Chaotic Quantum Encryption to Secure Image Data in Post Quantum Consumer Technology

The rapid advancement in consumer technology has led to an exponential increase in the connected devices, resulting in an enormous and continuous flow of data, particularly the image data. This data needs to be processed, managed, and secured efficiently, especially in the quantum-enabled consumer technology era. This paper, in this regards, presents a quantum image encryption scheme featuring a novel two-phase chaotic confusion-diffusion architecture. The proposed architecture consists of four distinct confusion-diffusion modules that perform a simultaneous qubit and pixel-level encryption on both the position and intensity of quantum encoded pixels. Moreover, quantum circuits for ’qubit-level chaotic transformation’ and ’chaos-based selective perfect shuffle operation’ have been implemented, which collectively enhance the encryption strength of the proposed scheme. Extensive evaluation has been performed based on various statistical security parameters, such as entropy and correlation. When subjected to differential attacks, the proposed scheme proved its resilience exhibiting ideal results of average 99.6% NPCR (Number of Pixels Change Rate) and 33.5% UACI (Unified Average Changing Intensity). Besides, the proposed scheme also demonstrated resilience against occlusion attacks. Tests involving 50% data occlusion from encrypted images validated the proposed scheme’s capability to successfully decrypt the tampered images, recovering maximum information.