IJSRD - International Journal for Scientific Research & Development| Vol.
7, Issue 04, 2019 | ISSN (online): 2321-0613
Image Encryption using Blowfish Algorithm
Anuj Kr. Singh1 Santosh Kr. Sahani2 Ravi Saroj3 Manish Prajapati4 Abhishek Agnihotri5
1,2,3,4,5
Department of Computer Science & Engineering
1,2,3,4,5
Dr. Ambedkar Institute of Technology for Handicapped, Kanpur, UP, India
Abstract— In recent years, with the wide development in
communications networks and applied the e-government in
most field depending on the internet and its technologies,
with the development in the hackers ability to intruder the
communication channels. Security is a major concern while
sending and receiving sensitive data over web. Cryptography
aims to protect the content of digital image during
transmission and to be able to recover its content in receiver’s
side with sufficient level of accuracy. In the area of
multimedia, an image has become important medium of
communication, they are used in many fields such as medical
science, military; they are stored or transfer through network,
security of such image data is important. This paper is aimed
to design and develop a method to address this problem. The
proposed method is based on Blowfish algorithm with
enhanced features. It has been enhanced with confusion and
diffusion method to strengthen the security of image. Our
proposed model gives two layers of security for secret data,
which fully satisfy the basic key factors of information
security system that includes: Confidentiality, Authenticity,
Integrity and Non – Repudiation. The proposed encryption
Algorithm in this study has been tested on some images and
showed good results.
Keywords: Image Cryptography; Encryption; Decryption;
Confusion and Diffusion
I. INTRODUCTION
Recently, with the quick improvement of web innovations
and communication networks, cryptographic techniques are
needed to achieve a high level of security, integrity,
confidentiality and to prevent unauthorized access of
sensitive information during storage or transmission over
unsafe channels such as the internet. Real-time applications
such as diagnostic images, web conferencing, live video
streaming, satellite images and surveillance camera
obviously require network encryption methods [1]. Image
encryption technique is a wonderful and new way of
protecting digital content like digital image, audio and video.
Image encryption is the technique which is used for secure
image transmission over the network. Image information is
different from the text data, it has larger amount of data,
higher redundancy and stronger correlation between pixels.
Traditionally developed encryption algorithm such as RSA,
DES is suitable for text encryption but not suitable for image
encryption directly because of two reasons. One is that the
image size is larger than that of text, so the traditional
cryptosystems take much time to directly encrypt the image
data. The other reason is that the decrypted text must be equal
to the original text. However, this requirement is not
necessary for image, a decrypted image containing small
distortion is acceptable due to human perception [2].
In the proposed method, first confusion and
diffusion is used to hide image and then popular Blowfish
Encryption method is applied. Blowfish was designed as a
fast, free alternative to existing encryption algorithm
Schneier designed blowfish [3] as general purpose algorithm.
II. RELATED WORK
Many researchers and scientists have worked with great effort
to encrypt and decrypt data using different approaches for a
significant time. In order to securely transmit the image over
the network, most of these researches were applied to digital
images. An unauthorized user will not be able to access the
image data. Many methods have been used to achieve the
purpose of image encryption, such as in 2012, when using the
classical cipher system with advanced Hill cipher to “develop
a procedure for the encryption of an image by applying
modern advanced Hill Cipher including a pair of involuntary
matrices as multiplicands and a set of functions” (Samson
2012). Another work using diffusion concept by selective
image encryption is based on chaos algorithm (Ismail and
Diab 2010).
Many image encryption algorithms are available
initially such as Baker’s Transformation [4] in this Baker’s
map is used for image encryption; Magic cube transformation
[5] is used to scramble the image pixels etc. But all these have
some disadvantages for that purpose new algorithm has been
developed in recent years.
Mohammad Ali Bani Younes and Aman Jantan [6]
have presented a block based transformation algorithm based
on the combination of image transformation and encryption
decryption algorithm called Blowfish. Sandeep Bhowmik
et.al [7] have presented image encryption technique in which
they provide a new approach for key generation for
encryption algorithm here Genetic Algorithm (GA), method
of artificial intelligence has been applied to generate
encryption key‟, which plays a vital role in any type of
encryption.
A proposed system was presented using randomly
diffusion concept by using randomly permutation with LFSR
and NLFSR generators.
These methods presented fast and randomly
decrypted images so that we can recover the original image
by a decryption process without distortion or loss data.
III. PROPOSED SYSTEM
In this section, we propose the novel technique of Image
Encryption. In this proposed model, image security has been
obtained by encrypting and decrypting image using
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 Image Encryption using Blowfish Algorithm
(IJSRD/Vol. 7/Issue 04/2019/052)

