A robust and lossless DNA encryption scheme for color images

In this paper, a new robust and lossless color image encryption algorithm is presented based on DNA sequence operation and one-way coupled-map lattices (OCML). The plain-image is firstly decomposed into three gray-level components and we randomly convert them into three DNA matrices by the DNA encoding rules. Then the XOR operation is performed on the DNA matrices for two times. Next, the shuffled DNA matrices are transformed into three gray images according to the DNA decoding rules. Finally, a diffusion process is further applied to change the image pixel’s values by a key stream, and the cipher-image is attained. The key stream generated by OCML is related to the plain-image. Experimental results and security analysis demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has a good encryption effect and can withstand various typical attacks. Furthermore, it is robust against some common image processing operations such as noise adding, cropping, JPEG compression etc.