Visual Cryptography Technique Research Articles

Border Collie Shuffled Shepherd optimization-based image reconstruction using visual cryptography

ABSTRACT The visual secret sharing (VSS) technique is an encryption model to conceal secret messages into two or more meaningless images, called shares. Information loss is a huge drawback in existing systems. An efficient model has been developed to reconstruct the original image using the Border Shuffled Shepherd Optimization (BSSO) based on the visual cryptography technique. Visual cryptography is performed on the transmitter and receiver sides. At the transmitter side, the input image is partitioned into numerous shares and the B-noisy matrix is optimally generated using BSSO, which is an incorporation of Border Collie Optimization (BCO) and Shuffled Shepherd Optimization (SSO). At the receiver end, all the shares are integrated to reconstruct the original image. The BSSO has maximum Peak-to-Signal Noise Ratio (PSNR) of 56.591, distortion ratio of 0.908, noise level of 0.834, Mean squared error (MSE) of 0.038, and Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) of 0.981, for Lena image.

Error-induced inverse pixel visual cryptography for secure QR code communication

<p>The rapid proliferation of Quick Response (QR) codes in various applications, particularly in sensitive domains like banking and financial transactions, necessitates robust data protection measures. Visual cryptography techniques are used to encode confidential information into multiple shares called shadows, which are communicated to the receivers. The receiving side decodes the shadows by stacking them together physically or digitally. In this research, an innovative solution titled “Error-induced inverse pixel visual cryptography (EIIPVC) for secure QR code communication” is proposed to enhance the security. The proposed EIIPVC leverages complementary shadows and introduces controlled errors during the sharing process. This feature makes it exceedingly challenging for potential malpractice to access or tamper with the data, ensuring a higher level of security. In this research, a single grayscale secret source (GSS) image in the form of QR code is used. This research also contributes to improving traditional issues, such as the quality of the reconstructed image and pixel expansion. The experimental results demonstrate that the EIIPVC approach significantly ensures enhanced security, safeguarding the transmitted data against potential attacks. The quality of the reconstructed image is improved by minimizing the mean square error (MSE) value up to 5%, indicating its superiority in preserving the visual clarity.</p>

Proposal for providing secure Zoom meeting through Corona pandemic

The Zoom program is widely used to manage meetings around the world, but it is easy to leak the associated Personal Meeting ID. The present study aims at improving the security for Zoom meetings during the transmission process. A new encryption algorithm is proposed to achieve this goal. The system includes three steps namely; separating images, scrambling one-half of the image, encrypting, and substituting the other scrambled half. Implementation of these three steps is achieved by using: cutting the image vertically, Arnold Cut Map, and tRNA respectively. The Bioinformatics technique (tRNA) used in encrypting (red and green) colors, and the Arnold cut map used in the scrambling and shifting process in the encryption method. The performance of the proposed system is measured by using a series of tests such as key sensitivity, histogram analysis, information entropy, correlation analysis, NCPR, similarity, and PSNR test. The results reveal a high sensitivity for initial values, resistant to statistical attack, and have the best performance in the NCPR test. It also passes the evaluation criteria for the both encryption method and S-Box. The complexity of the suggested system is represented by the attacker's need to know many chaos parameters, the logistic method (Arnold cut map), the utilized visual cryptographic techniques, and the methods used to generate the S-Box and keys. The consumed time is fewer than AES algorithm because AES takes huge time in the encryption process especially for big data. The proposed key needs to refresh only one time to make big changed and produces high security.

