A general multi-secret visual cryptography scheme

In a (k, n) visual cryptography scheme (VCS), a secret image is encoded into n shadow images that are distributed to n participants. Any k participants can reveal the secret image by stacking their shadow images, and less than k participants have no information about the secret image. In this paper we consider the case when the secret image is more than one, and this is a so-called multi-secret VCS (MVCS). The previous works on MVCS are all the simple 2-out-of-2 cases. In this paper, we discuss a general (k, n)-MVCS for any k and n. This paper has three main contributions: (1) our scheme is the first general (k, n)-MVCS, which can be applied on any k and n, (2) we give the formal security and contrast conditions of (k, n)-MVCS and (3) we theoretically prove that the proposed (k, n)-MVCS satisfies the security and contrast conditions.     

A Secret Sharing Scheme for Quantum Gray and Color Images Based on Encryption

This paper is concerned with the better security of quantum image secret sharing (QISS) algorithm. The improved QISS (IQISS) scheme is implemented on both quantum gray image (FRQI) and quantum color image (MCQI). The new IQISS scheme comprises efficient sharing process and recovering process. The core idea of the sharing process is to combine encryption and measurement for two types of quantum secret images to acquire the quantum shadow images. In the recovering process, strip operation is firstly utilized on the shadow images. Afterwards, the decryption algorithm is used to recover the original quantum secret image. Experiments demonstrate that significant improvements in the security are in favor of the proposed approach.

     

Multiple-image encryption with bit-plane decomposition and chaotic maps

Image encryption is an efficient technique of image content protection. In this work, we propose a useful image encryption algorithm for multiple grayscale images. The proposed algorithm decomposes input images into bit-planes, randomly swaps bit-blocks among different bit-planes, and conducts XOR operation between the scrambled images and secret matrix controlled by chaotic map. Finally, an encrypted PNG image is obtained by viewing four scrambled grayscale images as its red, green, blue and alpha components. Many simulations are done to illustrate efficiency of our algorithm.     

Incrementing visual cryptography using random grids

Visual cryptography (VC) is an image-based secret protection mechanism in which the decoding process is conducted by inspecting the stacked shares with the unaided eye. In traditional VC schemes, the content of an image is usually processed as a single secret, which limits the whole image to unique secret property. Recently, Wang ( IEEE SPL, 16(2009) 659-663) proposed an n-level region incrementing VC scheme which has the ability of incremental revealing of the secrets on an image; however, the pixel expansion of the generated shares increases rapidly in the proposed scheme as n grows. In this paper, we propose an incrementing VC scheme using random grids. The method has the same incremental revealing effect to the secrets on an image, and the size of each share is the same as that of the original image without any expansion. The smaller size of shares makes their further processing such as storage and/or printing out more efficient.     

Attack on double-random-phase-encoding-based image hiding method

The double-random phase-encoding (DRPE) technique is a typical optical image encryption technique, which can also be used for image hiding. Usually, the secret image is encrypted with the DRPE technique and the encoded image is hidden into the host image via superimposition to obtain the stego-image. The attack technique on the DRPE-based image hiding method was proposed in this paper. Firstly, a randomly selected superimposition coefficient was used to approximate the original superimposition coefficient to extract the hidden encoded images from the stego-images approximately. Then, the chosen-plaintext attack technique on the DRPE-based optical image encryption technique was applied to recover the random phase masks used in the DRPE technique. The theoretical analysis indicated that, without considering the computational error, the recovered secret image via the proposed attack technique is identical to the original one. Even considering the computational error, it is identical to the secret image recovered with the original DRPE-based image hiding method, which demonstrates that the attack on the DRPE-based image hiding method is successfully achieved. The numerical simulation results demonstrated the correctness of the theoretical analysis.     

Application of homomorphism to secure image sharing

In this paper, we present a new approach for sharing images between l players by exploiting the additive and multiplicative homomorphic properties of two well-known public key cryptosystems, i.e. RSA and Paillier. Contrary to the traditional schemes, the proposed approach employs secret sharing in a way that limits the influence of the dealer over the protocol and allows each player to participate with the help of his key-image. With the proposed approach, during the encryption step, each player encrypts his own key-image using the dealer's public key. The dealer encrypts the secret-to-be-shared image with the same public key and then, the l encrypted key-images plus the encrypted to-be shared image are multiplied homomorphically to get another encrypted image. After this step, the dealer can safely get a scrambled image which corresponds to the addition or multiplication of the l + 1 original images (l key-images plus the secret image) because of the additive homomorphic property of the Paillier algorithm or multiplicative homomorphic property of the RSA algorithm. When the l players want to extract the secret image, they do not need to use keys and the dealer has no role. Indeed, with our approach, to extract the secret image, the l players need only to subtract their own key-image with no specific order from the scrambled image. Thus, the proposed approach provides an opportunity to use operators like multiplication on encrypted images for the development of a secure privacy preserving protocol in the image domain. We show that it is still possible to extract a visible version of the secret image with only l-1 key-images (when one key-image is missing) or when the l key-images used for the extraction are different from the l original key-images due to a lossy compression for example. Experimental results and security analysis verify and prove that the proposed approach is secure from cryptographic viewpoint.     

