Elliptic Curve Cryptography for Ciphering Images

Nikita Gupta1, Vikas Kundu2, Neha Kurra3, Shivani Sharma4, Bhagyashree Pal5
Department of Computer Engineering
Army Institute of Technology
Pune, India
gupta_nikita12@yahoo.co.in1, kundu.vikas13@gmail.com2, kneha93@yahoo.co.in3, shivani24_7@yahoo.co.in4

logarithms is harder than factoring for numbers of the same

Abstract— the growing dire need for more and more secure size. Computationally intensive hard problem leads to a
systems has led researchers worldwide to discover and stronger cryptographic system, which means that elliptic curve
implement newer ways of encryption. Public key cryptography cryptosystems are harder to break than RSA and Diffie-
techniques are gaining worldwide popularity for their ease and Hellman. Although initially these algorithms were not used
better strength. With the rapid developments of the much but now these algorithms are gaining popularity. ECC
communication and applications of multimedia techniques in has a very wide variety of applications: the US
recent years lead the researchers to focuses on the security of government uses it to protect internal communications, the Tor
digital data over the internet. In this paper we have discussed the project uses it to help assure anonymity, this mechanism was
use of Elliptical Curve Cryptography for ciphering color images. used by bitcoins to prove ownership, it provides signatures in
ECC has been proved to score over RSA on the basis of its
Apple's iMessage service, it is the technique which is used to
strength and speed. In this paper we have used NIST Curves for
encrypt DNS information with DNSCurve, and it is the also
ciphering color image.
used for authentication for secure Web browsing over
Keywords—Encryption, Elliptic Curve Cryptography SSL/TLS.[7]
In 1997 Robshaw and Yin analyzed performance of RSA and
I. INTRODUCTION ECC digital signature in a RSA laboratory. They compared
With the wireless communication, online transaction on RSA digital signature with a key size of 1024 bit and ECDSA
the rise, the security of these systems is one of the major with 160 bit length key. They compared both algorithms
concerns facing the computing world [5]. As the channel is according to storage requirements and computational speed.
open air, it leaves these systems completely vulnerable to They found ECC signature generation is seven times faster
unauthenticated accessibility. Some systems which include and signature verification is around six times slower than RSA
ATM machines and smart cards which can be used at varied signature [1].
locations demand stringent security at the cost of low Wiener researched about RSA with and ECDSA digital
processing. signature with key size in 1024 bit and 168 bit length. He
The systems so far had been using the traditional RSA concluded that RSA signature generation is eight times slower
techniques. But where this poses a question is the increased bit and signature verification is thirty times faster than ECDSA
lengths in the recent times and with growing number of digital signature.
transactions every minute, it also questions the processing The table 1 gives the key sizes recommended by the National
time as well. Here is where the elliptic curves have come to Institute of Standards and Technology to protect keys used in
the rescue. conventional encryption algorithms like the (DES) and (AES)
together with the key sizes for RSA, Diffie-Hellman and
Elliptical Curve Cryptography was introduced by Neal elliptic curves that are needed to provide equivalent security
Koblitz and Victor S. Miller. It makes use of the structure of [8].
elliptic curves over finite fields. ECC has the advantage of
smaller key size over the earlier public key cryptosystems in TABLE I Key Comparison
turn demanding lesser storage requirements [3]. Symmetric Key Size RSA and Diffi-Hellman ECC Key Size
Key Size
Theoretically the strength of elliptical curves can be
80 1024 160
attributed to the ease of finding a resultant point on the curve 112 2048 224
by multiplying a given point by a random number but 128 3072 256
deciphering the number even after knowing the given and 192 7680 384
resultant point is a herculean task [5]. 256 15360 521

III. ELLIPTIC CURVE CRYPTOGRAPHY

II. LITERATURE REVIEW
The major attraction by which ECC scores over other
ECC has a hard problem of elliptic curve discrete
public key cryptosystems is the same level of security it
logarithm. Although even after a long period of research, there
provides with smaller bit lengths thereby requiring lesser
is still not even a single algorithm exists which can solve this
storage and processing time. Informally, an elliptic curve is a
problem efficiently? That means solving elliptic curve discrete
kind of cubic curve but whose solutions are confined to a

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region of space. The general equation of an elliptic curve For converting all these mathematical basics into a
looks like: cryptosystem, some parameters are defined which are
y2 = x3 +ax +b [10] sufficient for meaningful operations. There are 6
distinct values for the Fp case and they comprise the so-
called "domain parameters":
a. p: The prime number which defines the field in
which the curve operates, Fp. All point
operations are taken modulo p.
b. a, b: The two coefficients which define the
curve. These are integers.
c. G: The generator (base) point. And used to
determine the "start" of the curve. This is
either given in point form G or as two separate
integers gx and gy
d. n: The order of the curve generator point G
(for getting the number of points on the curve).
For digital signing using ECDSA the
operations are congruent modulo n, not p.
e. h: The cofactor of the curve. It is the quotient
of the number of curve-points, or #E(Fp),
A prime number p and a generator point a are given along divided by n.
with the equation of the curve. The operation exploited for key 2. Generating a keypair
selection in elliptic curve cryptography comes from
considering elliptic curve as an abelian group with points as Generating a keypair for sender and receiver.
elements.
Point addition: It states that to add two points P and Q we To calculate the private key sender A, choose a random
draw a line PQ through them and find the third point of integer nA, such that
intersection –R of that line and reflect it over the axis of
symmetry of the curve. The resultant point R will give the 0<nA<n0
addition of the two points.
To calculate public key of sender PbA use scalar point
multiplication of the private key with the generator
point G:

