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Optics Express

Chosen-plaintext attack on the double random polarization encryption

Lei Wang, Quanying Wu, Guohai Situ

Published Oct 21, 2019• 22 citations
Publisher

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1364/oe.27.032158

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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.
Double Random Phase Encoding (DRPE), which is a typical optical encryption technique, has been reported to be vulnerable to Known Plaintext-Attacks (KPAs) using a Phase Retrieval Algorithm (PRA). But the reported case in which the encryption key is successfully estimated was that the plain image was rather simple such as the image of a character. In addition, although Phase Only DRPE (PO-DRPE) was proposed to achieve more resistance to the KPA than Complex DRPE (C-DRPE) in which both amplitude and phase components are used as an encrypted image, no quantitative results about the relationship between the vulnerability and the plaintext image. In this paper, we show the result of quantitative analysis on KPA by PRA to C-DRPE and PO-DRPE, for the plaintext images of different characteristics. As a result of experiment, KPA to C-DRPE succeeded to estimate the correct key while the probability of success became lower when the number of non-zero pixel increases in the plaintext image. However, KPA to PO-DRPE enabled to estimate only "singular" keys, which are effective for no more than given plaintext/ciphertext image pair and far different from the correct encryption key. We also conducted KPA using two plaintext-ciphertext image pairs for KPA. In the case when two plaintext-ciphertext image pairs were given to KPA, the cryptanalysis succeeded with higher probability than the case of one. Moreover, the probability of success in the KPA was high even in PO-DRPE.
We demonstrate a method of chosen-plaintext attack on lensless double-random phase encoding (L-DRPE) in the Fresnel domain. With this attack an opponent can access two encryption keys with help of the impulse functions as chosen plaintexts. This shows that a lensless optical encryption scheme based on DRPE is vulnerable to chosen-plaintext attack. Cryptoanalysis also indicates that the security worry originates from the linearity of the encryption and decryption mechanism of the L-DRPE scheme. One of the interesting features of the proposed attack is that the decryption process is lossless. Numerical simulations show good agreement with theoretical analysis.
This paper studies an inverse problem in nonlinear optical encryption. We examine chosen-plaintext attacks (CPA) on a nonlinear optical encryption strategy that integrates double random phase encryption (DRPE) into a nonlinear optical propagation model to enhance the security of the combined system. We first demonstrate that the system's phase information can be decoded from carefully designed differential CPA data. We then demonstrate that the strength of the optical device's nonlinearity can also be recovered from CPA data, indicating that including this parameter as an additional security key does not enhance protection against CPA attacks, although numerical simulations show that strong nonlinearity still poses significant challenges for CPA attacks. Finally, we provide a stability analysis to demonstrate that small errors in decoded security keys result in only small errors in the decrypted text, even though the encryption process is nonlinear.
This paper analysis the security of the optical encryption scheme based on the classical double random phase encoding. We describe a known-plaintext attack which can be used to successfully access the encryption key with the pre-knowledge of only one arbiturary pair of known plaintext-ciphertext. A phase retrieval algorithm is employed in this attack. Computer simulations are made to demonstrate the effectiveness. The results show that even implementing only one round of iteration in the phase retrieval, an attacker can obtain a clear decoded plaintext (a gray-scale image) from an intercept ciphertext.