Journal of Information Security and Applications 45 (2019) 35–43 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Information Security and Applications journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jisa Quick response code and Interference-based optical asymmetric cryptosystem Avishek Kumar, Naveen K. Nishchal ∗ Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Patna, Bihta 801 106, Patna, Bihar, India a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Keywords: Image encryption Arnold cat map Quick response codes Fresnel transform Interference a b s t r a c t In this paper, a novel image encryption scheme based on quick response code and interference in Fresnel domain is proposed. The framework is asymmetric in nature due to amplitude- and phase-truncation operation of encoded spectrum. The input image is scrambled using Arnold cat map and divided into pixel blocks. Each block is encoded into a quick response code, which are then multiplexed to generate a binary matrix. The phase-truncated binary matrix is encoded into analytically generated two phase- only masks. During decryption the phase-only masks are recombined to yield the binary matrix, which is grouped into quick response codes and decoded into pixel blocks. The pixel blocks are recombined and descrambled to retrieve the original image. Numerical simulations have been carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Securing data/information and secure dissemination of informa- tion are of prime concern in today’s digital era. Digital compu- tational techniques to secure data have been flourishing through decades. In last two decades, optical image encryption techniques have also emerged and are attracting increased attention because of their high speed and parallel processing capability. An opti- cally processed image may be represented as an amplitude im- age, phase-only image or a combination of both. A groundbreak- ing research was reported by Refregier and Javidi, who proposed a scheme to encrypt an image into a stationary white noise em- ploying double random phase encoding (DRPE) architecture [1]. The method was further explored and expanded into other opti- cal domains, such as, fractional Fourier, Fresnel, gyrator transform domains, etc. [2–4]. Despite widespread acclamation of DRPE, the scheme was proved to be prone to security attacks. The decryption key was easily obtained if Dirac delta function was used as the test im- age in the encryption process [5]. Vulnerabilities of DRPE to vari- ous other applicable attacks were also reported [6–8]. A method of scrambling and then applying DRPE to the test image also proved to be vulnerable to brute force attack [9]. To address the vulnera- bilities of the basic DRPE, security enhanced versions of the DRPE scheme were reported [10,11]. The major drawback of symmetric ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: nkn@iitp.ac.in (N.K. Nishchal). cryptosystems is the key management. Since the same key is used during encryption and decryption process, the keys needs to be sent to the authorized receiver through a dedicated channel and are thus vulnerable to attacks. Asymmetric cryptographic schemes use different encryption and decryption keys, in which encryption key is made publicly available. Even if the attacker gets any of the pairs of plaintext, cipher text, and encryption key, it would be very difficult to derive the decryption key and hence decrypt the infor- mation. Amplitude- and phase-truncation based optical asymmet- ric cryptosystems are very popular among the research community and various contributions exist in literature [12]. However, a se- curity leak has been discovered in the basic scheme. The scheme was prone to known-plaintext attack, in which the decryption keys are obtained using a pair of known-plaintext and ciphertext us- ing the modified Gerchberg–Saxton phase retrieval algorithm [13]. The basic scheme was also proved vulnerable to a specific attack [14,15]. Chaos, a non-linear phenomenon has gained lot of ground and continues to be an active element of research owing to its highly unpredictable nature and sensitivity to the initial conditions. A slight difference between the initial states produces entirely differ- ent trajectories, which grows exponentially with time and do not converge. Singh and Sinha proposed a chaos-based DRPE scheme in which the random phase masks (RPM) are generated by chaos functions namely Logistic map, Tent map, and Kalpan–Yorke map [16]. A proposal to enhance the security of basic DRPE scheme by randomizing the input image pixels using a chaotic Baker map have also been reported [20]. It can therefore be inferred that optical technologies linked with chaos theory may be a good https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jisa.2019.01.004 2214-2126/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.