Networked hardware assisted key image and chaotic attractors for secure RGB image communication

In multimedia communication, significance of the images for data representation is noteworthy. In this context, secure transmission of images over open channel has become a challenging task. Creation of different strategies in improving the secure image transmission always has a demand. The proposed work suggests an RGB image encryption with the confluence of attractors and hardware triggered key image in which confusion and diffusion were accomplished by Lorenz, Lü and Cellular Automata attractors. The uniqueness of proposed encryption scheme is a key image generation module through cascaded Ring Oscillator circuit which creates M?×?N key image for diffusion of pixels. Facilitating the authenticated networked access to key image generation hardware enables the secure server-client architecture for a variety of secure image transfer applications. The proposed approach is a hardware – software codesign which possesses a good keyspace, improved key sensitivity and satisfies the various statistical parameters thus offering substantial resistance to differential, occlusion and chosen plaintext attacks on RGB images.