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Sensors

A Robust Quasi-Quantum Walks-based Steganography Protocol for Secure Transmission of Images on Cloud-based E-healthcare Platforms

Bassem Abd-El-Atty, Abdullah M. Iliyasu, Haya Alaskar, Ahmed A. Abd El‐Latif

Published May 31, 2020• 94 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Traditionally, tamper-proof steganography involves using efficient protocols to encrypt the stego cover image and/or hidden message prior to embedding it into the carrier object. However, as the inevitable transition to the quantum computing paradigm beckons, its immense computing power will be exploited to violate even the best non-quantum, i.e., classical, stego protocol. On its part, quantum walks can be tailored to utilise their astounding 'quantumness' to propagate nonlinear chaotic behaviours as well as its sufficient sensitivity to alterations in primary key parameters both important properties for efficient information security. Our study explores using a classical (i.e., quantum-inspired) rendition of the controlled alternate quantum walks (i.e., CAQWs) model to fabricate a robust image steganography protocol for cloud-based E-healthcare platforms by locating content that overlays the secret (or hidden) bits. The design employed in our technique precludes the need for pre and/or post encryption of the carrier and secret images. Furthermore, our design simplifies the process to extract the confidential (hidden) information since only the stego image and primary states to run the CAQWs are required. We validate our proposed protocol on a dataset of medical images, which exhibited remarkable outcomes in terms of their security, good visual quality, high resistance to data loss attacks, high embedding capacity, etc., making the proposed scheme a veritable strategy for efficient medical image steganography.

