Visual Cryptography Research Articles

Visual cryptography for securing medical images using a combination of hyperchaotic-based pixel, bit scrambling, and DNA encoding

Visual cryptography for securing medical images using a combination of hyperchaotic-based pixel, bit scrambling, and DNA encoding

A New Data Model for the Privacy Protection of Medical Images

Benefiting from the intelligent Medical Internet of Things (IoMT), the medical industry has dramatically improved its quality and productivity. The transmission of biomedical data in an open and untrusted network poses a new challenge to the privacy protection of patient information. The low processing power of IoMT limited the application of traditional encryption to protect sensitive data. In this paper, we developed a new data protection model for medical images. The model uses visual cryptography (VC) to store biomedical data in a separate database, which can transfer the sensitive data of patients simply and securely. To alleviate the degradation of biomedical recognition performance caused by VC-based noise, we further use transfer learning to train an optimized neural network. The experimental results show that this proposed method provides privacy in the IoMT environment and maintains the high accuracy of biomedical recognition.

Color Visual Cryptography Based on Three Dimensional Chaotic Map

Cryptographic approaches based on chaos theory provide a several new and promising avenues for developing safe picture encryption solutions. This paper aims to complicate the process of decrypting images by adding encryption with keys, this was achieved by applying the principle of the 3D-chaotic system with the encryption algorithm, so we present an image encryption algorithm called black mask by using an efficient Multidimensional Chaotic Map represented by Lorenz system. For the confusion process, the suggested approach is based on a keys stream generator. The process of confusion is initiated by a 256-bit secret keys, which is produced by a logistic maps. To make the cipher more dynamic in the face of any threat. The suggested digital image encryption technique, as well as its security analysis and implementation, are discussed in depth. The experimental results suggest that the proposed method for image encryption and transmission is both efficient and safe. Index Terms— Chaotic Maps, visual Cryptography, confusion, diffusion.

Visual Cryptography Using Computation-Free Bit-Plane Reconstruction

Visual cryptography (VC) using bit-plane decomposition improves the quality of the reconstructed image. The disadvantage of this scheme is that the decoder needs computation in order to reconstruct the secret image from its bit-planes. To solve this problem, we propose a no-computation bit-plane decomposition visual cryptography (NC-BPDVC). In NC-BPDVC, we convert the grayscale secret image into a multitone image by multilevel halftoning. Then, by exploring the difference between a digital pixel and a printed dot, we design different dot patterns to render a digital pixel. By doing so, we abandon the usual assumption that DPI (dots per inch) equals PPI (pixels per inch) during printing. By adopting the more realistic assumption that DPI can be larger than PPI as is supported by most printers, we use different patterns to render different tone levels. These patterns are carefully designed so that no computation is needed when one needs to reconstruct the multitone image from its bit-planes. Our algorithm is tested on a batch of twenty standard grayscale images. The experimental results confirm the correctness and advantages of the proposed scheme. Compared with the ordinary bit-plane decomposition VC, NC-BPDVC does not need computation. The security of the proposed algorithm is also analyzed and verified.

A zero-watermark algorithm for multiple images based on visual cryptography and image fusion

At present, it is difficult for the multiple images zero-watermark algorithm to protect all the images in the image set, and repeated operations will reduce the efficiency of the algorithm. To solve these issues, the proposed algorithm can design a reasonable copyright protection scheme according to the number of images in the image set to realize the protection of all images, and reduce the cost of time and storage. The gray-weighted average image fusion method is used to fuse multiple normalized standard images into one image. The LWT(Lifting the Wavelet Transform)-QR decomposition is applied to the effective area of the fusion image to obtain the robust feature image. Non-extended visual cryptography is used to enhance the security of the algorithm. A zero-watermark image is obtained by using the XOR manipulation for the feature image and the public shared image. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has good performance.

Distributed three-level QR codes based on visual cryptography scheme

Owing to the large storage and fast machine recognition, QR codes have been widely utilized in many fields such as mobile payment, website navigation and user identity authentication. However, any QR code reader can access to the message contained in the QR code, the security becomes a major challenge to QR codes for privacy usage scenarios. Moreover, the management of QR codes for users are also inconvenient, since the human vision is hard to distinguish a QR code from the others. To solve the security and management problems, we propose the three-level QR codes for a group of participants. The first-level management information and the second-level public information are recognizable for the human vision and QR code reader device, respectively. The third-level privacy information is protected using visual cryptography scheme, and can be decoded using simple and non-cryptography computations. Furthermore, the shares can be stored or transferred in not only e-format but also print-format and photo-format, leading to the broad applicability. Experimental results and analysis demonstrate that the proposed scheme can encode three-level information into several distributed QR codes, and has more advantages compared with the previous schemes.

