A Robust Selective Encryption Scheme for H.265/HEVC Video

Abstract

To protect the information of video stream, many selective video encryption schemes have been proposed based on the H.265/HEVC video. However, most of the existing algorithms are not robust, thus failing to decrypt under packet loss. To further improve the robustness capability of video protection, a robust selective encryption scheme is proposed in this paper. In H.265/HEVC standard, video is encoded into multiple slices, and the slices are decoded independently. Inspired by the feature, each slice is individually encrypted using RC4 stream cipher. The pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS) for one slice is related to encoding parameters and the SHA-256 hash value of the corresponding slice header, thus ensuring the real-time update of the PRBS and increasing the resistance to chosen-plaintext attack. Two-rounds shifting algorithm is designed to scramble non-zero coefficients of the transform units (TUs) and then motion vector difference (MVD) parameters, quantized transform coefficients (QTCs) and intra prediction modes (IPMs) are selected for encryption. The combination of coefficient scrambling and syntax elements encryption further improves the encryption performance. The proposed scheme is slice-synchronized. Hence, it decrypts normally in the case of packet loss, and supports online real-time interaction. Furthermore, the simulation and analysis results show that the proposed algorithm has format compatibility, high security and low time complexity, which is a promising tool for video cryptographic applications.