Post-quantum era: a new data privacy protection scheme combining static circular dispersion scramble and chaotic cryptography

Abstract The development of communication technology has brought emerging technologies such as 5G networks and the Internet of Things (IoT), but it also hides a significant risk of information leakage. In the post-quantum era, the security of most traditional encryption technologies will face serious challenges. For the information security problem, quantum technology is a feasible solution, which can effectively guarantee the security of data. In this paper, a new scheme for quantum image privacy protection is proposed. The NEQR (Novel Enhanced Quantum Representation) quantum image representation can be used to quickly convert a classical image into a quantum image, and the converted quantum image has higher flexibility and maneuverability in processing. In this scheme, the static circular dispersion scramble algorithm is proposed to inversely scramble the image by constructing a diffusion analysis table, and the scrambling algorithm is combined with Knuth-Durstenfeld shuffling to enhance the overall randomness of the algorithm. A four dimensional fractional order hyper chaotic system is used as the key generator and superimposed diffusion using Fibonacci Q-matrix, Gray code and chaos matrix is performed to completely incorporate the plain-image information into the cipher-image. In this, the Gray code will act on the pixel positions in the quantum image. In addition, converting the color image into quantum state for operation effectively ensures the security during transmission. After a series of experimental analysis, we obtained excellent test results, such as an average information entropy of 7.9972.