Agriculture Supply Chain Management Using Blockchain

Agricultural farmers have a number of challenges these days, including seasonal variations and a broken supply chain; their work is tough and time-consuming. In this circumstance, a separate information database with validated data would be extremely beneficial. Knowledge exchange is critical in all facets of our industry, whether it's regarding market trends or successful techniques. In this area, third-party influence could lead to the spread of incorrect information. To mitigate this risk, blockchain, a secure and immutable data ledger, can be used. The purpose of this study is to investigate the many ways in which blockchain technology can be applied as a transparent and dependable transaction mechanism in the agricultural supply chain. Keywords: ASC, BCT, AES, visual cryptography, SHA 256, Java, JSP, Servlet, Web, etc

A novel perfect contrast XOR-based visual cryptography scheme for multiple secrets

A novel perfect contrast XOR-based visual cryptography scheme for multiple secrets

Compressive Imaging Encryption with Secret Sharing Metasurfaces

AbstractExploiting various degrees of freedom of light, metasurfaces have unique advantages in multiple‐channel information storage and demonstration, which thereby provides a novel platform to convey the keys and cipher images for different encryptions. Following the secret sharing principle of visual cryptography (VC), the authors here successfully embed both the keys and cipher images of computational ghost imaging (CGI) encryption into the holographic metasurface‐images (meta‐images). The decryption process starts with key retrieval via optical observation of overlapped meta‐images, followed by a compressive CGI calculation to reconstruct the target images according to the obtained key and steganographic cipher images with a high compression ratio of 4. By integrating metasurface imaging, VC, and CGI, the authors’ proposed encryption scheme exempts conventional key distribution and transmission of CGI, enhances the security by secret sharing of VC, and increases the amount of hiding data contained in meta‐images with compressive sensing.

Competitive Swarm Improved Invasive Weed Optimization-Based Secret Sharing Scheme for Visual Cryptography

Visual cryptography is a cryptographic method that encrypts visual facts and the information decrypted appears as an original visual image. Here, the confidential data is shared by dividing the visual details into multiple shares such that the encryption and the decryption are performed for reconstructing the original image back by stacking the splitted shares. However, the data sharing process lacks adequate security protection. To overcome the issues, this paper presents a robust visual cryptography-based data sharing scheme, named Competitive Swarm Improved Invasive Weed Optimization (CSIIWO) for sharing multiple data. Initially, the grayscale input image is shared between several parties, such that the shared image is encrypted and decrypted for retrieving the original image back. However, the cryptographic key generation is done using the devised CSIIWO algorithm such that the cryptographic keys are generated for the data sharing process to maintain confidentiality among multiple parties. Moreover, the devised method achieved the maximum Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of 40.749 dB, minimum conditional privacy loss of 0.508, and maximum entropy of 7.987, respectively using Lena image. Furthermore, the proposed scheme can protect the multiple data sharing information and has numerous advantages compared with the previous mechanisms.

Improving the visual quality of a size deterministic visual cryptography scheme for Grayscale Images

To enhance the security choices in transmission of information over the web, various methods such as cryptography, steganography and digital watermarking have been developed. Visual cryptography has developed in the past decade as an entity that splits the information into two parts in order to complete integration. This system is also secured in a lesser quantity. In this paper a secret message multi-share method is used. In the proposed work input picture is divided into eight portions. The eight portions shares are encrypted before embedding the image in the patchwork image, photo sharing and the image retrieved is the same as the hidden starting image. Results show that the proposed method has optimized the optimal time by 8%, improved PSNR by 11% and lower overhead communication.

