Multi Secret Image Sharing Scheme of General Access Structure with Meaningful Shares

Hongliang Cai,Dan Tang

doi:10.3390/math8091582

Abstract

A Multi Secret Image sharing scheme can share several secret images among certain participators securely. Boolean-based secret sharing schemes are one kind of secret sharing method with light-weighted computation compared to the previous complex algebraic-based methods, which can realize the sharing of multi secret images. However, the existing Boolean-based multi secret sharing schemes are mostly restricted to the particular case of (2, n) and (n, n), only few Boolean-based multi secret sharing schemes study the general access structure, and the shares are mostly meaningless. In this paper, a new Boolean-based multi secret sharing scheme with the general access structure is proposed. All the shares are meaningful, which can avoid attracting the attention of adversaries, and the secret images can be recovered in a lossless manner. The feasibility of the scheme is proven, the performance is validated by the experiments on the gray images, and the analysis of the comparison with other methods is also given out.

Highlights

The secret sharing scheme was firstly proposed by Shamir [1] and Blakley [2] in 1979
The basic idea of Visual Cryptography (VC) is to use different binary matrices to represent the black and white pixel; the shares are generated based on the binary matrices by each pixel and printed on the transparencies, and the secret image can be recovered by overlapping the transparencies and can be recognized by the Human Vision System (HVS)
In this paper, we propose a multi secret image sharing scheme with general access structure and meaningful shares based on the Boolean operation

Summary

Introduction

The secret sharing scheme was firstly proposed by Shamir [1] and Blakley [2] in 1979. Unlike the traditional encryption methods such as RSA which encrypt a piece of original plaintext into a piece of ciphertext, in the secret sharing scheme, the secret information is split into several pieces called shares using the secret sharing method and distributed between a group of participants, and only the participants in the qualified set can retrieve the secret information. In 1994, Shamir developed Visual Cryptography (VC) [11] which can encrypt binary images into several shares with random black and white pixels. The basic idea of VC is to use different binary matrices to represent the black and white pixel; the shares are generated based on the binary matrices by each pixel and printed on the transparencies, and the secret image can be recovered by overlapping the transparencies and can be recognized by the Human Vision System (HVS)

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion