A new efficient permutation-diffusion encryption algorithm based on a chaotic map

Nowadays, the internet is the main channel for private communication. The use of a public channel for private communications increases the importance of cryptography to protect the information. The most commonly shared archives are images, for which traditional algorithms are not suitable due to the file’s large size and algorithms’ high computational cost. In this scenario, chaos theory surges as a promising alternative for image encryption due to intrinsic features of chaos, leading to the development of many chaotic ciphers for image encryption. However, many of them are either insecure or ineffective, motivating us to present a new chaotic cipher that satisfies both of these requirements. To ensure peak performance, a comparison of chaotic maps is made to select the one most conductible to a high throughout, while architecture measures such as the use of the permutation-diffusion architecture and a hash function are taken to ensure security. Extensive tests applied show that the cipher is secure against various forms of attacks such as statistical, differential, noise, occlusion and chosen-plaintext, while the throughput analysis shows that our cipher compares favorably to other recently presented chaotic ciphers in literature.