A novel and efficient method based on knight moves for securing the information contents of images - A parallel approach

Protection of multimedia information from unauthorized access demands a mechanism that provides security. In addition, securing the information contents in less time is a challenging issue. In this work, a novel and efficient parallel approach is proposed based on moves of knight pieces to secure the contents of an image in short span of time. The novelty of the approach lies in simulating the moves of knight pieces in parallel and generation of key sequence based on crossover operation. Further, in this approach, initialization of positions of knight pieces results in generation of key sequence. The proposed approach comprises three stages. In the first stage, a number of knight pieces which process in parallel are selected automatically. In second stage, random keys are generated based on the linear feedback shift register to select one of one point, two point and arithmetic crossover operation. Using crossover operation key sequence is generated. In third stage, exclusive OR operation is performed on the selected position of knight piece and generated key to produce the encrypted image. Experiments are carried out exhaustively on various types of images and performance of the proposed approach is measured in terms of parameters structural similarity index, feature similarity index, entropy and correlation coefficient. The proposed approach is compared with an existing parallel approach and the comparative analysis reveals that the proposed method outperforms in securing contents of images.