AES Image Encryption

paavni gaur (  paavnigaur2001@gmail.com )

Research Article

Keywords: encryption, AES, image encryption, cryptography, symmetric encryption

Posted Date: December 21st, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1179585/v1

License:   This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Read Full License
 AES IMAGE ENCRYPTION
(ADVANCED ENCRYPTION STANDARD)

Paavni Gaur
B-Tech: Information Technology
Guided by: Mr. Ajay Kaushik Assistant Professor- Department of IT

Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology

Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University

ABSTRACT: using conventional encryption techniques, Private key bulk

An Image Encryption and Decryption Using AES (Advance encryption algorithms, such as Triple DES, are not so suitable for
Encryption Standard) Algorithm is proposed in the project. Due to transmission of images. Due to complexity of their internal
increasing use of image in various field, it is very important to protect structure, they are not particularly fast in terms of execution
the confidential image data from unauthorized access. The design
speed and cannot be applied for images in the real time scenario
uses the iterative approach with block size of 128 bit and key size of
Also traditional cryptographic techniques such as DES cannot be
128, 192 or 256 bit. The numbers of round for key size of 256 bits is 14
, for 128 bits is 10 and for 192 bits is 12. As secret key increases the applied to images due to intrinsic properties of images such as
security as well as complexity of the cryptography algorithms. bulk data capacity, redundancy and high correlation among
In this paper , an algorithm in which the image is an input to AES pixels. Image encryption algorithms can become an integral part
Encryption to get the encrypted image and then input it to AES of the image delivery process if they aim towards efficiency and
Decryption to get the original image is proposed and explained which at same time preserve the security level.
will further be implemented by me.
Scope of the study
The paper shows the study in which a system could be used for
effective image data encryption and key generation in diversified Image processing is a mechanism in which an original image
application areas, where sensitive and confidential data needs to be will be converted into digital image and after converting in
transmitted along with the image. digital form process it to get useful information. It is a type of
signal processing in which input is an image and output may be
I. INTRODUCTION: image or characteristics/features associated with that image. .In
recent years, the advances in communication technology have
Need of the study seen strong interest in digital image transmission. However,
In today’s image communication system security of images is growth of computer processor possessing power and storage
essential. It is necessary to protect confidential image data from illegal access has become easier. Encryption involves applying
unauthorized users. To detect and find unauthorized users is a special mathematical algorithms and keys to transform digital
challenging task. Different researchers proposed different data into cipher code before they are transmitted and decryption
techniques for securing image transmission. Today almost all involves the application of mathematical algorithms and keys to
digital services like internet communication, medical and get back the original data from cipher code, scientific community
military imaging systems, multimedia system requires reliable have seen strong interest in image transmission. Information
security in storage and transmission of digital images. Due to privacy becomes a challenging issue. In order to protect valuable
faster growth in multimedia technology, internet and cellphones, data or image from undesirable readers, data or image encryption
there is a need for image encryption techniques in order to hide / decryption is essential, furthermore. As such in this paper, a
images from such attacks. In this system we use AES (Advanced scheme based on encryption has been proposed for secure image
Encryption Technique) in order to hide image. Such Encryption transmission over channels.
Technique helps to avoid intrusion attacks.
Objective of the study
Problem Definition There appears to be illegal activity taking place at different
Many encryption methods have been proposed in literature, and organization. The suspects are apparently the use of computers
the most common way to protect large multimedia files is by and an illegal wireless network by intruders to conduct their
activities by access an unsecure file and document without an
encrypted password. Therefore this project will deal with the In asymmetric, or public key, encryption, there are two keys: one
development of encrypting and decryption software for images. key is used for encryption, and a different key is used for
Security is one of the core areas of study in recent days. decryption. The decryption key is kept private (hence the
Encryption of the image is widely known as an effective method "private key" name), while the encryption key is shared publicly,
for its secure transmission. The objective of any image for anyone to use (hence the "public key" name).
encryption method is to obtain a top quality hidden image in
order to keep information secret. Data encryption reasons
In this project I will do a thorough research on basics of Privacy: Encryption ensures that no one can read
cryptography, AES algorithm, how AES is implemented, how communications or data at rest except the intended recipient or
AES algorithm is modified to be used on images and will at the the rightful data owner. This prevents attackers, ad networks,
end of gaining knowledge of cryptography and AES , will Internet service providers, and in some cases governments from
