A Novel Privacy Framework for Satellite Images Based on Theory of Chaos and Chess Pieces Castle and King
Nayef Alqahtani · IEEE Access · 2025
Satellite images are normally captured through Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), drones, different aircraft, and other flying objects. These images are being used in many areas to get their utility. Occasionally, these images are very sensitive and confidential. Hence, they must be protected through some state-of-the-art cryptosystem. In this work, a novel image cryptographic work has been carried out by combining chaotic systems and the chess pieces of Castle and King. Apart from that, a 5D multi-wing hyperchaotic system has been employed to spawn the streams of random numbers. These streams of random numbers have been further customized to make them a good fit for the proposed algorithm. Two pairs of random numbers from the first & second streams and third & fourth streams control the addresses of the chess pieces, Castle and King, on the big chessboard. As these chess pieces maneuver on the chessboard, the pixels of the satellite images are swapped with each other. In particular, the movement of the chess pieces has been ingeniously linked with the swapping of the pixels of the given satellite images. These operations have been repeated at certain times to inject confusion effects in the suggested image encryption algorithm. The fifth and last stream of random numbers has been employed to introduce the requisite diffusion effects. Plaintext sensitivity –a necessary feature to foil the potential differential attacks, has been achieved by taking the SHA-256 hash codes of given images. Simulation results validate proof of concept. Moreover, the cipher has been subjected to comprehensive performance analyses using the security parameters of key space, histogram, correlation, information entropy, local Shannon entropy, irregular and maximum deviation, etc. We got an information entropy of 7.9981 and a computational time of 1.2445 seconds. These results suggest that the proposed satellite image cipher can be installed in some real-world settings to reap its benefits.