Sharing Secret Colour Images with Embedded Visual Cryptography Using the Stamping Algorithm and OTP Procedure

Finding a way to ensure the safety of media is becoming increasingly common in the modern world as digital media usage increases. Visual cryptography (VC) offers an efficient method for sending images securely. Images that have been protected using visual encryption can be decoded using features of human vision. Emails are not a highly safe method of exchanging private data because someone else can quickly weaken the content. In the visual cryptography technique, we presented for colour pictures, the divided shares are enclosed in additional pictures using stamping. Using a random number generator, the shares are created. Visual cryptography schemes (VCS) are a method of encoding pictures that conceals the secret information which is present in images. A secret image is encrypted using a straightforward visual cryptography technique by splitting it into n shares, and the stamping operation is carried out by overlapping k shares. It can be beneficial for hiding a secret image. There is a chance that employing cryptography for information exchange could cause security problems because the process of decryption of simple visual cryptographic algorithms can be completed by the human eye. To address this issue, we are using the OTP procedure. In the past, static ID and passwords were employed, making them susceptible to replay and eavesdropping attacks. One Time Password technology, which generates a unique password each time, is utilized to solve this issue. The suggested approach strengthens the security of the created transparencies by applying an envelope to each share and employing a stamping technique to address security vulnerabilities that the previous methods had, such as pixel expansion and noise.

Privacy Protection of Digital Images Using Watermarking and QR Code-based Visual Cryptography

The increase in information sharing in terms of digital images imposes threats to privacy and personal identity. Digital images can be stolen while in transfer and any kind of alteration can be done very easily. Thus, privacy protection of digital images from attackers becomes very important. Encryption, steganography, watermarking, and visual cryptography techniques to protect digital images have been proposed from time to time. The present paper is focused on the enhancement of privacy protection of digital images utilizing watermarking and a QR code-based expansion-free and meaningful visual cryptography approach which generates visually appealing QR codes for transmitting meaningful shares. The original secret image is processed with a watermark image (copyright logo, signature, and so on), and then halftoning of the watermarked image has been done to limit pixel expansion. Then, the halftoned image has been partitioned using VC into two shares. These shares are embedded with a QR code to make the shares meaningful. Lossless compression has been performed on the QR code-based shares. The compression method employed in visual cryptography would save space and time. The proposed approach keeps the beauty of visual cryptography, i.e., computation-free decryption, and the size of the recovered image the same as the original secret image. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Visual Cryptography Using Neighborhood Based Encryption Techniques in The Framework of Cellular Automata

Security of digital data during data communication, data exchange, data authentication is very important. Many authentication techniques are used to secure data. Visual cryptography is one of the methods which creates signatures by applying nonlinearity into the data. The signatures consist of cipher and the key. At the receiving end if the key and the cipher match then the authentication is done. Through this visual cryptography technique, the users hide information securely based on key authentication. This paper discusses another approach to visual cryptography using neighborhood-based encryption techniques in the framework of cellular automata. A cellular automaton has a grid of cells. This cell has either value 0 or 1. These values are changed to next state level in a discrete way with respect to time using some fixed rule. A ‘Cellular Automaton’ (CA) is a 2-dimensional finite array of lattice points called cells together with an updating rule that involves values of a cell and of some predetermined neighborhood cells. Cellular automaton rules for visual cryptography are defined. These rules consist of Neighborhood generation phase and signature generation phase. A sample array is considered. Using cellular automaton rules encryption and decryption is done on sample array.

Analysis of Various Visual Cryptographic Techniques and Their Issues Based on Optimization Algorithms

Visual Cryptography (VC) is a process employed for the maintenance of secret information by hiding the secret messages that are embedded within the images. Typically, an image is partitioned into a number of shares that are stacked over one another in order to reconstruct back the original image accurately. The major limitation that existed in the traditional VC techniques is pixel expansion, in which pixel expansion is replaced with a number of sub-pixels in individual share, which causes a considerable impact on the contrast and resolution of the image that further gradually decreases the quality of the image. VC is named for its essential characteristics, such as transmitting the images with two or more shares with an equal number of black pixels and color pixel distribution. The secret message can be decrypted using Human Visual System (HVS). In this paper, 50 research papers are reviewed based on various classification algorithms, which are effectively used for the VC technique. The classification algorithms are categorized into three types, namely, meta-heuristic, heuristic, and evolutionary, and the research issues and challenges confronted by the existing techniques are reported in this survey. Moreover, the analysis is done based on the existing research works by considering the classification algorithms, tools, and evaluation metrics.

