An image encryption scheme based on the four-dimensional chaotic system and the Mealy Finite State Machine

Abstract This paper proposes a four-dimensional hyperchaotic system to overcome the defect of weak encryption effect due to the simple complexity of low-dimensional chaotic systems in chaos-based image encryption schemes, which is verified to have better chaotic properties by dynamics analysis, sensitivity analysis, and randomness test. In addition, this paper proposes an image encryption scheme by combining the proposed chaotic system with the Mealy finite state machine (MFSM) to overcome the problem that some schemes are not resistant to statistical analysis. Firstly, the chaotic sequence is applied in the Knuth-Durstenfeld shuffling method to scramble the original image efficiently; secondly, according to the different information contained in the bit-plane, the pixel is decomposed and cyclically shifted at the bit level to achieve bit-level scrambling and diffusion; thirdly, the chaotic sequence is applied to select the rules for DNA encoding, and the diffusion process is achieved by Mealy finite state machine transformation; lastly, decoding the diffused image by selecting DNA rules randomly to get cipher image. This paper gives the experimental results, demonstrating that the algorithm is highly secure. It can improve the encryption algorithm's sensitivity to plaintext and resist attacks such as differential attacks and select attacks.