DOI
10.3390/s20113108

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Traditionally, tamper-proof steganography involves using efficient protocols to encrypt the stego cover image and/or hidden message prior to embedding it into the carrier object. However, as the inevitable transition to the quantum computing paradigm beckons, its immense computing power will be exploited to violate even the best non-quantum, i.e., classical, stego protocol. On its part, quantum walks can be tailored to utilise their astounding 'quantumness' to propagate nonlinear chaotic behaviours as well as its sufficient sensitivity to alterations in primary key parameters both important properties for efficient information security. Our study explores using a classical (i.e., quantum-inspired) rendition of the controlled alternate quantum walks (i.e., CAQWs) model to fabricate a robust image steganography protocol for cloud-based E-healthcare platforms by locating content that overlays the secret (or hidden) bits. The design employed in our technique precludes the need for pre and/or post encryption of the carrier and secret images. Furthermore, our design simplifies the process to extract the confidential (hidden) information since only the stego image and primary states to run the CAQWs are required. We validate our proposed protocol on a dataset of medical images, which exhibited remarkable outcomes in terms of their security, good visual quality, high resistance to data loss attacks, high embedding capacity, etc., making the proposed scheme a veritable strategy for efficient medical image steganography.
Information hiding aims to embed secret data into the multimedia, such as image, audio, video, and text. In this paper, two new quantum information hiding approaches are put forward. A quantum steganography approach is proposed to hide a quantum secret image into a quantum cover image. The quantum secret image is encrypted first using a controlled-NOT gate to demonstrate the security of the embedded data. The encrypted secret image is embedded into the quantum cover image using the two most and least significant qubits. In addition, a quantum image watermarking approach is presented to hide a quantum watermark gray image into a quantum carrier image. The quantum watermark image, which is scrambled by utilizing Arnold's cat map, is then embedded into the quantum carrier image using the two least and most significant qubits. Only the watermarked image and the key are sufficient to extract the embedded quantum watermark image. The proposed novelty has been illustrated using a scenario of sharing medical imagery between two remote hospitals. The simulation and analysis demonstrate that the two newly proposed approaches have excellent visual quality and high embedding capacity and security.
The security of sensitive information is an urgent need in today's communication, principally in cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) environments. Therefore, a well-designed security mechanism should be carefully considered. This paper presents a new framework for secure information in fog cloud IoT. In the framework, the user in one location embeds his/her valuable data via the proposed quantum steganography protocol and uploads the covered data to the fog cloud. The intended receiver in another location accesses the data from the fog cloud and extracts the intended content via the proposed extraction approach. This paper also presents a novel quantum steganography protocol based on hash function and quantum entangled states. To the best of our knowledge, there is no prior quantum steganography protocol that authenticates an embedded secret message. In the suggested protocol, the hash function is utilized to authenticate embedded secret messages. The presented protocol is secure against well-known attacks, such as message, man-in-the-middle, and no-message attacks. In addition, it does not consume additional channels besides the proposed one to send a secret message or verify security. The proposed approach is nominated for use in fog and mobile edge computing.
In the age of digital technology, medical images play an important role in the healthcare industry, which aids surgeons in making precise decisions and reducing the diagnosis time. However, the storage of large amounts of these images in third-party cloud services raises privacy and security concerns. There are a lot of classical security mechanisms to protect them. Although, the advent of quantum computing entails the development of quantum-based encryption models for healthcare. There is a significant demand for resource-efficient, quantum-secure image encryption mechanisms that leverage existing classical infrastructure. Hence, in this paper, a novel quantum chaos-based encryption scheme for medical images has been introduced. The model utilizes bit-plane scrambling, a 3D quantum logistic map, quantum operations in the diffusion phase, a hybrid chaotic map, and DNA encoding in the confusion phase to transform the plain medical image into a cipher medical image. The proposed scheme has been evaluated using multiple statistical analyses and validated against more attacks such as differential attacks, known and chosen plaintext attacks with three different medical datasets, and theoretically, as well. Hence, the introduced encryption model has proved to be more attack-resistant and robust than other existing image encryption schemes, ensuring the secure storage of medical images in cloud environments.
Smart systems and technologies have become integral parts of modern society. Their ubiquity makes it paramount to prioritise securing the privacy of data transferred between smart devices. Visual encryption is a technique employed to obscure images by rendering them meaningless to evade attention during transmission. However, the astounding computing power ascribed to quantum technology implies that even the best visually encrypted systems can be effortlessly violated. Consequently, the physical realisation quantum hardware portends great danger for visually encrypted date on smart systems. To circumvent this, our study proposes the integration of quantum walks (QWs) as a cryptographic mechanism to forestall violation of the integrity of images on smart systems. Specifically, we use QW first to substitute the original image and to subsequently permutate and embed it onto the reference image. Based on this structure, our proposed quantum walks visually meaningful cryptosystem facilities confidential transmission of visual information. Simulation-based experiments validate the performance of the proposed system in terms of visual quality, efficiency, robustness, and key space sensitivity, and by that, its potential to safeguard smart systems now and as we transition to the quantum era.
Security of medical media is important for patient safety and confidentiality. This paper proposes a framework for the chaos-based quantum encryption of healthcare images. In the framework, healthcare staff in one location send cipher images to the cloud. The healthcare staff in another location receives the images from the cloud. By decrypting the content of the images, the healthcare staff can assist users in a secure manner. This paper also proposes a novel approach for the efficient quantum image encryption of healthcare media. The proposed algorithm utilizes gray code and a chaotic map. The quantum image is scrambled by quantum gray code. Then, the scrambled quantum image is encrypted using a quantum XOR operation based on a key generator controlled by the logistic-sine map. The circuits of the proposed encryption/decryption algorithm are devised based on an NEQR quantum image representation. Numerical and simulation analyses show that the proposed quantum image encryption approach is robust, realizable, and has high efficiency compared with its classical counterpart.
Secure remote sharing of medical images is essential for advancing telemedicine, accurate diagnostics, and collaborative healthcare delivery. The traditional cryptography techniques are fast turning to be susceptible to quantum computing risks and generally are less efficient in high throughput medical settings. To counter such a shortcoming, we present an innovative quantum-oriented solution that utilizes optimized methods of secure and real-time medical image transmission over a long-distance network. In this method, Quantum Key Distribution (BB84 protocol), hybrid cryptography, quantum informed optimization, and quantum steganography are used to provide efficient high-fidelity and low latency transmission of images. The QKD is used to securely create symmetric keys that are to be used in the AES 256 encryption of the image and Elliptic Curve Cryptography is applied so that the metadata can be kept confidential. Immutable and transparent access logs are kept by using the blockchain technology. In order to even improve the performance, a dynamically tuning encryption parameters using a Quantum Genetic Algorithm can be applied to eliminate the computing overhead. Experimental testing with NIH Chest X-ray dataset shows an average encryption and decryption speed of 38.1 milliseconds, with a success rate of more than 25% relative to the conventional post-quantum cryptographic system. The results of a secure transmission show a decrease in latency of 12.5% over the TLS-enhanced QKD. The system keeps the Quantum Bit Error Rate at less than 5% under realistic noise levels and retains more than 75% of the key material obtained. In quantum steganography, the level of accuracy to detect tampering is 98.6%, hence data integrity. The solution has shown the capability to integrate quantum-level security, computing performance, and regulatory durability to become a trusted and long-term process of safe sharing of medical images in modern healthcare systems.