PLOS ONE

RESEARCH ARTICLE

A new secure image encryption algorithm

based on a 5D hyperchaotic map
Dejian Fang1,2, Shuliang Sun ID2*
1 College of Computer Science, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China, 2 School of Electronics and
Information Engineering, Fuqing Branch of Fujian Normal University, Fuqing, China

* [email protected]

Abstract
Image encryption is an effective method for protecting private images during communica-
tion. In this paper, a novel image encryption method is proposed based on a 5D hyperchao-
tic system. Since a 5D hyperchaotic system can generate more complex dynamic behavior
a1111111111 than a low-dimensional system, it is used in this paper to generate pseudorandom number
a1111111111
sequences. The generated sequences are processed to obtain new sequences. The ran-
a1111111111
a1111111111 domness of the new sequences is improved by recombination and rearrangement. The
a1111111111 experimental results and theoretical analysis show that the method possesses a large key
space and can resist differential attacks, statistical analysis, entropy analysis, clipping
attacks and noise attacks. Therefore, it is very secure and can be used for secure
communication.
OPEN ACCESS

Citation: Fang D, Sun S (2020) A new secure

image encryption algorithm based on a 5D
hyperchaotic map. PLoS ONE 15(11): e0242110.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242110
1 Introduction
Editor: Hua Wang, Victoria University, AUSTRALIA
With the rapid development of the Internet and communication technologies, researchers
Received: June 11, 2020
have focused increasingly more on information security. Images are known as one of the most
Accepted: October 26, 2020 important and popular multimedia technologies and are widely transmitted over the Internet.
Published: November 12, 2020 It is important to protect private images from hackers during communication. Image encryp-
tion is an effective method for protecting private images during communication, and many
Copyright: © 2020 Fang, Sun. This is an open
access article distributed under the terms of the image encryption methods have been proposed [1–3]. Chaos is famous for its sensitivity to ini-
Creative Commons Attribution License, which tial conditions and system parameters, pseudorandomness, ergodicity and reproduction. It is
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and suitable for image encryption. Many chaotic image cryptosystems have been proposed [4–9].
reproduction in any medium, provided the original Gao et al. [4] proposed a new nonlinear chaotic algorithm based on a power function and tan-
author and source are credited.
gent function. The system parameters were obtained by experimental analysis. It is a one-time
Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are password system. Wang and Zhang [5] proposed a new color image encryption method based
within the manuscript and its Supporting on bit permutations and correlated chaos. Heterogeneous a bit permutation process was
Information files.
adopted to reduce the computational cost and improve the permutation efficiency. An
Funding: The authors received no specific funding expanded XOR operation was also employed for the red (R), green (G) and blue (B) compo-
for this work. nents of color images. Sun [6] proposed an image encryption scheme based on DNA opera-
Competing interests: The authors have declared tions and a chaotic map. A two-dimensional sine iterative chaotic map with an infinite
that no competing interests exist. collapse matrix was employed. An extended XOR operation was also applied to improve the

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PLOS ONE 5D hyperchaotic image encryption algorithm

