Image Encryption based on AES Stream Cipher in Counter Mode

Abstract

With the first evolution of digital data exchange, information security is becoming more important in data storage and transmission. Because of widely using images in industrial process, it is important to protect the confidential image data from unauthorized access. In this paper, we intend to develop software based image encryption system by applying AES in Counter Mode (AES-CTR) with an explicit initialization vector (IV). IV generation includes incrementing a counter for each packet and linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs). AES-CTR uses the AES block cipher to create stream cipher. AES-CTR uses the only AES encrypt operation for both encryption and decryption, making AES-CTR implementations smaller than implementations of many other AES modes. It is an attractive encryption algorithm for high-speed networking and improving the security of images from unauthorized access.