A soliton based hybrid image encryption technique using Cellular Automata and DNA encoding

In the modern era of technology, multimedia data is flowing at a quick pace. Sensor devices transmit data in the form of images in various Internet of Things (IoT) based applications. However, if sensor devices are used in areas where information is important, such as defence or healthcare, etc., the image data should be encrypted prior to transmission to the fog nodes. Althogh traditional encryption methods are frequently used, these schemes are inefficient for IoT devices because of their restrictions on low-resource devices. To overcome these limitations, a new image encryption technique has been proposed named Soliton Chaos Cellular Automata DNA-based encryption. The method involves image shuffling using a 128-bit diffused key, pixel transformation using CA, and feedback XOR matrix encryption. The resulting cipher image has been tested for randomness using the NIST statistical test suite. The test results confirm that the generated cipher image shows a high randomness. Furthermore, the correlation, information entropy, and differential analysis of the proposed method further substantiate its resilience against various attacks. The proposed cipher exhibits strong resilience against data loss and noise attacks.