security of the system. Liu and Wang [7] proposed a color image encryption scheme based on
one-time keys. Image encryption using the DNA complementary rule and chaotic system was
proposed in [8]. Wang et al. [9] proposed a chaotic image encryption algorithm based on a
perception model. A fast image encryption algorithm based on the perceptron model was pro-
posed in [10]. Wang and Gao proposed an image encryption algorithm based on matrix semi-
tensor product theory and a Boolean network [11–12]. However, many image encryption
methods employ low-dimensional chaotic systems [13–16]. Low-dimensional chaotic systems
have a small key space and parameters. They are not safe enough to use as an image
cryptosystem.
A hyperchaotic system is a better image cryptosystem than a low-dimensional chaotic sys-
tem. A hyperchaotic system has more than one positive Lyapunov exponent. It generates more
complex dynamic behavior and higher randomness than low-dimensional chaotic systems
[17–21]. Ye and Wong [18] designed an image encryption scheme based on a time delay and a
hyperchaotic system. A permutation function and double diffusion operations were executed
in both the forward and reverse directions. Sun [19] proposed a novel hyperchaotic image
encryption algorithm based on pixel-level scrambling, bit-level scrambling and DNA encod-
ing. A 5-D hyperchaotic system was executed to generate chaotic sequences. Chen [20] pro-
posed a fast chaos-based image encryption scheme with a dynamic state variable selection
mechanism. Liu and Kadir [22] proposed color image encryption using bit-level permutations
and a high-dimensional chaotic system. Sun et al. [23, 24] proposed a novel hyperchaotic
image encryption method. Since a 5-D hyperchaotic system [25] has three positive Lyapunov
exponents and generates more complex dynamic behavior than a low-dimensional system, we
also adopt a 5-D hyperchaotic system to generate chaotic sequences in this paper. To eliminate
the correlations between adjacent elements in chaotic sequences, the generated sequences are
pretreated before being used for scrambling and diffusion. Compared with other encryption
algorithms, the proposed method has advantages in efficiency and security.
In this paper, we propose a new image encryption method based on a 5D hyperchaotic sys-
tem. First, a 5D hyperchaotic system is used to generate chaotic sequences. Then, chaotic
sequences are preprocessed to obtain new sequences, which are used in the image confusion
and diffusion processes.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. The 5D hyperchaotic system and chaotic
sequence generation are introduced in Section 2. The confusion and diffusion methods are
described in Section 3. Section 4 discusses the experimental results and safety analysis. The
conclusions are given in Section 5.

2 5D hyperchaotic system and chaotic sequence generation

2.1 5D hyperchaotic system
A 5D hyperchaotic system [25] can be described as follows:
8
> x_ 1 ¼ a1 ðx2 x1 Þ þ x4 þ a2 x5
>
>
>
>
>
> x_ ¼ a3 x1 x2 x1 x3
< 2
x_ 3 ¼ a4 x3 þ x1 x2 ð1Þ
>
>
>
> x_ 4 ¼ a5 x4 x1 x3
>
>
>
:
x_ 5 ¼ a6 x1 þ a7 x2

where a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, a6 and a7 are system parameters. When a1 = 10, a2 = 1, a3 = 28, a4 = 8/3,
a5 = 2, a6 = -1 and a7 = 1, the 5D hyperchaotic system is in a chaotic state and can produce five
chaotic sequences. The sequence trajectories of system (1) are displayed in Fig 1.

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Fig 1. Sequence trajectories of system (1) with (a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, a6, a7) = (10, 1, 28, 8/3, 2, -1, 1).
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2.2 Preprocessing of chaotic sequences

1. Calculate the initial values of system (1) as follows:
8 0 1
> XMN
>
> PðzÞ
>
> B 5 C
< x ð1Þ ¼ modBXx0 þ z¼1
> C
; 1C
1 B j
@ j¼1 MN A ð2Þ
>
>
>
>
>
>
:
xi ð1Þ ¼ modðxi 1 ð1Þ þ xi0 ; 1Þ i ¼ 2; 3; 4; 5;

where x10 , x20 , x30 , x40 and x50 are the initial secret keys, and mod (x, y) represents the residue of x
divided by y. The row and column of original plain image P are M and N.
2. System (1) is iterated N0 times to eliminate the transient response.
! !
X5
0 10
N0 ¼ 300 þ mod floor xi � 10 ; 300 ð3Þ
i¼1

where floor (x) returns the nearest integer value less than or equal to x.
3. System (1) continues to iterate MN/4 times to generate five real-number sequences: X =
[x1, x2, . . ., xMN/4], Y = [y1, y2, . . ., yMN/4], Z = [z1, z2, . . ., zMN/4], U = [u1, u2, . . ., uMN/4], and V
= [v1, v2, . . ., vMN/4].
4. Four sequences are chosen from the five chaotic sequences, and they are combined to
become a new sequence with the length MN. There are 120 kinds of arrangement modes
according to an arrangement study. For example, A1 = {Y, Z, V, X}, A2 = {X, V, Z, U}, A3 = {V,
X, Z, Y} and A4 = {U, Y, Z, V}.
5. Sequences A1, A2 and A3 are rearranged to form new sequences A1’, A2’ and A3’, respec-
tively. The processes of these rearrangements are demonstrated in Eqs 4 and 5.

