Enhancing Image Security With a Novel Chaotic System: A Focus on Multiface Image Encryption in Smart Applications

To ensure stringent security strategies for image information involving personal privacy during conveyance and storage, we propose an innovative multiface privacy protection scheme based on chaos theory. Compared to single-face encryption algorithms, the proposed scheme has broader potential applications in fields, such as smart cities and smart transportation. Specifically, a new spatiotemporal chaotic system named the sine-cosine coupled mapping lattice system (SCCML) is designed. It features a larger parameter domain, complexity, and profound unpredictability, yet maintains a simpler construction aimed at providing potential benefits and implementations in the field of information security. In the proposed multiface privacy protection scheme, multiple faces within an image are rapidly and accurately identified and then encrypted using the proposed SCCML-based digital separation loop encryption algorithm. The encryption algorithm exhibits a synchronous scrambling diffusion mechanism. Additionally, the introduction of mixed multibase cascade diffusion offers multiple layers of security for facial data, prevents diffusion singularity, and enhances diversity, making it significantly more challenging to crack. Experimental verification on a real multiface image dataset shows that the algorithm is superior, practical, safe, and efficient.