Image cryptography based on the imitation of gene fusion and horizontal gene transfer

In this paper a novel signal processing algorithm for secure image communication is proposed. It is a genetic algorithm that combines both gene fusion and Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) inspired from the spread of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. The symmetric encryption key playing the role of a pathogen is generated by controlled multi-layer random sequences. The principal key is then absorbed by the organism genome represented by the image. The process of encryption starts by a full uptake of the key-agent or pathogen which has the size of the whole image; the image and the principal key are merged together in a gene fusion process. A second phase of encryption is an obfuscation process produced by an HGT where the genes are pixels and the chromosomes are the rows and columns of the image. The obfuscation process as a second layer of encryption is realized by two sub-keys from which the principal key matrix is constructed. The whole process is repeated recursively L rounds. A Salt extracted from the image hash-value is used against chosen-plaintext cryptanalysis, therefore, even a modification of one pixel will generate different encryption keys adding a stealthy-key feature to the cipher. The key generation process with the two layers of encryption of the genetic algorithm are fully described. Results of the signal processing algorithm based on gene fusion and HGT show a great promise in genetic inspired data security.