½g; h� ¼ sort ðA4 Þ ð4Þ

0
Aj ðiÞ ¼ Aj ðhðiÞÞ; ð5Þ

where sort is a sorting function; i = 1, 2, . . ., MN; j = 1, 2, 3; g is the new sequence; and h is the
index value of g.

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3 Confusion and diffusion methods

3.1 Confusion method
1. The sequence of A1’ is modified first as Eq 6.
0 0 �
A1 ðiÞ ¼ mod floorðabsðA1 ðiÞ � 1010 ÞÞ; MN ð6Þ

where i = 1, 2, . . ., MN, and abs(x) is the absolute value of x.

2. Suppose i and i’ are the positions of plain image P. The corresponding confusion image is
denoted as P’, and it is calculated as follows:
0 0 0 �
i ¼ i þ mod A1 ðiÞ þ P ði 1Þ; MN þ 1 i ð7Þ

where i = 1, 2, . . ., MN, and P’(0) is designated as the initial secret key.

3. The scrambling method is executed as
0 0
P ðiÞ ¼ Pði0 Þ; Pði Þ ¼ PðiÞ ð8Þ

where P’(i) is the scrambling image positioned at i, P(i’) and P(i) are the plain images posi-
tioned at i’ and i, respectively, for i = 1, 2,. . ., MN.

3.2 Diffusion method

0 0
1. The sequences A2 and A3 are modified as Eqs 9 and 10.
0 0 �
A2 ðiÞ ¼ mod floorðabsðA2 ðiÞÞ � 1015 Þ; 8 ð9Þ

� �
0 0
A3 ðiÞ ¼ mod floorðabsðA3 ðiÞÞ � 1015 Þ; 256 ð10Þ

0 0
where A2 ðiÞ�[0, 7], A3 ðiÞ�[0, 255] and i = 1, 2, . . ., MN.
0
2. Convert decimal sequences P’ and A2 into the corresponding binary sequences.
3. Sequence Q is obtained by Eq 11.
� 0 0 �
QðrÞ ¼ CIRSFT P0 ðrÞ; LSBðA2 ðrÞÞ; A2 ðrÞ ð11Þ

where CIRSFT [r, s, t] represents the t-bit cyclic shift on binary sequence r. LSB(t) represents
the smallest bit of t. The left cyclic shift or right cyclic shift will be decided by s = 0 or s = 1.
4. Convert the binary sequence Q into its decimal sequence.
5. Diffusion sequence C is obtained by Eqs 12–14.
! !
X 5 0
P ð0Þ
0 15
sum ¼ floor xj þ � 10 ð12Þ
j¼1
256

0 0
Cð1Þ ¼ A3 ð1Þ � modðA3 ð1Þ þ Qð1Þ; 256Þ � modðsum; 256Þ ð13Þ

0 0
CðiÞ ¼ A3 ðiÞ � modðA3 ðiÞ þ QðiÞ; 256Þ � Cði 1Þ ð14Þ
0
where Q(i), A3 (i), C(i) and C(i-1) represent the decimal sequence value, chaotic sequence
value, diffusion sequence value and previous diffusion value, respectively, and i = 2, 3, . . ., MN.
6. Convert C to a gray image P”. Finally, encrypted image P” is obtained.
The flowchart of the image encryption procedure is displayed in Fig 2.
The decryption algorithm is the reverse process of the encryption algorithm.

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Fig 2. Flowchart of the image encryption procedure.

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4 Experimental results and safety analysis

In this paper, MATLAB 2010b is applied to execute the algorithm. The experiments are executed
on a computer with a Windows 7 operating system, inter(R) Core (TM) i3-3220, 3.3 GHz and 8.00
GB RAM. The initial values of the 5D chaotic system are x10 = 2.2356, x20 = 1.9057, x30 = 0.7468, x40 =
2.1577, x50 = 0.9723 and P’(0) = 128. The 256×256 gray images “Boat”, “Tiffany” and “Peppers” are
used as the plain images. The plain, cipher and deciphered images are shown in Fig 3.

