Fast Selective Encryption Methods for Bitmap Images

The authors are interested in image protection within resource environments offered by commodity computers such as desktops, laptops, tablets, or even smartphones. Additionally, the authors have in mind use cases where a large amount images are to be protected. Traditional encryption is not fast enough for such environments and such use cases. The authors derived a new solution by parallelizing selective encryption and using available GPU (Graphic Process Unit) acceleration. Progress obtained in terms of performance allows considering selective encryption as a general purpose solution for the use cases considered. After presenting related works, a ‘first level' of protection is described and a new ‘strong level' of protection method is introduced. Different architecture designs and implementation choices are extensively discussed, considering various criteria: performance indeed, but also image reconstruction quality and quality of data protection.