Image encryption algorithm based on optical chaos and Rubik’s cube matrix conversion

Security issues and privacy issues are serious problems facing today’s society, especially in image security, where privacy protection plays a pivotal role. To improve the security of images, we propose an image encryption algorithm based on optical chaos and Rubik’s cube matrix in this paper. First, optical chaos is generated by constructing an optical device model. Second, in the image encryption algorithm, optical chaos and Rubik’s cube matrix are used to encrypt the image at the bit level for the first time, and a “U” type encryption method is designed, and different “U” type encryption schemes are selected to encrypt the image for the second time. Finally, the “four-way diffusion” algorithm is used to diffuse the encrypted image, which further improves the security of the image. The computer simulations and security analysis results both confirm that ciphertext images can resist various common attack means, such as statistical attacks, differential attacks, and brute force attacks. In this paper, the proposed algorithm of decimal conversion, “U” encryption, and “quadrangle diffusion” makes the pixel value and pixel position change greatly, and the ciphertext image loses the original features of the plaintext image, which shows that the algorithm has good security performance and is suitable for image encryptions.