4.1 Key space analysis

In this paper, the key space is determined by the initial values of the 5-D hyperchaotic system
{xi0, i = 1, 2, . . ., 5}. If the precision of the system is 10−15, the key space is approximately
(1015)5 = 1075�2249. It is larger than 2100, so the proposed method could effectively resist a
brute-force attack.
Other encryption schemes are compared with the proposed method in Table 1. It can be
seen that the key space of the proposed method is much larger than those of Refs [26, 31] but
smaller than that of Ref [19]. Although the key space in Ref [19] is larger than that of our
scheme, it has more secret keys and is more complex.

Fig 3. Encryption and decryption results. (a) Boat (b) Cipher image, (c) Decoded image, (d) Tiffany, (e) Cipher
image, (f) Decoded image, (g) Pepper (h) Cipher image, (i) Decoded image.
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Table 1. Key space results comparison with other methods.

Schemes Ref [19] Ref [26] Ref [31] proposed

Key space 1090 1070 1058 1075

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4.2 Key sensitivity analysis

An excellent cryptosystem should be sensitive to the initial keys. Two completely different
cipher images can be produced if a minor change (10−15) is made and the other four keys
are unchanged. The cipher image also cannot be decrypted correctly if even a slight change
(10−15) is made between the encryption and decryption keys. The key sensitivity test is
shown in Fig 4.
Key x1 is changed to x1+10−15, and the cipher image is displayed in Fig 4(A). The value of x2
is modified to x2+10−15, and the corresponding cipher image is shown in Fig 4(B). The value of
x4 is altered to x4+10−15 to decipher Fig 3(H), and the deciphered image is shown in Fig 4(C).
Fig 4(D) is the deciphered image when x5 is altered to x5+10−15. Table 2 shows the differences
between the different cipher and decipher images.
It can be concluded that a small difference in the secret key will generate a completely dif-
ferent cipher image. It also cannot extract the correct deciphered image. If the secret key and
plain image have a slight alteration, it is impossible to decrypt the plain image. The pixels differ
by approximately 99.6% between the original image and the decrypted image.

4.3 Histogram analysis

The histogram of the cipher image should be as uniform as possible. In the proposed method,
the histograms of the plain and cipher images of Boat, Tiffany and Pepper are displayed in Fig
5. It is shown that the plain image pixel values are centralized around some values; however,
the corresponding cipher image pixel values are very smooth and even. Therefore, it makes a
statistical attack ineffective.
The chi-square test [27, 28] is often used to measure the uniformity of the histogram. The
chi-square results are listed in Table 3 for different cipher images.
It can be shown from Table 3 that all values generated by the proposed method are smaller
than the theoretical value of 293.25 [29, 30]. It can be proven that the distribution of the histo-
gram is flat, and the proposed method could pass the chi-square test.

4.4 Correlation analysis

The plain image pixel has a great correlation with its neighboring pixels. An excellent crypto-
system should reduce this correlation to close to zero. The correlation coefficient, rxy, between

Fig 4. The key sensitivity test: (a) cipher image with x1 changed to x1+10−15; (b) cipher image with x2 changed to
x2+10−15; (c) deciphered image with x4 changed to x4+10−15; (d) deciphered image with x5 changed to x5+10−15.
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Table 2. Differences between the cipher and decipher images with minor key modifications.

Figures Secret keys Comparison with Fig 3(H)

x1 x2 x3 x4 x5
Fig 3(H) x10 x20 x30 x40 x50 -
0 −15 0 0
Fig 4(A) x +10
1 x 2 x3 x40 x50 0.9965
Fig 4(B) x10 x20 +10−15 x30 x40 x50 0.9974
Fig 4(C) x10 x20 x30 x40 +10−15 x50 0.9963
0 0 0 0 0 −15
Fig 4(D) x1 x 2 x3 x 4 x +10
5 0.9954

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two adjacent pixels, x and y, is defined as:

1X N
1X N
2
EðxÞ ¼ xi ; DðxÞ ¼ ðx EðxÞÞ ð15Þ
N i¼1 N i¼1 i

Fig 5. Histogram of the plain and cipher images. (a) Boat’s histogram (b) Boat’s cipher histogram, (c) Tiffany’s
histogram, (d) Tiffany’s cipher histogram, (e) Pepper’s histogram, (f) Pepper’s cipher histogram.
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Table 3. Chi-square test of the histograms.