implement it to showcase my learnings. intercepting and reading sensitive data.
Security: Encryption helps prevent data breaches, whether the
II. LITERATURE REVIEW data is in transit or at rest. If a device is lost or stolen and its hard
drive is properly encrypted, the data on that device will still be
Cryptography secure. Similarly, encrypted communications enable the
Cryptography, or cryptology is the practice and study of communicating parties to exchange sensitive data without
techniques for secure communication in the presence leaking the data.
of adversarial behavior. More generally, cryptography is about Data integrity: Encryption also helps prevent malicious behavior
constructing and analyzing protocols that prevent third parties or such as on-path attacks. When data is transmitted across the
the public from reading private messages; various aspects Internet, encryption (along with other integrity protections)
in information security such as data confidentiality, data ensures that what the recipient receives has not been tampered
integrity, authentication are central to modern cryptography. with on the way.
Modern cryptography exists at the intersection of the disciplines Authentication: Public key encryption, among other things, can
of mathematics, computer science, electrical engineering, be used to establish that a website's owner owns the private key
communication science, and physics. listed in the website's TLS certificate. This allows users of the
Applications of cryptography include electronic commerce, website to be sure that they are connected to the real website
chip-based payment cards, digital currencies, military etc. Regulations: For all these reasons, many industry and
government regulations require companies that handle user data
Encryption to keep that data encrypted. Examples of regulatory and
Encryption is a way of scrambling data so that only authorized compliance standards that require encryption include HIPAA,
parties can understand the information. In technical terms, it is PCI-DSS, and the GDPR.
the process of converting human-readable plaintext to
incomprehensible text, also known as ciphertext. In simpler Symmetric Encryption
terms, encryption takes readable data and alters it so that it Symmetric encryption is a type of encryption where only one key
appears random. Encryption requires the use of a cryptographic (a secret key) is used to both encrypt and decrypt electronic
key: a set of mathematical values that both the sender and the information. The entities communicating via symmetric
recipient of an encrypted message agree on. encryption must exchange the key so that it can be used in the
Although encrypted data appears random, encryption proceeds in decryption process. This encryption method differs from
a logical, predictable way, allowing a party that receives the asymmetric encryption where a pair of keys, one public and one
encrypted data and possesses the right key to decrypt the data, private, is used to encrypt and decrypt messages.
turning it back into plaintext. Truly secure encryption will use By using symmetric encryption algorithms, data is converted to a
keys complex enough that a third party is highly unlikely to form that cannot be understood by anyone who does not possess
decrypt or break the ciphertext by brute force — in other words, the secret key to decrypt it. Once the intended recipient who
by guessing the key. possesses the key has the message, the algorithm reverses its
action so that the message is returned to its original and
Types of encryption understandable form.
The two main kinds of encryption are symmetric encryption
and asymmetric encryption. Types of Symmetric Encryption
In symmetric encryption, there is only one key, and all There are two types of symmetric encryption algorithms:
communicating parties use the same (secret) key for both Block algorithms: Set lengths of bits are encrypted in blocks of
encryption and decryption. electronic data with the use of a specific secret key. As the data
is being encrypted, the system holds the data in its memory as it NIST specified the new AES algorithm must be a block cipher
waits for complete blocks. capable of handling 128-bit blocks, using keys sized at 128, 192
Stream algorithms: Data is encrypted as it streams instead of and 256 bits. Other criteria for being chosen as the next AES
being retained in the system’s memory. algorithm included the following:
Security: Competing algorithms were to be judged on their
Drawbacks ability to resist attack as compared to other submitted ciphers.
A significant disadvantage of symmetric ciphers is the key Security strength was to be considered the most important factor
management necessary to use them securely. Each distinct pair of in the competition.
communicating parties must, ideally, share a different key, and Cost: Intended to be released on a global, nonexclusive and
perhaps for each ciphertext exchanged as well. The number of royalty-free basis, the candidate algorithms were to be evaluated
keys required increases as the square of the number of network on computational and memory efficiency.
members, which very quickly requires complex key management Implementation: Factors to be considered included the
schemes to keep them all consistent and secret. algorithm's flexibility, suitability for hardware or software
Key Exhaustion implementation, and overall simplicity.
Symmetric Encryption suffers from behavior where every use of
a key ‘leaks’ some information that can potentially be used by an Attacks on AES encryption
attacker to reconstruct the key. The defenses against this Research into attacks on AES encryption has continued since the
behavior include using a key hierarchy to ensure that master or standard was finalized in 2000. Various researchers have
