Cryptanalysis of an image encryption scheme based on the Hill cipher

This paper studies the security of an image encryption scheme based on the Hill cipher (Ismail et al., 2006) and reports its following problems: (1) There is a simple necessary and sufficient condition that makes a number of secret keys invalid; (2) It is insensitive to the change of the secret key; (3) It is insensitive to the change of the plain-image; (4) It can be broken with only one known/chosen plaintext; (5) It has some other minor defects. The proposed cryptanalysis discourages any use of the scheme in practice. © 2008 Zhejiang University and Springer-Verlag GmbH.