Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

Discover Quantum Science

A Novel Quantum Key Distribution Inspired Image Encryption (QKDIE) Algorithm for Enhanced Image Security

Jyoti Singh Kirar, Akanksha Rao

Published Jun 30, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

As the world is transitioning towards the quantum era, this research presents the Quantum Key Distribution Inspired Image Encryption (QKDIE) algorithm, an image encryption and decryption framework that leverages the BB84 quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol to enhance the security of image transmission. BB84 ensures secure key exchange through the quantum bit error rate (QBER) monitoring. A QBER of approximately $$1.0\%$$ was consistently achieved across all the experiments and well below the 11% security abort threshold. The BB84 sifted key is used to derive a 256-bit ChaCha20 stream cipher key via SHA-256, providing formally IND-CPA secure encryption with a unique nonce per session. The encryption pipeline implements four successive layers: Fisher-Yates pixel permutation for spatial scrambling, a key-dependent nonlinear S-box substitution for per-pixel confusion, an invertible CBC-style row-column diffusion layer for inter-pixel avalanche propagation, and ChaCha20 stream encryption for quantum seeded bitwise transformation. The proposed method is evaluated through cryptographic security metrics including UACI, NPCR, Shannon Entropy, pixel correlation, chi-square uniformity test, avalanche effect, and known-plaintext attack simulation, alongside decryption fidelity metrics including MSE, PSNR, SSIM, and NIQE. Experimental results across four test images demonstrate UACI values of $$33.46\%$$ – $$36.59\%$$ , NPCR values of $$99.59\%$$ – $$99.63\%$$ , Shannon entropy of 7.9968–7.9995 bits per pixel, and near-zero pixel correlation in all spatial directions. All four images passed the chi-square uniformity test (values 217.77–283.94, critical value 293.25). The avalanche test confirmed $$99.60\%$$ – $$99.61\%$$ pixel change rate and $$50.01\%$$ – $$50.05\%$$ bit-level change rate with a single-bit key perturbation, satisfying the strict avalanche criterion. KPA simulation confirmed keystream independence across sessions ( $$47.27\%$$ – $$51.95\%$$ bit match, indistinguishable from random chance). Perfect decryption was achieved in all cases (MSE $$= 0$$ ) which validates the reliability of the proposed QKDIE framework.

DOI
10.1007/s44464-026-00027-7

Related papers

Quantum Key Distribution-Assisted Image Encryption Using 7D and 2D Hyperchaotic Systems

Zahrah Asri Nur Fauzyah, Aceng Sambas, Prajanto Wahyu Adi +1 more

Secure image transmission is increasingly vital in the digital era, especially against emerging quantum threats. This study proposes a hybrid image encryption scheme that integrates Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) using the BB84 protocol with a combination of 7-dimensional (7D) and 2-dimensional (2D) hyperchaotic systems to achieve robust security. The BB84 protocol facilitates quantum-assisted key exchange, ensuring resistance to eavesdropping, while the hyperchaotic systems provide high entropy and complex randomness, utilized in a layered permutation-substitution encryption framework. The initial seeds for chaotic sequences are derived using a SHA-512 hash of both the input image and quantum-generated key, ensuring uniqueness and sensitivity. Experimental validation was conducted using several benchmark images. The information entropy values of the ciphered images reached up to 7.9993, indicating excellent randomness. Differential analysis showed high resistance to small perturbations, with NPCR exceeding 99.61% and UACI averaging around 33.47%, which meet standard security thresholds. Histogram and chi-square tests confirmed the uniform pixel distribution, with chi-square values below 280, satisfying the randomness criterion for 8-bit images. Furthermore, correlation coefficients of adjacent pixels dropped to near zero, evidencing effective decorrelation. The encryption scheme also demonstrated robustness to data loss, as shown by the successful decryption of partially corrupted cipher images. Robustness testing under partial data loss (200×200-pixel blocks) also demonstrated visual recoverability and algorithm resilience. Overall, the proposed BB84-assisted dual-hyperchaotic encryption scheme offers a secure and computationally effective solution for protecting sensitive image data, making it suitable for post-quantum secure communications.

