Quantum security improves cryptographic protocols by applying quantum mechanics principles, assuring resistance to both quantum and conventional computer attacks. This work addresses these issues by integrating Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) utilizing the E91 method with Multi-Layer Chaotic Encryption, which employs a variety of patterns to detect eavesdropping, resulting in a highly secure image-transmission architecture. The method leverages entropy calculations to determine the unpredictability and integrity of encrypted and decrypted pictures, guaranteeing strong security. Extensive statistical scenarios illustrate the framework's effectiveness in image encryption while preserving high entropy and sensitivity to the original visuals. The findings indicate significant improvement in encryption and decryption performance, demonstrating the framework's potential as a robust response to weaknesses introduced by advances in quantum computing. Several metrics, such as Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), Structural Similarity Index (SSIM), Normalized Cross-Correlation (NCC), Bit Error Rate (BER), entropy values for original, encrypted, and decrypted images, and the correlation between original and decrypted images, validate the framework's effectiveness. The combination of QKD with Multi-Layer Chaotic Encryption provides a scalable and resilient technique to secure image communication. As quantum computing advances, this framework offers a future-proof approach for defining secure communication protocols in crucial sectors such as medical treatment, forensic computing, and national security, where information confidentiality is valuable.
Quantum security improves cryptographic protocols by applying quantum mechanics principles, assuring resistance to both quantum and conventional computer attacks. This work addresses these issues by integrating Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) utilizing the E91 method with Multi-Layer Chaotic Encryption, which employs a variety of patterns to detect eavesdropping, resulting in a highly secure image-transmission architecture. The method leverages entropy calculations to determine the unpredictability and integrity of encrypted and decrypted pictures, guaranteeing strong security. Extensive statistical scenarios illustrate the framework's effectiveness in image encryption while preserving high entropy and sensitivity to the original visuals. The findings indicate significant improvement in encryption and decryption performance, demonstrating the framework's potential as a robust response to weaknesses introduced by advances in quantum computing. Several metrics, such as Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), Structural Similarity Index (SSIM), Normalized Cross-Correlation (NCC), Bit Error Rate (BER), entropy values for original, encrypted, and decrypted images, and the correlation between original and decrypted images, validate the framework's effectiveness. The combination of QKD with Multi-Layer Chaotic Encryption provides a scalable and resilient technique to secure image communication. As quantum computing advances, this framework offers a future-proof approach for defining secure communication protocols in crucial sectors such as medical treatment, forensic computing, and national security, where information confidentiality is valuable.
The emergence of quantum computing has introduced unprecedented security challenges to conventional cryptographic systems, particularly in the domain of optical communications. This research addresses these challenges by innovatively combining quantum key distribution (QKD), specifically the E91 protocol, with logistic chaotic maps to establish a secure image transmission scheme. Our approach utilizes the unpredictability of chaotic systems alongside the robust security mechanisms inherent in quantum entanglement. The scheme is further fortified with an eavesdropping detection mechanism based on CHSH inequality, thereby enhancing its resilience against unauthorized access. Through quantitative simulations, we demonstrate the effectiveness of this scheme in encrypting images, achieving high entropy and sensitivity to the original images. The results indicate a significant improvement in encryption and decryption efficiency, showcasing the potential of the scheme as a viable solution against the vulnerabilities posed by quantum computing advancements. Our research offers a novel perspective in secure optical communications, blending the principles of chaos theory with QKD to create a more robust cryptographic framework.
ABSTRACT The emergence of quantum computing has introduced unprecedented security challenges to conventional cryptographic systems, particularly in the domain of classical communications. Our research addresses these challenges by creatively combining quantum key distribution (QKD), specifically the E91 protocol, with logistic chaotic maps to establish a secure image transmission scheme. Our approach utilises the pseudo‐randomness of chaotic systems alongside the security mechanisms inherent in quantum entanglement‐based protocols. This framework leverages the E91 protocol for secure quantum key distribution to generate identical key pairs at both ends, followed by chaos encryption using the key as a basis for the parameters. This framework utilises the E91 protocol for secure quantum key distribution, leveraging maximally entangled pairs and CHSH inequality tests to detect eavesdropping and potential double‐agent attacks by identifying nonentangled qubits, therefore maintaining key confidentiality. Furthermore, through quantitative simulations, we demonstrate the effectiveness of this scheme through key space and key sensitivity analysis, histogram analysis, information entropy analysis, execution time analysis, and differential attack analysis in end‐to‐end encryption. The results indicate a significant improvement in encryption and decryption efficiency, showcasing the scheme's potential as a viable solution against the vulnerabilities posed by quantum computing advancements. Our research offers a novel perspective on a critical aspect of cybersecurity applications across healthcare, defence, finance, and beyond in the realm of secure quantum communication.
