Title: An extended secret sharing scheme for colour images with fixed pixel expansion

Authors: Rabia Sirhindi, Mehreen Afzal, Saeed Murtaza

Addresses: Department of Information Security, College of Signals, National University of Sciences and Technology, Humanyun Road, Rawalpindi 46000, Pakistan. ' Department of Information Security, College of Signals, National University of Sciences and Technology, Humanyun Road, Rawalpindi 46000, Pakistan. ' Department of Information Security, College of Signals, National University of Sciences and Technology, Humanyun Road, Rawalpindi 46000, Pakistan

Abstract: An extended visual secret sharing scheme uses multiple innocent-looking cover images to hide a secret image such that none discloses any portion of the secret. In this article, an extended secret sharing technique is proposed that shares a secret colour image in a couple of significant images using a fixed pixel expansion factor of 9 for a colour space as large as comprising 2²⁴, i.e. 16 million colours approximately. Furthermore, the data hiding technique employed in this article uses all three planes of a colour image which reduces the number of cover images that would otherwise be needed. Recovery is performed through a simple stacking (XOR) operation and a sequence of random integers.

Keywords: data hiding; extended visual cryptography; pixel expansion; secret sharing; visual cryptography; colour images; cover images; secret images; security.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESDF.2009.023876

International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 2009 Vol.2 No.1, pp.58 - 67

Published online: 17 Mar 2009 *

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