A reversible extended secret image sharing scheme based on Chinese remainder theorem

Secret image sharing (SIS) is an important method to protect the security of secret images. When part of the shadows generated by the secret sharing is leaked or when the secret image is restored, the shadows and the secret need to be renewed. Aiming at secret image and shadow image renewal, a scheme for renewing secret image and shadow images is proposed. The scheme is to multiply the original and renewed shadow of the corresponding serial number to get a new shadow over finite fields. Our scheme can realise the renewal of the secret image and shadows and has characteristics of the variable threshold, secure public transmission, variable size, and lossless recovery. This paper theoretically analyses and proves the security of the proposed scheme and verifies the effectiveness through a large number of experiments.

Values such as cellular sum in initial configurations and neighbor radius can potentially affect confusion and diffusion in cellular automata. Specifically, both confusion and diffusion characteristics in cellular automata usually are not sufficient to break up the high correlation between the secret image pixels when these two parameters are too small. Thus, using only One-Dimensional Reversible Memory Cellular Automata (ODRM-CA) to generate shadow images will lead to the leakage of original secret image’s information by some shadow images. In order to solve this problem, in this paper, we propose an image secret sharing (ISS) scheme with no third-party scrambling method. This is realized by increasing the values of cellular sum and neighbor radius to implement the scrambling process for the secret image, thus both processes of image scrambling and image secret sharing can be achieved by ODRM-CA. Experimental results show that this scheme can generate strong random shadow images to avoid leaking information of the original secret image.

Secret image sharing is a technique to share a secret image among a set of n participants. A trusted third party embeds the secret image into the cover image to generate shadow images such that at least t or more shadow images can reconstruct the secret image. In this paper, we consider an extreme and real-world situation, in which there is no one who is trusted by anyone else. In the proposed scheme, the participants can act as a dealer and communicate with each other in a secret channel. Each participant can generate her/his own shadow image independently, according to the cover image and the secret image. Experimental results are provided to show that the shadow images have satisfactory quality. In addition, our scheme has a large embedding capacity, and the secret image can be reconstructed losslessly.

Secret image sharing (SIS) possesses advantageous attributes such as loss tolerance, offering a promising solution for image protection. However, the issue remains unresolved, which is the trade-off between the transmission or storage overhead of shadow images and the concealment of secret distribution. This paper designs a novel polynomial splitting framework and proposes the first SIS scheme with multi-sized shadow images. By splitting the original polynomial into various levels containing different numbers of sub-polynomials, the proposed scheme enables the generation of multi-sized shadow images. Moreover, since polynomial splitting is compatible with image bit-plane decomposition, we introduce the first progressive secret image sharing scheme with multi-sized shadow images (PSIS-MS). The secret image can be recovered by integrating multi-sized shadow images, with the visual fidelity of the recovered image progressively enhancing as the quantity of shadow images increases. The proposed schemes generate multi-sized shadow images with an average size smaller than the original image, reducing communication overhead and enhancing the concealment of secret distribution. Theoretical analysis and experimental comparison demonstrate the validity of the proposed schemes.

Generalized general access structure in secret image sharing

Economics has some limitations, such as insecure multiple parties economical investment decision and leakage of business quotation. Secret image sharing (SIS) for (k, n)-threshold is such a technique that protects an image through splitting it into n shadows, a.k.a. shadow images or shares, assigned to n corresponding participants. The secret image can be disclosed by obtaining k or more shadows. Polynomial-based SIS and visual secret sharing (VSS) are the chief research branches. This paper first analyzes the insecure issues in economics and then introduces two methods to apply typical SIS schemes to improve economical security. Finally, experiments are realized to illustrate the efficiency of the methods.

A reversible and lossless secret image sharing scheme with authentication for color images

A user-friendly secret image sharing scheme with reversible steganography based on cellular automata

Most of today’s secret image sharing (SIS) schemes are based on Shamir’s polynomial-based secret sharing (SS), which cannot recover pixels larger than 250. Many exiting methods of lossless recovery are not perfect, because several problems arise, such as large computational costs, pixel expansion and uneven pixel distribution of shadow image. In order to solve these problems and achieve perfect lossless recovery and efficiency, we propose a scheme based on matrix theory modulo 256, which satisfies ( k , k ) and ( k , k + 1 ) thresholds. Firstly, a sharing matrix is generated by the filter operation, which is used to encrypt the secret image into n shadow images, and then the secret image can be obtained by matrix inverse and matrix multiplication with k or more shadows in the recovery phase. Both theoretical analyses and experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