This research introduces a novel cryptographic system that enhances the security of steganographic images by integrating Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) with traditional encryption. Using the E91 QKD protocol, it generates a shared secret key between parties, leveraging quantum entanglement to provide superior protection against eavesdropping. The quantum key is then hashed with the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) to produce a fixed-length, high-entropy key for symmetric encryption . The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is employed to encrypt steganographic images, which conceal critical data within digital images, adding an extra layer of security through obscurity. Experiments with images of varying resolutions (64 × 64 to 512 × 512 pixels) show consistent encryption performance. The encrypted images exhibit high randomness, with an average entropy of 7.9929. Differential attack resilience is demonstrated by a Number of Pixels Change Rate (NPCR) averaging 99.6928% and a Unified Average Changing Intensity (UACI) of 56.1549%. The average E91 protocol key generation time is 5.78 s with a key rate of 7.43 bps. Encryption and decryption times for test images are 0.00149 and 0.00175 s, respectively. This research combines quantum and classical cryptography with steganography, providing a robust security framework highly resistant to both quantum and classical threats.
Text and images data generation, transmission, and storage have seen an exponential growth with the advancement of digital platforms which poses serious security issues for the next generation communication systems.Traditional cryptographic methods (archive) have long-standing challenges from the point of view of scalability, key management overhead and complexity, computational demands but more importantly their sustainability against the future quantum computing threats.Quantum primitives that rely on mathematical hard problems are doomed to be broken by quantum adversaries with μ= Shor's and Grover's algorithms.Also, the integration of heterogeneous data types such as unstructured text and highdimensional images under a unified framework is still an open research problem.To solve these problems, this paper presents a multi-modal quantum cryptography system for secure message and image encryption/decryption and transmission.The framework is based on the basic concepts of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, entanglement and the nocloning theorem, concentrating mainly on Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and cryptographic techniques resilient to quantum attacks.The proposed approach combines quantumsecure key establishment with modality-aware encoding and encryption, specifically designed for textual and image data transport, supporting confidentiality, integrity, and secure transit of the data while maintaining high level of fidelity to the original data after decryption.Comprehensive experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed framework in all aspects over the existing work based PLS, PRS, and ACI schemes in terms of anti-self-interference ability, computational complexity or memory requirement, and resistance to cryptanalysis from both classical attacker (AA) and quantum adversary.Our findings indicate is that quantum-assisted encryption is resilient to the most aggressive threats and at the same time provides performance that is strong enough to be used on a large scale.By addressing some of the most pressing issues in the field, such as the threat of quantum attacks, the management of multi-modal data, and scalability, this research provides a foundation for a future-proof security framework that is applicable in the present as well.The new framework has a number of applications in the present, including secure medical imaging, digital forensics, and secure document transfer.
The rapid growth in the storage and transmission of visual data across communication, sensing, and decision-making systems requires image encryption methods that are both computationally efficient and resilient against quantum-enabled adversaries. Classical chaotic encryption offers desirable properties such as sensitivity, unpredictability, and large key spaces, but its practical use is limited by restricted chaotic ranges, and conventional confusion–diffusion mechanisms often fail to eliminate structural redundancies in images. This thesis furthers the field by developing novel chaotic and gate-efficient quantum image encryption architectures. First, it introduces a new cosine-modulated polynomial chaotic map and validates its dynamical and statistical suitability for cryptographic key generation. Second, it designs lightweight yet effective chaotic primitives, including the Single-Round Single S-Box (SRSS) confusion mechanism and the featureaware diffusion scheme (PermutEx) that address the limitations in breaking correlation and maintaining efficiency. Third, these components are integrated into a complete endto- end chaos-based encryption framework that combines feature-driven segmentation, adaptive permutation, and dynamic confusion, demonstrating strong security across entropy, correlation, and differential metrics. Finally, the thesis advances two quantum image encryption architectures, i.e., a chaos-enhanced quantum image encryption framework that strengthens quantum confusion and diffusion mechanisms, and a gate-efficient architecture that reduces circuit depth and multi-qubit operations while retaining robust security. The proposed architectures achieve improved computational efficiency compared to existing chaos-based and quantum image encryption techniques, by reducing redundant operations, minimising circuit depth, and enabling lightweight yet effective confusion-diffusion processes. Consequently, this thesis provides a way forward for advancing image encryption by integrating chaotic and quantum approaches, offering practical steps for protecting visual data in the post-quantum era.
Safeguarding image confidentiality is a crucial communication concern due to the valuable information that must remain inaccessible to unauthorized users. However, the imminent emergence of quantum computers has introduced pressing security concerns to current cryptography. This paper proposes a quantum-resistant cryptosystem integrating a three-qubit entanglement-based Quantum Key Distribution protocol with a chaotic Henon map to develop an image transmission system resilient to classical and quantum adversaries. This QKD employs bidirectional qubit transmission to entangle three qubits, resulting in a quantum-secured key that is double that of the E91 protocol and demonstrates exceptional eavesdropper detection capabilities via the CHSH inequality violation. A 2D Henon map is utilized to address the intrinsic vulnerabilities related to key size and security in one-dimensional logistic maps. The expanded key generates a more complex sequence employing the Henon map, ensuring the utmost security of the encryption by integrating the chaotic randomness with the cryptographic properties embedded in entanglement. The findings from various security assessments indicate that the proposed encryption is both reliable and effective. It exhibits robust resistance to differential analysis, showing NPCR at 99.6% and UACI near 50%. A colossal 10220 key space thwarts brute-force attempts, while near-zero correlation and uniform pixel-intensity distribution confirm strong statistical security, highlighting the advantages of quantum–classical cryptography protocols.