CryptoImg: Privacy Preserving Processing Over Encrypted Images

TL;DR

CryptoImg is an open source library enabling privacy-preserving image processing over encrypted images using homomorphic encryption, allowing secure remote operations with minimal error and acceptable performance overheads.

Contribution

It introduces CryptoImg, a modular library extending OpenCV to perform various image processing tasks securely over encrypted data using homomorphic encryption.

Findings

Efficient processing over encrypted images with negligible error.

Supports common image operations like filtering and histogram equalization.

Operates effectively on mobile and desktop platforms.

Abstract

Cloud computing services provide a scalable solution for the storage and processing of images and multimedia files. However, concerns about privacy risks prevent users from sharing their personal images with third-party services. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of CryptoImg, an open source library (Source at https://github.com/TarekIbnZiad/CryptoImg) of modular privacy preserving image processing operations over encrypted images. By using homomorphic encryption, CryptoImg allows the users to delegate their image processing operations to remote servers without any privacy concerns. Currently, CryptoImg supports a subset of the most frequently used image processing operations such as image adjustment, spatial filtering, edge sharpening, histogram equalization and others. We implemented our library as an extension to the popular computer vision library OpenCV. CryptoImg can be used from either mobile or desktop clients. Our experimental results demonstrate that CryptoImg is efficient while performing operations over encrypted images with negligible error and reasonable time overheads on the supported platforms