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Journal of Optics

Robustness against attacks of dual polarization encryption using the Stokes–Mueller formalism

Matthieu Dubreuil, Ayman Alfalou, Christian Brosseau

Published Jul 11, 2012• 29 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The security of our recently proposed dual polarization encryption scheme of images is evaluated by numerical simulations. This consists of testing the resistance of the scheme against brute force, known-plaintext, chosen-plaintext and video sequence attacks. While some attacks are ineffective (brute force, video sequence) others are effective (known-plaintext, chosen-plaintext), but only under certain assumptions. An optimization of the setup, which is based on a regular rotation of polarization optics angles (polarizers, wave plates), is proposed associating the use of a high dynamic range for the key image, or the use of a phase-only spatial light modulator in the target and in the key image channel. The possibility of the attacker decrypting an unknown image is thus strongly reduced. The precision required for optical specifications is also evaluated, in order to ensure a good decryption for an authorized user.

DOI
10.1088/2040-8978/14/9/094004

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The security of our recently proposed dual polarization encryption scheme of images is evaluated by numerical simulations. This consists of testing the resistance of the scheme against brute force, known-plaintext, chosen-plaintext and video sequence attacks. While some attacks are ineffective (brute force, video sequence) others are effective (known-plaintext, chosen-plaintext), but only under certain assumptions. An optimization of the setup, which is based on a regular rotation of polarization optics angles (polarizers, wave plates), is proposed associating the use of a high dynamic range for the key image, or the use of a phase-only spatial light modulator in the target and in the key image channel. The possibility of the attacker decrypting an unknown image is thus strongly reduced. The precision required for optical specifications is also evaluated, in order to ensure a good decryption for an authorized user.
In conventional symmetric encryption, it is common for the encryption/decryption key to be reused for multiple plaintexts. This gives rise to the concept of a known-plaintext attack. In optical image encryption systems, such as double random phase encoding (DRPE), this is also the case; if one knows a plaintext-ciphertext pair, one can carry out a known-plaintext attack more efficiently than a brute-force attack, using heuristics based on phase retrieval or simulated annealing. However, we demonstrate that it is likely that an attacker will find an imperfect decryption key using such heuristics. Such an imperfect key will work for the known plaintext-ciphertext pair, but not an arbitrary unseen plaintext-ciphertext pair encrypted using the original key. In this paper, we illustrate the problem and attempt to characterise the increase in security it affords optical encryption.
In conventional symmetric encryption, it is common for the encryption/decryption key to be reused for multiple plaintexts. This gives rise to the concept of a known-plaintext attack. In optical image encryption systems, such as double random phase encoding (DRPE), this is also the case. With optical encryption, if one knows a plaintext-ciphertext pair, one can carry out a known-plaintext attack more efficiently than a bruteforce attack, using heuristics based on phase retrieval or simulated annealing. However, it is more likely that an attacker will find an imperfect encryption/decryption key using such heuristics. Such an imperfect key will work for the known plaintext-ciphertext pair, but not an arbitrary unseen plaintext-ciphertext pair using the original key. In this paper, we illustrate the problem and attempt to characterise the increase in security it affords optical encryption.
Images can be optically encrypted by random encoding in the phase, the polarization, or even the coherence of a light field. It is important for these optical encryption methods to undergo rigorous cryptanalysis. However, only phase-encoding-based encryption has been rigorously analyzed to date. In this manuscript, we demonstrate that the double random polarization encryption (DRPolE) is vulnerable to chosen-plaintext attack (CPA). We show that the keys can be retrieved if one can choose the polarization states of two plaintext images and collect the corresponding cyphertext images. Our study reveals a serious concern regarding the DRPolE that should be addressed in the design of polarization-based optical encryption methods.
The optical cryptosystem based on phase-shifting interferometry (PSI) is one of the most interesting optical cryptographic schemes in recent years. However, we find that the PSI technique provides an attractive method to record the ciphertext, but contributes little to the security level of the cryptosystem. From the cryptanalysis point of view, in a certain simplified case, an attacker is only required to crack two equivalent decryption keys instead of the original random phase keys and geometric key. Moreover, a chosen-plaintext attack method is proposed, in which an impulse function is chosen as a known plaintext. By using this attack, the attacker can effectively recover any plaintext from the corresponding ciphertext. The validity of the attack is verified by computer simulations.
Abstract Optical technologies have been widely used in information security owing to its parallel and high-speed processing capability. However, the most critical problem with current optical encryption techniques is that the cyphertext is linearly related with the plaintext, leading to the possibility that one can crack the system by solving a set of linear equations with only two cyphertext from the same encryption machine. Many efforts have been taken in the last decade to resolve the linearity issue, but none of these offers a true nonlinear solution. Inspired by the recent advance in spatial nonlinear optics, here we demonstrate a true nonlinear optical encryption technique. We show that, owing to the self-phase modulation effect of the photorefractive crystal, the proposed nonlinear optical image encryption technique is robust against the known plaintext attack based on phase retrieval. This opens up a new avenue for optical encryption in the spatial nonlinear domain.