imgCRYPTO

The purpose of this app is to provide a user-friendly image encryption and watermarking application targeted towards the casual users for use in everyday life. The app is heavily tailored around its simplicity and aesthetics, with delightful graphics and intuitive animations. This app aims to be lightweight and fast while still providing its users a powerful tool for image cryptography.

Features:
• Image Encryption – perform image encryption using keys generated from chaotic maps
• Image Decryption – perform image decryption using keys generated from chaotic maps
• Embed Watermark – embed watermark into an image based on bit plane slicing
• Extract Watermark – extract watermark from an image based on bit plane slicing
• Image Checker – check two images for their similarity
• Log – keep track of the usage history of the application
• Help page – provide simple explanations on how to use the application
• About page – provide some background information on the application

Image encryption is used to keep an image safe and secure from interceptions. Image encryption works by modifying an image into a jumble of nonsense which does not resemble the original image at all. The image can be transformed back to normal through decryption, by providing the exact same keys that were used to encrypt the image. It is impossible to decrypt an image without the crucial keys, which should be only known by the sender and the intended recipient. Therefore, the data is effectively protected from any other party other than the sender and the intended recipient.

Image encryption in imgCRYPTO works on the basis of chaotic maps. Chaotic maps are mathematical maps that exhibit chaotic behavior. Chaotic maps are capable of generating a non-uniform distribution of sequence. It means that the values generated from chaotic maps are random and unpredictable in nature. When these chaotic values are used in encryption, it ensures that the encrypted image will be significantly different than the original image.

Image watermarking is used mainly to verify the authenticity or integrity of the original image or to show the identity of its owners by embedding another image into it. Image watermarking is often used to counter piracy and to protect intellectual rights. Image watermarking works by hiding another image (called message image) in the original image. A properly watermarked image appears to be very similar to the original, therefore it is impossible to distinguish it from the original with naked eyes.

Image watermarking in imgCRYPTO works on the basis of bit plane slicing. The use of image watermarking is mainly in identifying the ownership of an image or in authentication purposes by the principle of hiding another image in the original image. Since the watermark image needs to be invisible, it has to be embedded deep into the data of the original image in order to make it unnoticeable, but it also has to be distinct enough from the original image to facilitate extraction of the watermark. This is made possible by using the bit plane slicing technique (otherwise known as watermarking in spatial domain).