Text image secret sharing with hiding based on color feature

The Secret Sharing is a scheme for sharing data into n pieces using (k, n) threshold method. Secret Sharing becomes an efficient method to ensure secure data transmission. Some visual cryptography techniques don’t guarantee security transmission because the secret information can be retrieved if the hackers obtain the number of shares. This study present a secret sharing method with hiding based on YCbCr color space. The proposed method is based on hiding the secret text file or image into a number of the cover image. The proposed method passes through three main steps: the first is to convert the secret text file or image and all cover images from RGB to YCbCr, the second step is to convert each color band to binary vector, then divide this band in the secret image into four-part, each part is appended with a binary vector of each cover image in variable locations, the third step is converting the color space from YCbCr to RGB color space and the generated shares, hidden with covers, are ready for transmission over the network. Even if the hackers get a piece of data or even all, they cannot retrieve the whole picture because they do not know where to hide the information. The results of the proposed scheme guarantee sending and receiving data of any length. The proposed method provides more security and reliability when compared with others. It hides an image of size (234x192) pixels with four covers. The MSE result is 3.12 and PSNR is 43.74. The proposed method shows good results, where the correlation between secret and retrieved images is strong ranging from (0.96 to 0.99). In the proposed method the reconstructed image quality is good, where original and reconstructed images Entropy are 7.224, 7.374 respectively.

CMY Color Spaced-Based Visual Cryptography Scheme for Secret Sharing of Data

Visual cryptography technique allows visual information to be encrypted in such a way that the decrypted information appears as a visual image. Visual cryptography allows digital images to be separate into few shares called transparent shares. For security reasons, it ensures that hackers cannot find any clues about the secret image from a single cover image. The proposed technique uses CMY (cyan, magenta, yellow) color space to enhance visual cryptography, and mean visual cryptography can be used on color images. The other techniques used were color decomposition and error diffusion. Error diffusion is a type of half toning in which the quantization residual is distributed to neighboring pixels that have not yet been processed. The image will be encrypted by four shares which is cyan, magenta, yellow, and mask. Mask will be using random function to random generate half black and half white pixel in 2 × 2 block. Stack all the shares for reviewing the secret image. After that, do the image preprocessing of the image and use OCR (optical character recognition) to recognize the message.

Usability and Security of Arabic Text-based CAPTCHA Using Visual Cryptography

Recently, with the spread of online services involving websites, attackers have the opportunity to expose these services to malicious actions. To protect these services, A Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA) is a proposed technique. Since many Arabic countries have developed their online services in Arabic, Arabic text-based CAPTCHA has been introduced to improve the usability for their users. Moreover, there exist a visual cryptography (VC) technique which can be exploited in order to enhance the security of text-based CAPTCHA by encrypting a CAPTCHA image into two shares and decrypting it by asking the user to stack them on each other. However, as yet, the implementation of this technique with regard to Arabic text-based CAPTCHA has not been carried out. Therefore, this paper aims to implement an Arabic printed and handwritten text-based CAPTCHA scheme based on the VC technique. To evaluate this scheme, experimental studies are conducted, and the results show that the implemented scheme offers a reasonable security and usability levels with text-based CAPTCHA itself.

Sailfish invasive weed optimization algorithm for multiple image sharing in cloud computing

Visual cryptography (VC) is a secret sharing cryptographic technique, which permits visual information that is encrypted in such a way that the decrypted information shows the visual image. Security is the common problem that arises in the general VC technique. To secure the visual information, an effective method is proposed using a developed sailfish invasive weed optimization (SIWO) algorithm. At first, the grayscale image is shared with multiple parties, and here the shared images are encrypted and decrypted to reconstruct the original image back. The key generation is done using the developed SIWO-based data sharing approach. Here, the developed approach offered the peak signal-to-noise ratiof 34.870 and 33.711 dB for Lena and Cameraman images, respectively, and it attains better performance in terms of secret image sharing.

