International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology E-ISSN 2277 – 4106, P-ISSN 2347 – 5161 ©2019 INPRESSCO ® , All Rights Reserved Available at http://inpressco.com/category/ijcet Research Article 368| International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.9, No.3 (May/June 2019) A Nature Inspired Color Image Encryption Technique to Protect the Satellite Images Bhagyashri Pandurangi R †* and Meenakshi R. Patil † Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, KLS Gogte Institute of Technology, Belagavi, Karnataka, India ‡ Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Jain AGMIT, Jamakhandi, Karnataka, India Received 01 March 2019, Accepted 01 May 2019, Available online 02 May 2019, Vol.9, No.3 (May/June 2019) Abstract A color image encryption algorithm based on chaotic maps is proposed in this paper. The algorithm is based on two bio-operations: crossover and mutation. To enhance the robustness against differential attacks, the mutated image is subjected to scrambling process operated on the pixel values of the image using a random sequence. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is capable of generating encrypted images with uniform distribution of the pixel values and very low correlation coefficients of adjacent pixels. It is very sensitive to any change in the secret key values. The results show that the algorithm is robust to statistical and differential attacks. Keywords: Cryptography, symmetric encryption, logistic map, bio inspired encryption, digital transactions 1. Introduction 1 Due to phenomenal growth in internet, multimedia content such as image, video and audio can be easily transmitted from source to destination. This develops a huge impact on development of applications including e-commerce, industry, multimedia and entertainment which rely totally on the Internet. Thus, to stop corruption of multimedia transmission content from unauthorized user, security plays a major role for content protection. In the past few years, cryptography has become a major tool for securing multimedia transmission content such as image, video and audio. Image encipherment is somehow different from text encryption due to some typical image characteristics like bulkiness and high correlation among pixels, which are generally difficult to handle by traditional methods [Sahar Mazloom, 2011]. The properties of chaotic systems like sensitivity to initial conditions, pseudorandom nature, and non-periodicity, have selected them a suitable tool for image encryption [Z. Lin, 2009]. A region based selective image encryption technique was proposed in [K. C. Ravishankar,2006] that provides the facility of selective encryption and selective reconstruction of images. A modified chaotic based image encryption scheme using two logistic maps and two-dimensional baker map was proposed in [Rashidah Kadir, 2010]. Paper [Sahar Mazloom, 2011] proposes a symmetric image cipher based on the *Corresponding author’s ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9620-3571 DOI: https://doi.org/10.14741/ijcet/v.9.3.4 widely used confusion–diffusion architecture which utilizes the chaotic 2D Standard map and 1D Logistic map. Paper [Aihong Z, 2010] proposed a method of color image protective transmission based on Logistic map and LSB hiding algorithm. A new self-adaptive image encryption algorithm was presented in [Chen Gang, 2005] that takes on a thorough integrity protect function and can be used in data validation. Fig.1 Typical architecture of an encryption algorithm Based on self-adaptive wave transmission, an image encryption algorithm was given in the paper [Xiaofeng Liao, 2010]. In the paper [Shujiang Xu, 2010] fast image encryption scheme based on a nonlinear chaotic map was proposed. Liu and Wang have designed a stream- cipher algorithm based on one-time keys and robust chaotic maps, in order to get high security and improve the dynamical degradation [Liu Hongjun, 2010]. They have utilized the piecewise linear chaotic map as the generator of a pseudo-random key stream sequence. The various image encryption algorithms proposed in