Abstract
Recently, a chaos-based image encryption scheme called RCES (also called RSES) was proposed. This paper analyses the security of RCES, and points out that it is insecure against the known/chosen-plaintext attacks: the number of required known/chosen plain-images is only one or two to succeed an attack. In addition, the security of RCES against the brute-force attack was overestimated. Both theoretical and experimental analyses are given to show the performance of the suggested known/chosen-plaintext attacks. The insecurity of RCES is due to its special design, which makes it a typical example of insecure image encryption schemes. A number of lessons are drawn from the reported cryptanalysis of RCES, consequently suggesting some common principles for ensuring a high level of security of an image encryption scheme.