IMPLEMENTASI TEKNIK KRIPTOGRAFI VISUAL PADA CITRA KEABUAN DAN BERWARNA UNTUK OTENTIKASI PENGGUNA PADA TRANSAKSI ONLINE

Visual cryptography (VC) technique encodes an image into two or more shares that appear random in human eyes. In the decryption section, the pixels in the shared images are combined to obtain the information contained in the original image. This study applies visual cryptographic techniques to graysle and color images for user authentication in online transactions using the VC2,2 scheme. The server computer encodes the CAPTCHA image into two shared images that are sent to the user through different channels or applications. To authenticate himself, the user performs an XOR operation on both share images, identifies the information contained in the CAPTCHA and sends it to the server. In encryption test, histogram of the share image has a different pattern from the original image. The description test shows the decrypted image in this study visually has a better quality than the binary image has better quality than binary images.

A Proposed Hybrid Fingerprint, Image Fusion and Visual Cryptography Technique for Anti-Phishing

This paper proposes an anti-phishing web site system it is carried out by the two following stages: Registration phase; the user enters username and password then (his/her) fingerprint, server site selects virtual fingerprint image. The fusion will be applied to fuse real fingerprint with virtual one, fused image will be input to visual cryptography(VC) scheme to produce two shares, one share kept with user in addition to fuse image, and other shares are kept with the server. Authentication phase; in this phase the user enters the password and is asked to enter the fingerprint. Pattern recognition is done to determine if it is hacker or authenticated user, when the server accepts the fingerprint the user will be required to input (his/her) share, so the user share is stacked with server share and generated image is displayed. The user will decide if it’s a phishing site or not depending on the displayed image (after matching it with the image that the server shared through registration phase).From many experimental works conducted on the proposal, we notice the strength is centered in image fusion. Where the fused fingerprint images have higher quality (entropy) than the single fingerprint image, that increases randomness of the VC shares which are extracted from the fused fingerprint.

Secure E-Voting System Using Visual Cryptography & Block Chain Ledger

Expanding advanced innovation has revolutionized the life of individuals. In this digital world many countries are trying to initiate an E-voting system in regular election process. Researchers are looking forward for the innovative ideas for secure and user friendly system. Block chain is one of the novel concepts that come with number of features to develop E-services. By embracing block chain in the circulation of databases on e-casting ballot frameworks, one can decrease the duping wellsprings of database control. This venture intends to execute casting a ballot result utilizing block chain calculation from each place of decision. In proposed system we have chosen Block chain for its decentralized framework and Here in security and data integrity is mainly achieved by making use of Visual Cryptography (VC) concept. This VC technique comes in when user casts vote on an E-voting portal.

WITHDRAWN: Secure medical image transmission using modified leading diagonal sorting with probabilistic visual cryptography

Informations are being sent through open channels and the security of those informations has been primary considerations. Aside from numerous regular cryptographic techniques, Visual Cryptographic (VC) methods have likewise been being used for information and data security. VC is a secret sharing method as it breaks the original image into share images in order, when the shares are stacked on each other a hidden secret image is uncovered. The VC technique is a secure technique that encodes a secret file or image by breaking it into share images. Cloud computing is a progression model for large scale systems. Security for medical image transmission has been an ongoing computational problem from image recovery to its processing, storage, and retrieval with the advancement of data in the medical sector and health care systems into the cloud. However, the role of Cloud Computing is applied only if security is assured. Modified Leading Diagonal Sorting with Probabilistic Visual Cryptography (MLDS-PVC) is proposed in this research. Breast cancer mammography images from the MIAS dataset are used in this work for medical images. The proposed model could support the transmission of medical images using cloud storage between medical organizations, diagnostics centers, and other health centers.

Um sistema alternativo para a verificação da autenticidade de produtos utilizando criptografia visual

Fraud and counterfeiting have caused various inconveniences to manufacturers and the product consumer market. To avoid counterfeiting and, therefore, bring a higher level of trust and security in commercial transactions, several authentication techniques for physical products have been proposed. Among the techniques commonly employed, the most popular are QR codes (Quick Response Code), Holographic Seals, and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags. This paper aims to propose an alternative product authentication system that applies the visual cryptography technique (NAOR; SHAMIR, 1995). This system employs two masks that, when overlaid, allow visual authentication by the user, without the need for any computational processing. The use of this authentication system for the need in question has not yet been reported in the literature.

