A New Approach to Encoding and Hiding Information in an Image
The information age brings some unique challenges to society. New technology and new applications bring new threats and force us to invent new protection mechanisms. So every few years, computer security needs to reinvent itself. In this paper we propose a new image encoding system utilizing fractal theories; this approach exploits the main feature of fractals generated by IFS techniques. Two levels of encryption and decryption methods performed to enhance the security of the system, this is based on the fact that all fractal functions use real number to ensure satisfaction of contraction property. If the cryptosystem parameters are based on real numbers (a continuous infinite interval) then the search space is massive. Hence, many well known attacks fail to solve the nonlinear systems and find the imprecise secret key parameter from the given public one. Even if it is theoretically possible, it is computationally not feasible. The encrypted date represents the attractor generated by the IFS transformation, Collage theorem is used to find the IFS for decrypting data. The proposed method gives the possibility to hide maximum amount of data in an image that represent the attractor of the IFS without degrading its quality.
Also to make the hidden data robust enough to withstand known cryptographic attacks and image processing techniques which do not change the appearance of image. The security level is high because the jointly coded images cannot be correctly reconstructed without all the required information.
Keywords: Image processing , Hiding, Fractal Image Compression, Quadtree, Steganography
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fadhil Salman Abed
Assist Professor in Applied Mathematic
Fadhil Salman Abed
Assist Professor in Applied Mathematic