A hybrid strategy for cryptanalysis of optical encryption based on double-random phase–amplitude encoding

A hybrid two-step attack scheme that combines the chosen-plaintext attack (CPA) and the known-plaintext attack (KPA) algorithms is proposed to acquire the secret keys of the optical cryptosystem based on double-random phase–amplitude encoding (DRPAE) technique. By implementing our presented attack, an opponent can obtain not only the estimated solutions of the two random phase keys but also the accurate solution of the amplitude modulator (AM), which is introduced to the encryption process and regarded as an additional key to enhance the security level of the DRPAE-based cryptosystem. The validity and effectiveness of this attack strategy is analyzed theoretically and then verified by computer simulations.

► We give a brief comment on double-random phase–amplitude encoding (DRPAE).
► We proposed a hybrid two-step attack (HTSA) to reveal the weakness of DRPAE.
► We provide a set of numerical simulations to verify the validity of HTSA method.