WITHDRAWN: An invisible based watermarking technique for biometric image authentication

Biometric image authentication is an important and challenging area of research. It involves an analysis of the candidate’s biometrics for security purposes. Exposure to such sensitive information can be a threat to an individual’s identity and system security. In this paper, we have proposed an invisible watermarking scheme to protect biometric information from harmful attacks. Initially, the technique segments the host image into blocks using edge entropy and then selects the appropriate band coefficients using 2D-DWT transformation. The adaptive histogram technique is used to embed the watermarking image properly. Finally, to retrieve the original watermark, a reversible data hiding approach (RDH) and visual cryptography technique (VC) is used that provides safety and security to biometric images. The proposed method was tested on two datasets, namely, CASIA-v5 and UBIRIS-v1 and is evaluated on various measuring metrics such as PSNR, NC, and BER. Further, the proposed technique is analyzed and compared with different traditionally implemented watermarking techniques based on PSNR and NC values. Results show that the presented method outperforms the other methods by achieving best in class results and highest PSNR (62.52, 61.25) and NC values (0.95, 0.94).

Voronoi-based image representation applied to binary visual cryptography

A common processing scheme of Visual Cryptography (VC) consists of generating two ciphered images from a secret image. The sender transmits these key images via two different channels. The receiver collects the key images and recovers the secret image by superimposing them. In this article, Voronoi tessellation is exploited in Visual Cryptography for the first time to the best of our knowledge. The proposed Voronoi-based Visual Cryptography (VVC) technique permits to drastically reduce the amount of encoded and transmitted information by comparison with a traditional VC scheme. Hence, the technique can be used for transmissions of secret images with enforcement of the transmission reliability by enhancing the redundancy of information or with communication networks and technologies having low bandwidth and memory. Moreover, the random arrangement of the Voronoi polygons makes the transmission of the secret image more secure since the sender and the recipient use a private generator of random points. In addition, shape reconstruction properties of the image-based Voronoi representation are stated.

A (2, 2) Visual Cryptography Technique with Improved Contrast

ABSTRACTVisual cryptography is a technique used to share a secret among many participants. The problem with visual cryptography technique is that the secret is not perfectly recovered, i.e. a black secret pixel is perfectly recovered but a white secret pixel is recovered with less contrast. Because of this, the overall quality of recovered secret is poor. So to improve the quality of recovered secret image, we need to improve the contrast. In this paper, we have proposed a (2, 2) visual cryptography technique with improved contrast as compared to the traditional (2, 2) visual cryptography scheme (VCS). In the proposed technique, we have used additional basis matrices for encrypting the secret pixels. The quality of the recovered secret image is compared with traditional (2, 2) VCS using various image quality metrics.

A Visual Cryptographic Technique for Transferring Secret Image in Public Cloud

The use of “Asymmetric Cryptography” provides the way to avail the feature of non-repudiation, encryption of data and defining the user digital identity to map with the authenticating user in the Public Cloud. A security technique is to be provided for the data even before it is stored on the Cloud. The public key certificate can be transferred into key server for encrypting the data by other users or devices in the public cloud. By using OpenPGP standard (PGP)/GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG), public key certificate and the private key certificate can be generated by the user in the client system itself. The client private key can never be moved out from the client system and users only responsibility is to decrypt their data like images. This methodology will be very much suitable for authenticating, transferring, accessing and storing the images in the Public Cloud. The computational cost for encrypting the whole image with public key will be huge and so the hybrid methodology is proposed with visual cryptography technique and Elliptic-Curve Diffie–Hellman (ECDH) methodology. This paper proposes secure transfer of secret image by using visual cryptography technique and thereby modifying any one of the visual shares into encrypted data with ECDH secret key and finally converted those two shares into base64 format. The proposed algorithm is implemented by using the Python language and their results are discussed with sample images.