City Research Online

Abstract

Image protection schemes face critical challenges, including high computational overhead, vulnerability to differential attacks, and susceptibility to known-plaintext and chosen-plaintext attacks. Many existing methods struggle to balance security and efficiency, limiting their practicality in real-time and resource-constrained environments. To address these challenges, we propose a novel image protection scheme that integrates NIST-approved elliptic curve P-256, SHA-256 hashing, and the improved Josephus sequence. Our approach ensures secure and efficient key generation, making it well-suited for low-resource applications. We rigorously evaluate the proposed scheme through comprehensive security and performance analysis, including correlation, histogram, entropy, differential attack resilience, computational efficiency, key sensitivity, key spacing, and plaintext attack resistance. Results demonstrate that our scheme outperforms state-of-the-art existing methods in security robustness while achieving notably low computational time. Furthermore, our security evaluation confirms that the protected images achieve near-optimal theoretical values across standard cryptographic benchmarks. In terms of efficiency, our scheme exhibits processing speed while maintaining security performance, making it a strong candidate for secure and real-time image protection applications.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2026. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publisher Keywords:	Elliptic curve cryptography, Cryptographic hash function, Improved Josephus sequence Security
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
Departments:	School of Science & Technology School of Science & Technology > Department of Computer Science
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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