Secure Approach Using Visual Cryptography

An Image Encryption and Decryption Using AES (Advance Encryption Standard) Algorithm is proposed in this paper. Visual cryptography is the most popular technique attracted various researchers to improve the security level while utilizing the images and videos as encryption key, instead of text which is easy to crack. Visual cryptography computes complex multimedia information which may leads to computational overhead when simple processing techniques and architectures were utilized. So, various researchers had taken over this challenge and trying to resolve while introducing the various high speed techniques and architectures which would make visual cryptography process highly secured and energy efficient. This paper presents an algorithm in which the image is an input to AES Encryption to get the encrypted image and the encrypted image is the input to AES Decryption to get the original image. Keywords: Visual cryptography, security, energy efficient, high speed architecture, accurate prediction outcome, AES algorithm, image encryption, image decryption

A TTP watermarking protocol based on visual cryptography

A TTP watermarking protocol based on visual cryptography

A QR code-based user-friendly visual cryptography scheme

Benefiting from the development of the Internet and smart devices, it is now convenient to transmit images anywhere and anytime, which poses a new challenge for image security. The Visual Cryptography Scheme (VCS) is a secret sharing method for protecting an image without a key, the merit of VCS is the human visual system (HVS) can restore the secret image by simply superimposing qualified shares, without any computation. To eliminate noise-like shares in traditional VCS, this paper presents a novel QR code-based expansion-free and meaningful visual cryptography scheme (QEVCS), which generates visually appealing QR codes for transmitting meaningful shares. When distributing on public networks, this scheme does not attract the attention of potential attackers. By limiting the gray-level of a halftoned image, QEVCS both keep the computation-free of visual cryptography and the size of recovery image same as the secret images. The experimental results show the effectiveness of QEVCS when preserving the privacy of images.

Design and Implementation of High-Speed AES and Visual Cryptography with Modified Mix Column on FPGA – A Survey

Network security is one of prime importance with the advent of cyber-attacks, phishing and hacking occurring on a regular basis in the 21st Century. Though a lot of popular algorithms already exist for encrypting data such as AES, DES or Triple DES, there is a necessity for strengthening the existing algorithms to prevent a possible brute force attack on encrypted data. This paper explores a few papers aiming to achieve the same. It elaborates on the advantages and disadvantages of the existing algorithms and finally concludes with a proposal for a future implementation which can overcome the disadvantages.

Primary Color Based Numerous Image Creation in Visual Cryptography with the Help of Grasshopper Algorithm, Artificial Neural Network and Elliptic Curve Cryptography

The two primary restrictions of visual cryptography methods, contract, and security are well-known. Visual cryptography is considered secure if no share reveals information about the secure picture and this image is unreachable when shares are combined. Recursion can be used in a visual cryptography method to ensure the integrity of both arguments. Sometimes, the many shares are generated illogically in such a manner that they sometimes reveal the actual image. The model proposed in the paper has been proved beneficial in reducing the computation, noise, or distortion in the recreated image and helps in providing amended contracts. The suggested scheme uses unique pixel patterns to create a contract for the decrypted image. The contract for the recursion visual cryptography scheme is alterable from the white pixel pattern to new pixel patterns. The elliptic curve cryptography approach is used to ensure the privacy and security of the image. This study has taken a four-share mechanism in which each component is divided into four shares for each color segment. The proposed algorithm uses the Grasshopper algorithm to select the bit's positions where the encryption must be done. Neural Networks have been used as a cross validator in the proposed work model. A new fitness function is designed for the Grasshopper algorithm. The proposed algorithm is compared based on Mean Square Error and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio.

Toward Privacy Protection of Sensed Biometric Features with Extended Visual Cryptography

The popularity of more powerful and smarter digital devices has improved the quality of life and poses new challenges to the privacy protection of personal information. Although traditional encryption algorithms are effective in most application scenarios, they may not be suitable in integrated sensing and communication environments due to their low processing capabilities. In this paper, we develop a novel extended visual cryptography scheme to store private information in separate databases, which eliminates the complex operations in privacy-preserving schemes based on cryptography and watermarking. Since shares do not reveal any feature about private sensed information, we can transmit sensitive information among sensors and smart home servers in plain. To abate the influence of noise due to the use of visual cryptography, we leverage the generalization ability of transfer learning to train a visual cryptography-based recognition network. Experimental results show that our proposed method keeps the high accuracy of the feature recognition system when providing security.

A fake threshold visual cryptography of QR code

A fake threshold visual cryptography of QR code

A robust and secure zero-watermarking copyright authentication scheme based on visual cryptography and block G-H feature

A robust and secure zero-watermarking copyright authentication scheme based on visual cryptography and block G-H feature

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.