PbA=nA.G

Similarly, receiver B will also calculate private key nB

and public key PbB=nB.G
3. Encryption
To encrypt a message M, which is encoded as a point
on the elliptic curve. Randomly select nA (Range 1to n-
1). Compute C1= nAG and C2= M + nAPbB where PbB is
the public key of receiver, n is the number of points
generated on curve and (C1,C2) are encrypted points.
4. Decryption
To decrypt the ciphertext,( C1,C2),receiver multiplies
the first point in the pair by B's secret key nB and
Example: An elliptic curve in Fp, it is a group of points which subtracts the result from the second point:
fulfill the "curve equation". The equation is: M + nAPbB - nB(nAG) = M + nA (nBG) - nB(nAG) = M
y2=x3+ax+b mod p [10]

IV. APPROACH
Here y, x, a and b belongs to curve Fp and they are integers
modulo p. The coefficients a and b are the characteristic The complete process followed by us can be summarized
coefficients of the curve. by the following flowchart:
1. Curve cryptosystem parameters

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Figure 1 Workflow Diagram • OpenCV in C++ for image processing operations
• Java for ECC Encryption and Decryption
The analyses of both the Setups are given in Table 2 and
Table 3 respectively.

TABLE1 Analysis of Ciphering of Image using ECC according to setup 1

NIST Curve Time for Time for Image Processing
[5] ECC ECC Operations
Encryption Decryption
(in sec) ( in sec) Sender Receiver

P – 192 0.577 10.161 2.444 0.407

P – 224 0.617 3.343 0.430 0.301
P – 256 0.575 2.951 0.448 0.361
P – 384 0.772 5.264 2.445 0.335
P – 521 1.210 29.736 0.506 0.310

TABLE2 Analysis of Ciphering of Image using ECC according to setup 2

NIST Time for Time for Image Processing

Curves [5] ECC ECC Operations
Encryption Decryption
(in sec) ( in sec) Sender Receiver

P – 192 0.936 3.675 0.072 0.089

P – 224 0.999 3.993 0.084 0.086
1. Operations performed by the sender: P – 256 1.087 4.580 0.097 0.120
a. The image to be encrypted is obtained. P – 384 1.474 3.914 0.079 0.102
P – 521 1.951 12.622 0.081 0.091
b. Represent the image to be encrypted using
OpenCV as a Mat Container. VI. RESULT
c. A random random number is generated using
number generator n. The results can be showcased by the following images at
d. The image matrix is divided into n parts. various stages of the process:
e. Every element of every matrix is divided by
another random number which is stored and so
Figure 2 Original Image
are the quotient and remainder.
f. Koblitz encoding [3] is used to generate points
on the curve.
g. The points are encrypted.
h. The encrypted image is then sent across the
network.

2. Operations performed by the receiver:

a. The receiver receives the encrypted image.
b. Decryption is applied to obtain the points on
the curve.
c. Decoding is done to obtain the matrix
elements.
d. The matrix elements are multiplied by the
number obtained while encryption.
e. All the matrices are merged and converted to
the original image.
V. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
Here we used OpenCV with java and C++ to perform
image Encryption and Description using ECC.
Setup1:
• OpenCV in Java for image processing operations
• Java for ECC Encryption and Decryption
Setup2:

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 Figure 3 Image after Encryption Cryptography, you need a key size of 224 bits. The difference
becomes more and more pronounced as security levels
increase (and, as a corollary, as hardware gets faster, and the
recommended key sizes must be increased). A 384 -bit Elliptic
Curve Cryptography key matches a 7680-bit RSA key for
security. There is a scope of concealing the encrypted image
within another image. Because the encrypted image will
attract attention and arouse interest and someone can try to
decrypt it but once it’s hidden nobody will know that there is
another image behind this image. In this paper, all the pixels
of the image are encrypted and if the image size is very large
then proposed system will takes more processing time. So,
instead of encrypting all the pixels of the image we can
encrypt only the important part of the image which will help in
Figure 4 Image after Decryption reducing the processing time.

References
[1]. Maryam Savari and Yeoh Eng Thiam, “Comparison of ECC and RSA in
Multipurpose Smart Card Application”.
[2]. Elsayed Mohammed and A.E Emarah and Kh.El-Shenawwey, “Elliptic
Curve Cyrptosystems on Smart Cards”.
[3]. Padma Bh, D.Chandravathi, P.prapoorna Roja: “Encoding and decoding
of a message in the implementation of Elliptic Curve Cryptography
using Koblitz Method”. International Journal on Computer Science and
Engineering (IJCSE) Vol. 02, No. 05, 2010, 1904-1907
[4]. Hankerson, Menezes, Vanstone. “Guide to elliptic curve cryptography”
Springer, 2004 ISBN 038795273X 332s_CsCr
[5]. http://www.nsa.gov/business/programs/elliptic_curve.shtml
[6]. Kamlesh Gupta1, Sanjay Silakari, “ECC over RSA for Asymmetric
Encryption: A Review”
[7]. http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/a-relatively-easy-to-understand-
primer-on-elliptic-curve-cryptography/2/
[8]. http://www.nsa.gov/business/programs/elliptic_curve.shtml
VII. FUTURE SCOPE [9]. Santoshi Ketan Pote, Usha Mittal “Elliptic Curve Cryptographic
Algorithm”
Elliptic Curve Cryptography is such an excellent choice for [10]. Christof Paar, Jan Pelzl ,”Understanding Cryptography”
doing asymmetric cryptography in portable, necessarily
constrained devices right now, mainly because of the level of
security offered for smaller key sizes. A popular,
recommended RSA key size for most applications is 2,048
bits. For equivalent security using Elliptic Curve

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