Crypto-Steganographic Method to Protect Secret Messages

Multiple methods are used to hide secret messages in digital color images, and the most important and most common is the least significant bit (LSB) method. The LSB method is a known and exposed method, and anyone with programming experience can retrieve the secret message embedded in the digital image. In this paper research we will add some enhancements to improve the security level of LSB method to protect the embedded secret message from being hacked. A simple method of secret message cryptography will be used to encrypt the secret message before bedding it using LSB method. The method will be based on using color image as an image_key; this image_key will be resized to generate the needed secret private key used to encrypt-decrypt secret message. The length and the contents of the generated private key will dynamically change depending on the message length and the selected image_key. The selected image_key will be kept in secret without transmission and will be known only by the sender and receiver and it can be changed any time when needed. The proposed crypto_steganographic method will be implemented to show how it will increase the level o secret message protection.

Face Detection Based On Eye-Mouth Triangular Approach

Human face is a complex and dynamic structure. It is a challenge to be able to make a face recognition system like humans. At the beginning of its development, many facial recognition studies only focused on facial features. In 1991, Turk and Pentland developed a face recognition system based on Principal Component Analysis named eigenface. This system is very efficient because it only focuses on components that most affect facial image. However, this system has weaknesses, which cannot be used to determine the position of the face. In this final project, image processing methods will be carried out to detect faces in digital images. The method used is eye mouth triangular approach with the steps being taken are skin detection, eye detection, mouth detection, and facial confirmation. From the results of a hundred digital color images tested, there were 82 images that were successfully detected. The main system failure is caused by failure in skin detection. Further development is needed so that the system can work optimally.

The genus Lepisiota Santschi, 1926 of the Arabian Peninsula with the description of a new species, Lepisiota elbazi sp. nov. from Oman, an updated species identification key, and assessment of zoogeographic affinities

This study updates and summarizes information on the taxonomy and status of the Arabian Lepisiota fauna. We describe and illustrate the new species Lepisiota elbazisp. nov. from the Dhofar Governorate, Oman based on the worker caste. The new species is closest to the Arabian species, L. arabica Collingwood, 1985 from the southwestern mountains of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and can be separated by having fewer body hairs (two pairs on the posterior margin of the head, two or three pairs on the promesonotum and, one or two pairs on the first gastral tergite), the longer head, scapes, and propodeal spines, and the shorter mesosoma. We present the first illustrated key to the worker caste of the Arabian species of Lepisiota using stacked digital color images to facilitate species determination. The new species is probably endemic to the Dhofar Governorate and seems rare. An up-to-date synoptic checklist of 21 species representing the Arabian Lepisiota Santschi, 1926 is emended based upon the most recent literature in ant systematics. Five species are excluded from the Arabian Lepisiota fauna, L. arenaria (Arnold, 1920), L. erythraea (Forel, 1910), L. incisa (Forel, 1913), L. sericea (Forel, 1892a), and L. simplex (Forel, 1892) for issues related to previous species misidentification. Lepisiota carbonaria (Emery, 1892) is proposed as a senior synonym of L. depilis (Emery, 1897) syn. nov. The faunal composition of Lepisiota species recorded from the Arabian Peninsula can be divided/delineated into two main groups according to their zoogeographical relationships; (1) Afrotropical (11 species-~52.38%); (2) Palearctic (10 species-~47.62%) elements whereas eight species (~38%) are Arabian endemics.

Securing Digital Color Image based on Hybrid Substitution Cipher

This study proposes securing digital color images with hybrid substitution cryptographic methods combined with the Vigenere and Beaufort methods. The hybrid process is carried out using the help of two randomly generated keys. The first key is a matrix with an 8-bits value and the second key is a matrix with a binary value. The binary key is used to determine the Vigenere or Beaufort process, while the 8-bit key is used for modulus operations based on the Vigenere or Beaufort algorithm. At the test stage used a standard image that has an RGB color channel as a dataset. The quality of the cryptographic method is measured by several measuring instruments such as MSE, PSNR, and SSIM to determine the quality of encryption visually and the perfection of decryption, besides that it is used Entropy, NPCR and UACI to determine the probability of encryption resistance and quality against differential attacks. The TIC TOC function is also used to measure the computing speed of the encryption and decryption process. Measurement results using all measuring instruments indicate that the proposed method has very satisfying results and has fast computing. Keywords – Cryptography, Substitution Cipher, Modulus Function, Encryption, Decryption, Image Transmission

Vector Isolated Minimum Distance Filtering for Image De-Noising in Digital Color Images

Image de-noising forms a crucial component of digital image processing. The state-of-the-art vector median filtering based image de-noising approaches like the median filtering, the vector median filtering and the basic vector directional filtering and their extensions process the vector pixels jointly in the red, green and blue components. Consequently any smoothing applied therein is leveraged on all the color components equally. In this paper we propose that processing the vectors in isolation, that is, each color component taken separately, and then smoothed by minimising the aggregate distance between the pixels in each color component will lead to more efficient de-noising of noisy images. We demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method compared against vector filtering approaches using several images and test measures.

An Efficient and Highly Secure Technique to Encrypt and Decrypt Color Images

Digital color images are considered as the most widely used data. They are exchanged frequently on the internet and via email, so an efficient and highly secure method of color image encryption and decryption is needed. Different methods of encryption-decryption are used, but most of them suffer from low efficiency or low-security level or both. In this paper, an efficient and highly secure method of encryption-decryption will be proposed, tested, and implemented. The efficiency parameters will be calculated and compared with other methods’ parameters to prove the efficiency of the proposed method.

Implementing a Chaotic Cryptosystem by Performing Parallel Computing on Embedded Systems with Multiprocessors

Profiling and parallel computing techniques in a cluster of six embedded systems with multiprocessors are introduced herein to implement a chaotic cryptosystem for digital color images. The proposed encryption method is based on stream encryption using a pseudo-random number generator with high-precision arithmetic and data processing in parallel with collective communication. The profiling and parallel computing techniques allow discovery of the optimal number of processors that are necessary to improve the efficiency of the cryptosystem. That is, the processing speed improves the time for generating chaotic sequences and execution of the encryption algorithm. In addition, the high numerical precision reduces the digital degradation in a chaotic system and increases the security levels of the cryptosystem. The security analysis confirms that the proposed cryptosystem is secure and robust against different attacks that have been widely reported in the literature. Accordingly, we highlight that the proposed encryption method is potentially feasible to be implemented in practical applications, such as modern telecommunication devices employing multiprocessors, e.g., smart phones, tablets, and in any embedded system with multi-core hardware.