lossy JPEG standard, which aims at encryption power's enhancement, on the premise of maintaining the JPEG's compression efficiency. The proposed scheme is image-content-adaptive, since the secret encryption key is generated from the plain image using the BLAKE2 hash algorithm. Three encryption operations are contained in our scheme, alternating new orthogonal transforms transformation, dc coefficients encryption, and ac coefficients encryption. To save the cost for transmitting different encryption keys each time to decoder for decryption when the plain image changes, we propose embedding the encryption key into the entropy-encoded bitstream of some ac coefficients, and the whole embedding procedure is controlled by another secret key called the embedding key. Extensive experiments are conducted to show that our encryption scheme is JPEG friendly, and has good confusion and diffusion properties. Detailed security analysis is also given to illustrate the proposed scheme's persistence to various cryptanalysis strategies.