Cryptanalysis of genetic algorithm-based encryption scheme

Genetic algorithm, a technique inspired by evolutionary biology to mimic the process of natural selection, has been applied in the image encryption due to the confusion and diffusion properties of mutation and crossover processes involved in the genetic algorithm. In this paper, we analyze the security of the image encryption designed based on genetic algorithms. We perform a known plaintext attack on Biswas et al. image encryption scheme designed based on chaotic maps and genetic algorithms. We show that the encryption scheme is not as secure as claimed by Biswas et al. since the proposed attack reduces the claimed 448-bit security to 264.28-bit security. The proposed attack and its analysis can be utilized and extended to other image encryption schemes designed based on genetic algorithms.