key-encryption keys are not overused and the appropriate published attacks against reduced-round versions of AES.
rotation of keys that do encrypt volumes of data. To be tractable, Researchers have found a few potential ways to attack AES
both these solutions require competent key-management encryption:
strategies. In 2009, they discovered a possible related-key attack.
Attribution data This cryptanalysis attempted to crack a cipher by studying how it
Unlike asymmetric (public-key) Certificates, symmetric keys do operates using different keys. The related-key attack proved to
not have embedded metadata to record information such as be a threat only to AES systems that are incorrectly configured.
expiry date or an Access Control List to indicate the use the key In 2009, there was a known-key attack against AES-128. A
may be put to - to Encrypt but not Decrypt for example. known key was used to discern the structure of the encryption.
The latter issue is somewhat addressed by standards(eg ANSI However, the hack only targeted an eight-round version of
X9-31) where a key can be bound to information prescribing its AES-128, rather than the standard 10-round version, making the
usage. But for full control over what a key can be used for threat relatively minor.
and when it can be used, a key-management system is required. A major risk to AES encryption comes from side-channel
Key Management at large scale attacks. Rather than attempting a brute-force assault,
Where only a few keys are involved in a scheme (tens to low side-channel attacks are aimed at picking up leaked information
hundreds), the management overhead is modest and can be from the system. Side-channel attacks, however, may reduce the
handled through manual, human activity. However, with a large number of possible combinations required to attack AES with
estate, tracking the expiration and arranging rotation of keys brute force. Side-channel attacks involve collecting information
quickly becomes impractical. about what a computing device does when it is performing
cryptographic operations and using that information
III. ADVANCED ENCRYPTION STANDARD (AES) to reverse-engineer the device's cryptography system. In one
case, a side-channel attack was used successfully to deduce
The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a symmetric block AES-128 encryption keys by carefully monitoring the cipher's
cipher chosen by the U.S. government to protect classified shared use of the processors' cache tables.
information.AES is implemented in software and hardware Side-channel attacks can be mitigated by preventing possible
throughout the world to encrypt sensitive data. It is essential for ways data can leak. Additionally, using randomization
government computer security, cybersecurity and electronic data techniques can help eliminate any relationship between data
protection.AES has become the most popular algorithm used in protected by the cipher and any leaked data that could be
symmetric key cryptography. The transparent selection process collected using a side-channel attack.
established by NIST helped create a high level of confidence in
AES among security and cryptography experts. Working of AES Algorithm
AES includes three block ciphers:
Features of AES ● AES-128 uses a 128-bit key length to encrypt and decrypt
a block of messages.
 ● AES-192 uses a 192-bit key length to encrypt and decrypt Creation of Round keys :
a block of messages. A Key Schedule algorithm is used to calculate all the round keys
● AES-256 uses a 256-bit key length to encrypt and decrypt from the key. So the initial key is used to create many different
a block of messages. round keys which will be used in the corresponding round of the
Each cipher encrypts and decrypts data in blocks of 128 bits encryption.
using cryptographic keys of 128, 192 and 256 bits, respectively.
The sender and the receiver must both know -- and use -- the Byte Substitution (SubBytes)
same secret key. There are 10 rounds for 128-bit keys, 12 rounds The 16 input bytes are substituted by looking up a fixed table
for 192-bit keys and 14 rounds for 256-bit keys. A round consists (S-box) given in design. The result is in a matrix of four rows
of several processing steps that include substitution, and four columns. This step implements the substitution. In this
transposition and mixing of the input plaintext to transform it step each byte is substituted by another byte.(Its performed using
into the final output of ciphertext. a lookup table also called the S-box.This substitution is done in a
way that a byte is never substituted by itself and also not
Detailed working of AES Algorithm substituted by another byte which is a compliment of the current
It is based on ‘substitution–permutation network’. It comprises byte.The result of this step is a 16 byte (4 x 4 ) matrix like
of a series of linked operations, some of which involve replacing before. The next two steps implement the permutation.
inputs by specific outputs (substitutions) and others involve
shuffling bits around (permutations). Interestingly, AES Shiftrows
performs all its computations on bytes rather than bits. Hence, Each of the four rows of the matrix is shifted to the left. Any
AES treats the 128 bits of a plaintext block as 16 bytes. These 16 entries that ‘fall off’ are re-inserted on the right side of row.
bytes are arranged in four columns and four rows for processing ● First row is not shifted.
as a matri. Each of the rounds uses a different 128-bit round key, ● Second row is shifted one (byte) position to the left.
which is calculated from the original AES key. ● Third row is shifted two positions to the left.
The schematic of AES structure is given in the following ● Fourth row is shifted three positions to the left.
illustration − The result is a new matrix consisting of the same 16 bytes but
shifted with respect to each other.

