A Lightweight Cryptographic Solution for Enhanced Image Security

Authors

  • Mohammad Alnabhan Department of Cybersecurity, School of Computing Sciences, Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Amman, Jordan
  • Ali El-Qasass Department of Cybersecurity, School of Computing Sciences, Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Amman, Jordan
  • Mohammad Atoum Computer Science Department, King Abdullah II School of Information Technology, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan
  • Qasem Abu Al-Haija Department of Cybersecurity, Faculty of Computer & Information Technology, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid, Jordan
  • Ahmad Habboush Department of Software Engineering, Al-Ahliyya Amman University, Amman, Jordan
Volume: 15 | Issue: 5 | Pages: 27052-27059 | October 2025 | https://doi.org/10.48084/etasr.11707

Received: 24 April 2025 | Revised: 25 June 2025 and 13 July 2025 | Accepted: 16 July 2025 | Online: 6 October 2025


Corresponding author: Qasem Abu Al-Haija

Abstract

Protecting the confidentiality of images is considered critical for all industries. Encryption stands out as the foremost protective strategy for image security. However, various image dimensions and quality concerns challenge conventional encryption methods in balancing the security objective, substantial computational resources, and image quality. This paper presents a lightweight cryptographic approach designed to match the robustness of traditional encryption schemes while minimizing the computational and time requirements to be more suitable for real-time applications and IoT environments. The proposed approach extracts the three Most Significant Bit (MSB) planes from the original image. Then, it applies a permutation on each bit plane using a chaotic logistic map to generate the key used as new indices for effective permutation of pixel locations. A set of performance metrics, such as the Correlation Coefficient (CC), Mean Square Error (MSE), Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), and CPU and RAM utilization, is used in the evaluation process. The results indicate that the proposed approach outperforms the traditional Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) in terms of computational efficiency and overhead. A 2% reduction in CPU and RAM utilization and a 96% decrease in extraction time were achieved while maintaining comparable security based on MSE, PSNR, and CC to AES. This improvement in efficiency is achieved while maintaining an acceptable level of security, which makes it more suitable for resource-constrained IoT devices.

Keywords:

cryptography, histogram, Coefficient Correlation (CC), Mean Square Error (MSE), Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

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How to Cite

[1]
M. Alnabhan, A. El-Qasass, M. Atoum, Q. A. Al-Haija, and A. Habboush, “A Lightweight Cryptographic Solution for Enhanced Image Security”, Eng. Technol. Appl. Sci. Res., vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 27052–27059, Oct. 2025.

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Copyright (c) 2025 Mohammad Alnabhan, Ali El-Qasass, Mohammad Atoum, Qasem Abu Al-Haija, Ahmad Habboush

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