Image Boat Tiffany Pepper

w2test (255) 293.25 293.25 293.25
w2test 245.37 265.62 256.29
Decision Pass Pass Pass

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1X N
covðx; yÞ ¼ ðx EðxÞÞðyi EðyÞÞ ð16Þ
N i¼1 i

covðx; yÞ
rxy ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð17Þ
DðxÞDðyÞ

A total of 7225 pairs of adjacent pixels in the “Pepper” plain and cipher images are selected in
the horizontal, vertical and diagonal directions. Fig 6 displays the correlation between two
adjacent pixels in the plain image Pepper and the corresponding cipher image. It can be con-
cluded that the pixels are highly correlated in the original image, while the correlation is con-
siderably reduced in the cipher image.
Table 4 displays the correlation coefficients of the plain image Pepper and the cipher image.

Fig 6. Correlation between the plain image Pepper and the cipher image in three directions. (a) Horizontal
direction of the plain image, (b) Horizontal direction of the cipher image, (c) Vertical direction of the plain image, (d)
Vertical direction of the cipher image, (e) Diagonal direction of the plain image, (f) Diagonal direction of the cipher
image.
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Table 4. Correlation coefficients of the adjacent pixels in the Pepper image.

Horizontal Vertical Diagonal

Plain image 0.9391 0.9700 0.9146
Cipher image 0.0068 -0.0054 0.0010

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4.5 Information entropy analysis

Information entropy is the most important characteristic of randomness. If m is the informa-
tion source, the information entropy can be defined as follows:
X
L
HðmÞ ¼ pðmi Þlog2 pðmi Þ ð18Þ
i¼1

where p(mi) represents the frequency of symbol mi, and L denotes the number of mi. The
information entropy data of the cipher image are shown in Table 5.
As displayed in Table 5, the information entropies of the cipher images are close to 8 bits.
This also means that the ciphered image with our algorithm is very uniform. This result dem-
onstrates that our method can resist entropy attacks. It can also be found that our algorithm is
better than other similar methods.

4.6 Differential attack analysis

NPCR and UACI are two important parameters that are often employed to measure the sensi-
tivity to plaintext [26]. These are defined as follows:

1 X M X N
NPCR ¼ Dði; jÞ � 100% ð19Þ
M � N i¼1 j¼1

1 X M X N
jC1 ði; jÞ C2 ði; jÞj
UACI ¼ � 100% ð20Þ
M � N i¼1 j¼1 255

(
0; if C1 ði; jÞ ¼ C2 ði; jÞ
Dði; jÞ ¼ ð21Þ
1; else

where M and N denote the width and height of the image, respectively, and C1 and C2 repre-
sent the ciphered images before and after one pixel of the plain image is modified, respectively.

Table 5. Information entropy of the cipher image.

Image Boat Tiffany Pepper

Proposed 7.9968 7.9972 7.9978
Ref. [19] 7.9967 7.9970 7.9976
Ref. [26] 7.9963 7.9966 7.9971
Ref. [31] 7.9965 7.9969 7.9973
Ref. [15] 7.9967 7.9970 7.9972

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The values of NPCR and UACI are shown in Table 6. It can be concluded that the proposed
algorithm can effectively resist differential attacks.

4.7 Clipping and noise attack analysis

A good cryptosystem should be designed to resist noise attacks and clipping attacks. The
ciphered Pepper image of Fig 2(H) is cropped by 1/8, 1/4 and 1/2, and the decryption results
are shown in Fig 7.
Salt and pepper noise and white Gaussian noise are added to the ciphered Pepper image in
Fig 2(H), and the deciphered images are shown in Fig 8. When the variance of the white
Gaussian noise is increased from 0.001 to 0.01, more noise points appear in the deciphered
image, but the deciphered image is still recognizable. Similar results were obtained for the salt
and pepper noise.
The results prove that the proposed method effectively resists cropping and noise attacks.
The peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) is used to measure the ability of the method to resist
noise and data loss [32]. It is adopted to measure the difference between plain image I and
cipher image I’. The PSNR is defined as follows:
255
PSNR ¼ 20log10 pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð22Þ
MSE

2
1 XM X N
0
MSE ¼ ðI Iij Þ ð23Þ
MN i¼1 j¼1 ij

The higher the value of the PSNR is, and the smaller the difference between I and I’. The results
are shown in Tables 7 and 8.
It can be seen from Tables 7 and 8 that the proposed algorithm obtains higher PSNR values
than those in [32–34] when decrypting images under noise and cropping attacks. Therefore,
the proposed scheme is superior to the comparative ones.