MixColumns
Each column of four bytes is now transformed using a special
mathematical function. This function takes as input the four
bytes of one column and outputs four completely new bytes,
which replace the original column. The result is another new
matrix consisting of 16 new bytes. It should be noted that this
Encryption Process step is not performed in the last round.
The encryption phase of AES can be broken into three phases: (This multiplication has the property of operating independently over each of the
the initial round, the main rounds, and the final round. columns of the initial matrix, i.e. the first column when multiplied by the matrix,
1. Initial Round produces the first column of the resultant matrix.)

● AddRoundKey
2. Main Rounds
● SubBytes
Addroundkey
● ShiftRows
The 16 bytes of the matrix are now considered as 128 bits and
● MixColumns
are XORed to the 128 bits of the round key. If this is the last
● AddRoundKey
round then the output is the ciphertext. Otherwise, the resulting
3. Final Round
128 bits are interpreted as 16 bytes and we begin another similar
● SubBytes
round.
● ShiftRows
● AddRoundKey
Decryption Process
The process of decryption of an AES ciphertext is similar to the
encryption process in the reverse order. Each round consists of
the four processes conducted in the reverse order −
1. Inverse Final Round achieve the high security, because 256 bit cipher key is difficult
● AddRoundKey to break. As a result of this secure transmission of image can be
● ShiftRows possible.
● SubBytes The goal of this research is to study the application of
2. Inverse Main Round Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm (AES) for secure
● AddRoundKey and efficient image encryption. The importance of image
● MixColumns -This step is similar to the MixColumns step encryption by AES algorithm processes have been studied. It is
in encryption, but differs in the matrix used to carry out also expected that AES algorithm study will have an
the operation. effective role in strategic applications, because the encryption
● ShiftRows algorithm applied on hardware is also take a place in
● SubBytes -Inverse S-box is used as a lookup table and strategic communications equipment, it is safe and possible to
using which the bytes are substituted during decryption. develop this algorithm in terms of height and speed of time that
3. Inverse Initial Round have approved mainly on logistical aspects not on the technical
● AddRoundKey aspects. It is possible to encrypt and decrypt by AES encryption
used in many highly sensitive applications like Image
Since sub-processes in each round are in reverse manner, unlike encryption. We have reason to believe that use this method to
for a Feistel Cipher, the encryption and decryption algorithms encrypt the image will have a very good prospect in the future.
needs to be separately implemented, although they are very
closely related. V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE
Of the four operations in AES encryption, only the
AddRoundKey operation is its own inverse (since it is an Since image steganography is done using AES, this system
exclusive-or). provides security from intrusion attacks and the usage of AES
To undo AddRoundKey, it is only necessary to expand the entire technique allows the encryption and decryption process to be
AES key schedule (identically to encryption) and then use the more secure and faster. Thus this system provides security in
appropriate key in the exclusive-or. The other three operations storage and transmission of digital images. The cryptographic
require an inverse operation to be defined and used. methodology proposed in this paper will further be tested on
The first operation to be undone is ShiftRows. The Inverse different types of input images with change in size of the image
ShiftRows operation is identical to the ShiftRows operation and keys of AES encryption algorithm.
except that rotations are made to the right instead of to the left. The report shows the study in which a system could be used for
effective image data encryption and key generation in diversified
application areas, where sensitive and confidential data needs to
be transmitted along with the image.
The next step in this direction will be system implementation,
The next operation to be undone is the SubBytes operation. The and then analyzing it for its efficiency, accuracy and reliability.
Inverse S-Box is used which is read identically to the S-Box As a future work, I am going to continue this research in order
matrix. generating more secure key to get the maximum encryption
The last inverse operation to define is MixColumns. Like speed in limited implementation area.
MixColumns, Inverse MixColumns can be defined as the matrix I will implement a novel mechanism in which AES algorithm
multiplication . will be apply to encrypt and decrypt images securely for further
applications in image communication system. Future scope is, it
can be used in various applications like Military communication,
Forensics, Intelligent systems etc.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
REFERENCES
Cryptography and its principles have been studied carefully. I
read and learned about Cryptography from various materials [1] https://www.iosrjournals.org/
available on the internet.Encryption including why data [2] https://www.researchgate.net/
encryption is necessary and types of encryption algorithms were [3] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/
studied. Features and principles of Symmetric key algorithm [4] https://www.ijser.org/
were studied from various materials available. Image encryption [5] https://www.educative.io/edpresso/what-is-the-aes-algorithm
and decryption techniques using Advanced Encryption Standard [6] https://www.researchgate.net
(AES) algorithm is proposed .The usage of 256 bit cipher key to