Grayscale-based block scrambling image encryption using YCbCr color space for encryption-then-compression systems

Abstract

A novel grayscale-based block scrambling image encryption scheme is presented not only to enhance security, but also to improve the compression performance for Encryption-then-Compression (EtC) systems with JPEG compression, which are used to securely transmit images through an untrusted channel provider. The proposed scheme enables the use of a smaller block size and a larger number of blocks than the color-based image encryption scheme. Images encrypted using the proposed scheme include less color information due to the use of grayscale images even when the original image has three color channels. These features enhance security against various attacks, such as jigsaw puzzle solver and brute-force attacks. Moreover, generating the grayscale-based images from a full-color image in YCbCr color space allows the use of color sub-sampling operation, which can provide the higher compression performance than the conventional grayscale-based encryption scheme, although the encrypted images have no color information. In an experiment, encrypted images were uploaded to and then downloaded from Twitter and Facebook, and the results demonstrated that the proposed scheme is effective for EtC systems and enhances the compression performance, while maintaining the security against brute-force and jigsaw puzzle solver attacks.