ABSTRACTA (k,n)‐scalable secret image sharing (SSIS) scheme shares a secret image into n independent shadow images. This (k,n)‐SSIS scheme can simultaneously provide the properties of threshold (k or more shadow images are required in reconstruction; but k − 1 or less shadow images reveal no information on the secret image) and the scalability (when k or more than k shadow images participate in reconstruction, more shadow images can reveal more information amount of secret image). In this paper, we deal with (k,n)‐SSIS scheme with the smooth scalability such that the information amount of revealed image is “smoothly” proportional to the number of involved shadows, the whole secret image can be reconstructed only when all the n shadow images participate in reconstruction. Comparing with the existing smooth (k,n)‐SSIS schemes, the proposed scheme has the less size of shadow image. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In the traditional secret image sharing scheme (SIS), the noise-like cover image is vulnerable and thus suspicion is easily aroused by malicious users. Therefore, the meaningful secret image sharing scheme deserves investigation. In this paper, we introduce a new k , n threshold meaningful secret image sharing scheme based on QR code (MSIS-QR). In the proposed MSIS-QR, the secret image is shared with n QR codes, where each share of the scheme is a valid QR code and can be decoded by a QR code scanner. When k or more shares are collected, the secret image can be losslessly recovered by the Chinese remainder theorem. Experimental results indicate the advantages of our scheme in terms of recovered image quality and decoding time.

In today's era of developed network, it is particularly important to ensure the security of information. Secret image sharing is a kind of secret information protection technology with loss tolerance by sharing a secret image to a number of shadow images. Most of the researches on secret image sharing focus on grayscale images, but the images we use in our daily life are mostly in color, so the research on the secret image sharing for color image is very meaningful and has great application value. The traditional color image sharing scheme is to share and recover R, G, and B color planes separately, which cause that the time of sharing and recovering one color image is at least triple that of sharing and recovering one grayscale image with the same size as the color image. In this paper, we propose an efficient and lossless secret image sharing scheme for color images. We concatenate the R, G, and B values of every color pixel into a long integer and share it by the polynomial-based secret image sharing, thus the sharing efficiency of color images is greatly improved by reducing the number of sharing operations to 1/3 of the traditional scheme. And we achieve lossless recovery by taking GF(16777259) as the finite field of polynomial operations. 16777259 is the smallest prime number greater than 2 24 - 1, so we intend to screen the random numbers to drop the invalid share values. Theoretical analyses and experiments are used to prove the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

With the spread of the Internet, the speed of data spread is getting faster and faster. It benefits us a lot but also brings us many potential security problems, especially the problem of privacy leakage. For example, more and more people choose to store their private images in the cloud. Secret image sharing as a significant method has been widely applied in protecting images in the cloud, which reduces the risks of data leakage and data loss. Generally, the secret image sharing scheme would encrypt the secret image into a series of shares and then stored these shares in a cloud. However, when this cloud has been attacked, the secret may meet a risk of leakage. A solution to solve the problem is that the generated shares are distributed storage in multiple clouds. Each cloud is independent and all clouds can have a collaboration to manage the secret image. To address this issue, a novel hierarchical secret image sharing scheme with multi-group joint management is proposed in this paper, which is suitable for protecting the security of the secret image by distributed storage over multiple clouds. In the proposed scheme, the secret image would be shared among multiple groups with different thresholds. The number of each group’s shareholders is determined by a sequence of thresholds. Therefore, the proposed scheme is a hierarchical secret image sharing scheme in which the secret image can be reconstructed if and only if the number of shares has met all threshold conditions. In addition, the generated shares have the same weight, which is more suitable for universal applicability. Both the system analysis and the simulation results prove that the proposed scheme is efficient and practical.

This paper presents hiding one to eight gray images or texts (secret information) inside color image (cover image) based on Least Significant Bits (LSB) algorithm. The main idea is to insert the secret message (one to eight texts or one to eight gray images) in the three LSB of the cover image (color image). The color cover image RGB model (R channel, G channel and B channel) is separated into three cover images (the red cover, green cover, and blue cover). Each one of these three cover images is used to hide secret messages (gray image (two secret images in R channel, three secret images in G channel and three secret images in B channel) or text). The experiments and comparative studies show that the algorithms are characterized by many features of the ability of hiding huge data, and then the ability of extracting secret message without errors. Beside the reconstructed image, has efficacies (to human acquaintance) according to peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and mean square error (MSE), also retain both the explicitness and the characteristics of the both secret message and cover image.

In the area of secret image sharing (SIS), most papers focused on the schemes for threshold or some special access structures. Regarding general access structures (GAS), few results have been found in the literature. Two SIS schemes for GAS were proposed in 2001 and 2010, both are based on qualified sets. However, one distorts the reconstructed secret image, and some extra information is needed in both schemes. Here, we propose three polynomial based SIS schemes for GAS. Considering either qualified or forbidden sets, these schemes can reconstruct the secret image perfectly without any extra information needed. Some proof and analysis on the shadow sizes of the three schemes are given to lead us to choose the one with the smallest size. In addition, we also give some comparisons with two existing schemes, and security issue is also addressed in conclusion.