Chaos theory based cryptography in digital image distribution

The amount of visual information available in digital format has grown exponentially in recent years due to the wide availability of digital equipments, changes in the way people socially interact by setting up community web pages, wide spread use of the Internet in all types of personal and business activities, pay-after-trial services of digital multimedia and developments in high speed transmission of digital images with high reliability. However, the wide accessibility of the Internet and its connected hosts and availability of technology to capture network traffic or penetrate hosts have made digital images vulnerable to unauthorized access while in storage and during transmission over a network. Hence users of the Internet and application that use or process digital images need to address security issues to protect commercial value of images and also ensure user privacy and other issues. The objective of the research presented in this paper focused on proposing an image encryption technique which is capable of encrypting an image effectively and securely with a predefined visibility level. The stipulated objective is achieved by employing 2D chaotic map called the Kaplan-Yorke map.