Journal of Future Artificial Intelligence and Technologies•Apr 22, 2025•30 citations

Multi-layered security system: Integrating quantum key distribution with classical cryptography to enhance steganographic security

Arman Sykot, Md Shawmoon Azad, Wahida Rahman Tanha +3 more

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.

arXiv:2408.06964•Alexandria Engineering Journal•Feb 27, 2025•21 citations

Implementation of a Mixed Triple Logistic Map and the BB84 Quantum Key Distribution for Secure Image Communication

Virnika Shefira Gina Morissa, De Rosal Ignatius Moses Setiadi

In the digital era, data communication security is one of the main challenges. This research proposes a new method for secure image communication, which is a mixed triple logistic map and BB84 quantum key distribution. This approach combines the strengths of classical and quantum cryptographic systems to improve security. BB84 quantum key distribution protocol for securely distributing encryption keys. The resulting key is then processed into a hash value using the SHA-256 algorithm. These hash values are converted into ASCII values, which are used to generate three key sequences using the modified logistic map. The three key sequences are combined to form a keystream used in image encryption. Several security metrics are used to evaluate encryption security, including entropy, the Chi-Square test, and pixel correlation. The analysis results show that the encrypted image has an entropy close to eight. In addition, all chi-square values smaller than 293 indicate a uniform distribution. The correlation of nearby pixels in the encrypted image is also very low, where all values are less than 0.01, which indicates the loss of local patterns in the encrypted image. These results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively secures image communications, providing high security and resistance to conventional and quantum cryptographic attacks.

International Seminar on Application for Technology of Information and Communication (iSemantic)•Sep 21, 2024•3 citations

Quantum Image Encryption: A Comprehensive Review of Representations, Encryption Schemes, Security Evaluation and Open Challenges

Vishal Prajapati, Harsh Patil, Saish Nair +2 more

Quantum image encryption (QIE) loads a digital image into qubits and ciphers it with unitary circuits, usually keyed by chaotic maps, quantum walks or quantum random numbers. This review follows the field from an early geometric-transformation scheme (2013) to designs executed on 127-qubit IBM processors (2025). We organise the literature by image representation (FRQI, NEQR, amplitude encoding), confusion and diffusion mechanism, key source and validation level, and we compare recent schemes on entropy, NPCR, UACI, correlation and key space. Reported statistics sit close to their ideals almost everywhere; recent quantum-walk and chaos-based designs report NPCR of 99.6 to 99.97% and UACI of 33.5 to 33.9%, so these metrics no longer separate strong schemes from weak ones. Three gaps stand out. Most evidence comes from classical simulation. The secret usually sits in a classical key generator rather than in the quantum circuit. And loading an image into qubits, then reading it back, remains the main hardware bottleneck. Hybrid designs that distribute keys with BB84 and cipher the image classically offer the most deployable route today. We close with a research agenda: attack-based benchmarks, error-aware hardware validation, cheaper state preparation and explicit security definitions.

•Oct 13, 2026•0 citations

Quantum Key - Based Secure Image Steganography with AES Encryption

U. Gowri Sankar, Radhesh Kumar K M, Vasanth V +1 more

We are building a highly secure way of sending messages by combining the use of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) to produce encryption keys and encrypting messages with a variant of AES-256 (a substitution cipher) and Least Significant Bit (LSB) steganography or hiding them in images. We are employing the BB84 protocol to produce these keys based on the quantum properties of the photonic (light) particles; we can detect any third parties attempting to intercept the key and measure it by the Quantum Bit Error Rate (QBER). Once we have produced a secure key, we then use it to encrypt the actual message with AES-256, and we hide that in a digital image (the cover image) with LSB steganography. Thus, if a third party were to capture the Stego image (the digital image containing the hidden encrypted message), they would not be able to decrypt the hidden message without the key that was produced using quantum cryptography. An analytics dashboard monitors the success of the key generation, the QBER value, and other performance metrics, giving a high degree of transparency and trustworthiness of the whole process.

International Research Journal on Advanced Engineering and Management (IRJAEM)•Mar 19, 2026•0 citations

Multi-Channel Multi-Protocol Quantum Key Distribution System for Secure Image Transmission in Healthcare

