A Lightweight Image Encryption Algorithm Based on Secure Key Generation

Abstract

The explosive increase in the transmission of digital images and cloud-based storage has made confidentiality and integrity of visual data an important security requirement. Image encryption is an important tool for protecting sensitive information from unauthorized access and cyber threats. In this paper, we propose full image encryption and decryption framework based on the AES which is implemented from scratch without using any external cryptographic libraries. The system takes any digital image as input. The system converts pixel level data into secure binary cipher text by using AES symmetric key cryptography. The information of the image becomes incomprehensible to the binary data by the encryption process and can not be used for visual and statistical inference attacks. The encrypted output is stored in a special repository and cannot be viewed or re-created without the proper decryption process. During decryption , the same AES key and algorithmic structure are used to reprocess the encrypted binary data , restoring the original image without loss of quality . The framework supports flexible image formats and shows the reliable reversibility, confidentiality and robustness to unauthorized access. This system integrates the encryption and decryption into a single application flow for the purpose of computational efficiency and secure image handling. The approach demonstrates the usefulness of AES in multimedia security applications, especially in the context of secure image storage, transmission and access control.