Fast selective encryption for video stream of high efficiency video coding standard

In this paper, a lightweight encryption method is developed to protect the visual information of video. Due to the new video coding standards High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), and in order to meet the compression requirements a new enhancement for the existing encryption schemes is needed. This is because the lack of the ability of the current encryption methods to balance the security level with the compression efficiency of HEVC standard. Hence, we utilized the selective encryption for the sensitive syntax elements to secure video transmission and fulfill the attributes of HEVC standard. This is done via selection of sensitive syntax elements (Absolute Coefficient Levels) that are encrypted using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm. On several video benchmarks, the analysis results obtained that the relevant security level of visual video perception is achieved, a trade-off between encryption reliability, flexibility, maintaining the HEVC bitstream format compliance, and computational complexity are provided. The protection level of this method is strong enough against plaintext and brute force attacks.