Bandana Mallick, Priyadarsan Parida, Chittaranjan Nayak +5 more

Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a viable technique for safeguarding image transmission against numerous attacks. To address the limitations of existing methods in securing electronic medical records, we have explored an encryption technique using a set of real-time medical images along with existing standard images using QKD protocols including BB84 (Bennett-Brassard 1984), CASCADE (Cascading Error Correction Algorithm for Data Exchange), and differential-phase-shift (DPS) under the fiber-based (OFC) and free-space (FSO) channels. It utilizes the quantum bit-plane representation of the Real Ket (QBRK) model and a logistic chaotic system with XOR operation. The performance of the developed framework is tested via visual illustration and 11 different quantitative assessments. The average entropy of the scrambled image for the medical source image is 7.9896, which is quite near to the optimum value of 8. TheUACI(Unified Averaged Changed Intensity) and theNPCR(Number of Pixels Change Rate) metrics values lie between 33.7879 to 33.9711 and 99.6014 to 99.8000 for the FSO channel. The BB84 QKD protocol achieves a QBER (Quantum Bit Error Rate) of 0.0028 for an FSO channel with DCR (Dark Count Rate), which improves to 0.0012 when DCR is ignored for a 10 km link range. In addition, we analyzed and compared the effect of OFC on system output as the quantum channel. From several experiments, it is observed that the BB84 provides better results against CASCADE and DPS. The proposed work is validated using the Optisystem 15.1 software under FSO and for OFC.