4.8 Classical types of attacks

There are four classical types of attacks: ciphertext only, known plaintext, chosen ciphertext,
and chosen plaintext. If a cryptosystem can resist a chosen plaintext attack, then it will be able
to resist other attacks [3].
The proposed method is sensitive to initial values xi0 (i = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and the plain image. If
one of them is changed, then the generated chaotic sequences will be completely different. The
ciphered value not only connects to the confused pixel but also connects to the former con-
fused pixel value and former ciphered value. This means that different ciphered values have
different former confused values and different ciphered values. Therefore, the proposed
scheme could defend against chosen plaintext attacks.

Table 6. NPCR and UACI values for cipher images.

Image NPCR (%) UACI (%)

proposed 99.62 33.47
Ref. [26] 99.60 33.48
Ref. [19] 99.61 33.46
Ref. [31] 99.60 33.45
Ref. [15] 99.59 33.42

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Fig 7. Recovery after different degrees of cropping attacks. (a) 1/8 cropped, (b) 1/4 cropped, (c) 1/2 cropped, (d)
deciphered of (a), (e) deciphered of (b), (f) deciphered of (c).
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Fig 8. Decryption results with different noise. (a) Gaussian v = 0.001, (b) Gaussian v = 0.005, (c) Gaussian v = 0.01,
(d) Salt and pepper d = 0.001, (e) Salt and pepper d = 0.005, (f) Salt and pepper d = 0.01.
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Table 7. PSNR values of different schemes with different percentages of salt and pepper noise.

Method Noise density (%)

0.01 0.05 0.1 0.5 1 5
Ref. [32] 41.40 34.17 30.93 24.03 21.18 14.32
Ref. [33] 9.52 8.93 8.62 8.56 8.55 8.55
Ref. [34] 42.69 36.84 31.53 28.71 9.29 18.84
Proposed 59.69 56.79 52.46 48.51 43.59 38.16

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Table 8. PSNR values of different schemes with different percentages of data loss.

Method Data loss (%)

1/32 1/16 1/8 1/4 1/2
Ref. [32] 20.76 18.51 15.93 11.15 8.72
Ref. [33] 8.615 8.568 8.554 8.550 8.548
Ref. [34] 24.37 20.63 17.64 14.61 11.61
Proposed 41.64 39.28 35.84 33.12 30.07

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Table 9. Comparison of encryption times (seconds).

Image size Ref [19] Ref [26] Ref [31] Proposed

128×128 1.93 1.68 1.90 1.28
256×256 7.72 6.72 7.59 5.14
512×512 31.58 26.88 30.35 20.56

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4.9 Encryption time analysis

The results of the comparison are shown in Table 9. As shown in Table 9, the proposed
method requires the least encryption time compared with the other algorithms. Thus, our pro-
posed method has better performance than other schemes.

5 Conclusion
In this paper, a novel image encryption scheme is proposed based on a 5D hyperchaotic sys-
tem. First, chaotic sequences are produced by a 5D hyperchaotic system based on initial secret
keys. Then, the chaotic sequences are preprocessed to obtain new chaotic sequences. They are
modified so that they can be used in confusing and diffusing the image. A cycle shift is exe-
cuted to improve the security of the cryptosystem. The experimental results and theoretical
analysis demonstrate that the method has a large key space and resists differential attacks,
brute-force attacks, statistical attacks, clipping attacks and noise attacks. Therefore, it is a high-
security method that can be used in practical applications.

Supporting information
S1 Material.
(RAR)

Author Contributions
Visualization: Dejian Fang.
Writing – original draft: Shuliang Sun.

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