Chaos-Based Novel Watermarked Satellite Image Encryption Scheme

• Published in: Computer modeling in engineering & sciences Vol. 143; no. 1; pp. 1049 - 1070
• Main Authors: Medani, Mohamed, Said, Yahia, Adnan Othman, Nashwan, Yuldashev, Farrukh, Kchaou, Mohamed, Aldawood, Faisal Khaled, Rehman, Bacha
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Henderson Tech Science Press 2025
• Subjects: Algorithms; Chaos theory; Deoxyribonucleic acid; DNA; Encryption; Military applications; Remote sensing; Satellite imagery; Security; Watermarking
• ISSN: 1526-1506; 1526-1492; 1526-1506
• DOI: 10.32604/cmes.2025.063405

Satellite images are widely used for remote sensing and defence applications, however, they are subject to a variety of threats. To ensure the security and privacy of these images, they must be watermarked and encrypted before communication. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel watermarked satellite image encryption scheme based on chaos, Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) sequence, and hash algorithm. The watermark image, DNA sequence, and plaintext image are passed through the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-512) to compute the initial condition (keys) for the Tangent-Delay Ellipse Reflecting Cavity Map (TD-ERCS), Henon, and Duffing chaotic maps, respectively. Through bitwise XOR and substitution, the TD-ERCS map encrypts the watermark image. The ciphered watermark image is embedded in the plaintext image. The embedded plaintext image is permuted row-wise and column-wise using the Henon chaotic map. The permuted image is then bitwise XORed with the values obtained from the Duffing map. For additional security, the XORed image is substituted through a dynamic S-Box. To evaluate the efficiency and performance of the proposed algorithm, several tests are performed which prove its resistance to various types of attacks such as brute-force and statistical attacks.