IEEE Access•Jan 1, 2025•35 citations
As the world is transitioning towards the quantum era, this research presents the Quantum Key Distribution Inspired Image Encryption (QKDIE) algorithm, an image encryption and decryption framework that leverages the BB84 quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol to enhance the security of image transmission. BB84 ensures secure key exchange through the quantum bit error rate (QBER) monitoring. A QBER of approximately 1.0%1.0\%1.0% was consistently achieved across all the experiments and well below the 11% security abort threshold. The BB84 sifted key is used to derive a 256-bit ChaCha20 stream cipher key via SHA-256, providing formally IND-CPA secure encryption with a unique nonce per session. The encryption pipeline implements four successive layers: Fisher-Yates pixel permutation for spatial scrambling, a key-dependent nonlinear S-box substitution for per-pixel confusion, an invertible CBC-style row-column diffusion layer for inter-pixel avalanche propagation, and ChaCha20 stream encryption for quantum seeded bitwise transformation. The proposed method is evaluated through cryptographic security metrics including UACI, NPCR, Shannon Entropy, pixel correlation, chi-square uniformity test, avalanche effect, and known-plaintext attack simulation, alongside decryption fidelity metrics including MSE, PSNR, SSIM, and NIQE. Experimental results across four test images demonstrate UACI values of 33.46%33.46\%33.46% – 36.59%36.59\%36.59% , NPCR values of 99.59%99.59\%99.59% – 99.63%99.63\%99.63% , Shannon entropy of 7.9968–7.9995 bits per pixel, and near-zero pixel correlation in all spatial directions. All four images passed the chi-square uniformity test (values 217.77–283.94, critical value 293.25). The avalanche test confirmed 99.60%99.60\%99.60% – 99.61%99.61\%99.61% pixel change rate and 50.01%50.01\%50.01% – 50.05%50.05\%50.05% bit-level change rate with a single-bit key perturbation, satisfying the strict avalanche criterion. KPA simulation confirmed keystream independence across sessions ( 47.27%47.27\%47.27% – 51.95%51.95\%51.95% bit match, indistinguishable from random chance). Perfect decryption was achieved in all cases (MSE =0= 0=0 ) which validates the reliability of the proposed QKDIE framework.
Secure image transmission is increasingly vital in the digital era, especially against emerging quantum threats. This study proposes a hybrid image encryption scheme that integrates Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) using the BB84 protocol with a combination of 7-dimensional (7D) and 2-dimensional (2D) hyperchaotic systems to achieve robust security. The BB84 protocol facilitates quantum-assisted key exchange, ensuring resistance to eavesdropping, while the hyperchaotic systems provide high entropy and complex randomness, utilized in a layered permutation-substitution encryption framework. The initial seeds for chaotic sequences are derived using a SHA-512 hash of both the input image and quantum-generated key, ensuring uniqueness and sensitivity. Experimental validation was conducted using several benchmark images. The information entropy values of the ciphered images reached up to 7.9993, indicating excellent randomness. Differential analysis showed high resistance to small perturbations, with NPCR exceeding 99.61% and UACI averaging around 33.47%, which meet standard security thresholds. Histogram and chi-square tests confirmed the uniform pixel distribution, with chi-square values below 280, satisfying the randomness criterion for 8-bit images. Furthermore, correlation coefficients of adjacent pixels dropped to near zero, evidencing effective decorrelation. The encryption scheme also demonstrated robustness to data loss, as shown by the successful decryption of partially corrupted cipher images. Robustness testing under partial data loss (200×200-pixel blocks) also demonstrated visual recoverability and algorithm resilience. Overall, the proposed BB84-assisted dual-hyperchaotic encryption scheme offers a secure and computationally effective solution for protecting sensitive image data, making it suitable for post-quantum secure communications.
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.
In the digital era, data communication security is one of the main challenges. This research proposes a new method for secure image communication, which is a mixed triple logistic map and BB84 quantum key distribution. This approach combines the strengths of classical and quantum cryptographic systems to improve security. BB84 quantum key distribution protocol for securely distributing encryption keys. The resulting key is then processed into a hash value using the SHA-256 algorithm. These hash values are converted into ASCII values, which are used to generate three key sequences using the modified logistic map. The three key sequences are combined to form a keystream used in image encryption. Several security metrics are used to evaluate encryption security, including entropy, the Chi-Square test, and pixel correlation. The analysis results show that the encrypted image has an entropy close to eight. In addition, all chi-square values smaller than 293 indicate a uniform distribution. The correlation of nearby pixels in the encrypted image is also very low, where all values are less than 0.01, which indicates the loss of local patterns in the encrypted image. These results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively secures image communications, providing high security and resistance to conventional and quantum cryptographic attacks.
Quantum image encryption (QIE) loads a digital image into qubits and ciphers it with unitary circuits, usually keyed by chaotic maps, quantum walks or quantum random numbers. This review follows the field from an early geometric-transformation scheme (2013) to designs executed on 127-qubit IBM processors (2025). We organise the literature by image representation (FRQI, NEQR, amplitude encoding), confusion and diffusion mechanism, key source and validation level, and we compare recent schemes on entropy, NPCR, UACI, correlation and key space. Reported statistics sit close to their ideals almost everywhere; recent quantum-walk and chaos-based designs report NPCR of 99.6 to 99.97% and UACI of 33.5 to 33.9%, so these metrics no longer separate strong schemes from weak ones. Three gaps stand out. Most evidence comes from classical simulation. The secret usually sits in a classical key generator rather than in the quantum circuit. And loading an image into qubits, then reading it back, remains the main hardware bottleneck. Hybrid designs that distribute keys with BB84 and cipher the image classically offer the most deployable route today. We close with a research agenda: attack-based benchmarks, error-aware hardware validation, cheaper state preparation and explicit security definitions.
We are building a highly secure way of sending messages by combining the use of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) to produce encryption keys and encrypting messages with a variant of AES-256 (a substitution cipher) and Least Significant Bit (LSB) steganography or hiding them in images. We are employing the BB84 protocol to produce these keys based on the quantum properties of the photonic (light) particles; we can detect any third parties attempting to intercept the key and measure it by the Quantum Bit Error Rate (QBER). Once we have produced a secure key, we then use it to encrypt the actual message with AES-256, and we hide that in a digital image (the cover image) with LSB steganography. Thus, if a third party were to capture the Stego image (the digital image containing the hidden encrypted message), they would not be able to decrypt the hidden message without the key that was produced using quantum cryptography. An analytics dashboard monitors the success of the key generation, the QBER value, and other performance metrics, giving a high degree of transparency and trustworthiness of the whole process.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a viable technique for safeguarding image transmission against numerous attacks. To address the limitations of existing methods in securing electronic medical records, we have explored an encryption technique using a set of real-time medical images along with existing standard images using QKD protocols including BB84 (Bennett-Brassard 1984), CASCADE (Cascading Error Correction Algorithm for Data Exchange), and differential-phase-shift (DPS) under the fiber-based (OFC) and free-space (FSO) channels. It utilizes the quantum bit-plane representation of the Real Ket (QBRK) model and a logistic chaotic system with XOR operation. The performance of the developed framework is tested via visual illustration and 11 different quantitative assessments. The average entropy of the scrambled image for the medical source image is 7.9896, which is quite near to the optimum value of 8. TheUACI(Unified Averaged Changed Intensity) and theNPCR(Number of Pixels Change Rate) metrics values lie between 33.7879 to 33.9711 and 99.6014 to 99.8000 for the FSO channel. The BB84 QKD protocol achieves a QBER (Quantum Bit Error Rate) of 0.0028 for an FSO channel with DCR (Dark Count Rate), which improves to 0.0012 when DCR is ignored for a 10 km link range. In addition, we analyzed and compared the effect of OFC on system output as the quantum channel. From several experiments, it is observed that the BB84 provides better results against CASCADE and DPS. The proposed work is validated using the Optisystem 15.1 software under FSO and for OFC.