cryptography. The proposed method called “Image original image and key image to fuse-defuse. The image of
Encryption using Blowfish Algorithm” is an encryption and GUI is shown in Fig. 1.
decryption technique. It is based on Blow Fish algorithm with
additional security layer to provide extra security while
sending and receiving images and sensitive data. This
proposed model is designed to process any type of images
(i.e., .jpg, .png, etc.). The proposed method consists of 4
phases in encryption and decryption. They are:
Confusion Diffusion Part:
1) Input Original Image
2) Key Image
3) Fusion of Both Image
4) Generate Fused Image
Encryption Part:
1) Input Fused Image
2) Input Secret Key
3) Generate Encrypted Image Fig. 1: GUI of the developed system
Decryption Part:
1) Input Encrypted Image B. Confusion Diffusion UI
2) Input Secret key After the User login, User first input original image through
3) Get Fused Image browsing local files. To generate the fused image, key image
Confusion Diffusion Part: (it can be any image) is needed to fuse with original image.
1) Input Original Image After that he can generate the fused image as shown in fig. 2.
2) Key Image
3) Separation of Image
4) Get Original Image

Fig. 2: GUI of Fused Image generation

C. Encryption Decryption UI
When user have generated fused image, in this UI, user needs
to input fused image through browsing from saved location.
To generate the encrypted image, secret key text is needed to
encrypt the fused image. After that he can generate the
encrypted image and same can be applied to recovered image
as shown in fig.3. Also encrypted image can be send via e-
mail as shown in fig. 4.

We can divide the proposed system into two

independent stages: (a) the interface to take input image after
login (b) the confusion-diffusion and Encryption-Decryption
part to encrypt or decrypt image. These have been explained
in detail in the following sub-sections.
A. Login of User
The system provides an easy and simple interface of login
forms which allows the user to fuse or defuse images and
encrypt-decrypt images. Also, to send encrypted image via e-
mail. The interface allows User to input Email ID and
password which is already registered and allows to select Fig. 3: Snaps of Encryption Decryption UI.

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 Image Encryption using Blowfish Algorithm
(IJSRD/Vol. 7/Issue 04/2019/052)

Fig. 4: Snap of Email Sending UI.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The proposed system has been tested on more than 20 images
for Image Encryption. We consider a dataset of some users
taken as sample, which consists of name, e-mail, and the
password. The software was executed in two different laptops
and a desktop, and was tested independently. The evaluation
results of the proposed system were verified and were found
to be cent percent accurate. All of the encrypted images was
accurately recovered.
Fig. 4: Results after encryption of image
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new method has been suggested for encrypting
images by using the blowfish encryption algorithm and
confusion-diffusion function. User is provided with an easy
interface, which helps him to encrypt decrypt image and can
send image using email. The system is designed to cater the
need of vast population, also it is easy to install and use.
Experimental results clearly depict the robustness and
correctness of the proposed system, proven to be invariant of
color, brightness and affine transformations. Various images
are used in experiments and performance measures are
recorded. In addition to that security factor is also analyzed.
REFERENCES
[1] A.M.Yousif, M.M.Ali,"A Selective Image Encryption
Based on Chaos Algorithm", Journal of Kerbala
University, Vol. 11 No.1, p136-p149 Scientific, 2013.
[2] Han Shuihua and Yang Shuangyuan, "An Asymmetric
Image Encryption Based on Matrix Transformation ",
ecti transactions on computer and information
technology vol.1, no.2 november 2005.
[3] B. Schneier, “Description of a new variable-length key,
64-bit block cipher (Blowfish)”; Fast Software
Encryption, Cambridge Security Workshop Proceedings,
Springer-Verlag, 1994, pp. 191- 204.
[4] Zhao Xue-feng, “Digital Image Scrambling Based on the
Baker’s Transformation”, Journal of Northwest Normal
University (Natural Science), Vol 39, No. 2, pp. 26-29.
[5] Bao Guan-jun, Ji Shi-ming, and Shen Jian-bin, “Magic
Cube Transformation and Its Application in Digital
Image Encryption”, Computer Applications, Vol 22, No.
11, pp. 23-25,
[6] M. Ali Bani Younes and A. Jantan, "Image encryption
using block-based transformation algorithm" in IAENG
International Journal of Computer Science, Volume 35,
Issue 1, 2008.
[7] Sandeep Bhowmik Sriyankar Acharyya “Image
Cryptography:The Genetic Algorithm Approach”
Computer Science and Automation Engineering
(CSAE), 2011 IEEE International Conference pp 223 -
227
[8] www.Oracle.com (Basic Information of Oracle 9i and
Pdfs)
[9] www.cs.ucl.ac.uk (Project Planning And Scheduling)
[10] www.engin.umd.umich.edu (Software Testing
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[11] www.GeekInterview.com (Introductions and
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First of all, I would love to give my regards to the almighty
GOD, my parents who are more than GOD for me and all
family member for making me a human being and for making
me able to make my dream comes true. It gives me an
immense feeling of great pleasure and most sincere regards
and sense of gratitude to my guide for his brilliant and
valuable guidance for completing this project. I am very
much grateful to my guide “Mr. Abhishek Agnihotri” for his
valuable suggestion, helping hand and guidance experienced
to me. I am thankful to my guide for his guidance and the
encouragement me for time to time.

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