A novel chaotic image encryption algorithm based on water wave motion and water drop diffusion models

This paper will put forward a novel chaotic image encryption algorithm with confusion–diffusion architecture. First of all, secret keys will be processed by key generator before they can really be used in the encryption scheme, and in this stage this paper associates plain image with secret keys; Secondly, by imitating the trajectory of water wave movement, encryption algorithm will do scrambling operations to the image. Thirdly, this paper combines water drop motion and dynamic look up table to realize diffusion operations. For an 8 bits pixel, this algorithm will just dispose the higher 4 bits, which is because the higher 4 bits contain the vast majority of information of the image. At last, the experiment results and security analysis show that this proposed algorithm has a desirable encryption effect. Its key space is large enough, it is sensitive to keys and plain image, its encryption speed is fast and it can resist cryptanalysis such as brute attack, differential attack, etc.     

Digital image encryption with chaotic map lattices

This paper proposes a secure approach for encryption and decryption of digital images with chaotic map lattices. In the proposed encryption process,eight different types of operations are used to encrypt the pixels of an image and one of them will be used for particular pixels decided by the outcome of the chaotic map lattices. To make the cipher more robust against any attacks,the secret key is modified after encrypting each block of sixteen pixels of the image. The experimental results and security analysis show that the proposed image encryption scheme achieves high security and efficiency.     

Meaningful Secret Image Sharing with Saliency Detection

Secret image sharing (SIS), as one of the applications of information theory in information security protection, has been widely used in many areas, such as blockchain, identity authentication and distributed cloud storage. In traditional secret image sharing schemes, noise-like shadows introduce difficulties into shadow management and increase the risk of attacks. Meaningful secret image sharing is thus proposed to solve these problems. Previous meaningful SIS schemes have employed steganography to hide shares into cover images, and their covers are always binary images. These schemes usually include pixel expansion and low visual quality shadows. To improve the shadow quality, we design a meaningful secret image sharing scheme with saliency detection. Saliency detection is used to determine the salient regions of cover images. In our proposed scheme, we improve the quality of salient regions that are sensitive to the human vision system. In this way, we obtain meaningful shadows with better visual quality. Experiment results and comparisons demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed scheme.     

Image sharing scheme based on combination theory

We present a simple algorithm for sharing and hiding secret image based on combination theory. The secret image is firstly encrypted by matrix multiplications and then shared into many shadow images by multiplying binary random sampling matrices. The sampling matrices randomly assign the pixel values to the shadow images which satisfy a specific combination rule as a constrain, so that the (t, n) threshold secret sharing scheme can be implemented. Numerical experiments have demonstrated the effectiveness of this image sharing algorithm.     

Deep Image Steganography Using Transformer and Recursive Permutation

Image steganography, which usually hides a small image (hidden image or secret image) in a large image (carrier) so that the crackers cannot feel the existence of the hidden image in the carrier, has become a hot topic in the community of image security. Recent deep-learning techniques have promoted image steganography to a new stage. To improve the performance of steganography, this paper proposes a novel scheme that uses the Transformer for feature extraction in steganography. In addition, an image encryption algorithm using recursive permutation is proposed to further enhance the security of secret images. We conduct extensive experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. We reveal that the Transformer is superior to the compared state-of-the-art deep-learning models in feature extraction for steganography. In addition, the proposed image encryption algorithm has good attributes for image security, which further enhances the performance of the proposed scheme of steganography.     

A novel chaos-based bit-level permutation scheme for digital image encryption

Confidentiality is an important issue when digital images are transmitted over public networks, and encryption is the most useful technique employed for this purpose. Image encryption is somehow different from text encryption due to some inherent features of image such as bulk data capacity and high correlation among pixels, which are generally difficult to handle by conventional algorithms. Recently, chaos-based encryption has suggested a new and efficient way to deal with the intractable problems of fast and highly secure image encryption. This paper proposes a novel chaos-based bit-level permutation scheme for secure and efficient image cipher. To overcome the drawbacks of conventional permutation-only type image cipher, the proposed scheme introduced a significant diffusion effect in permutation procedure through a two-stage bit-level shuffling algorithm. The two-stage permutation operations are realized by chaotic sequence sorting algorithm and Arnold Cat map, respectively. Results of various types of analysis are interesting and indicate that the security level of the new scheme is competitive with that of permutation-diffusion type image cipher, while the computational complexity is much lower. Therefore the new scheme is a good candidate for real-time secure image communication applications.     

A robust and secure chaotic standard map based pseudorandom permutation-substitution scheme for image encryption

A novel and robust chaos-based pseudorandom permutation-substitution scheme for image encryption is proposed. It is a loss-less symmetric block cipher and specifically designed for the color images but may also be used for the gray scale images. A secret key of 161-bit, comprising of the initial conditions and system parameter of the chaotic map (the standard map), number of iterations and number of rounds, is used in the algorithm. The whole encryption process is the sequential execution of a preliminary permutation and a fix number of rounds (as specified in the secret key) of substitution and main permutation of the 2D matrix obtained from the 3D image matrix. To increase the speed of encryption all three processes: preliminary permutation, substitution and main permutation are done row-by-row and column-by-column instead of pixel-by-pixel. All the permutation processes are made dependent on the input image matrix and controlled through the pseudo random number sequences (PRNS) generated from the discretization of chaotic standard map which result in both key sensitivity and plaintext sensitivity. However each substitution process is initiated with the initial vectors (different for rows and columns) generated using the secret key and chaotic standard map and then the properties of rows and column pixels of input matrix are mixed with the PRNS generated from the standard map. The security and performance analysis of the proposed image encryption has been performed using the histograms, correlation coefficients, information entropy, key sensitivity analysis, differential analysis, key space analysis, encryption/decryption rate analysis etc. Results suggest that the proposed image encryption technique is robust and secure and can be used for the secure image and video communication applications.     

Secret shared multiple-image encryption based on row scanning compressive ghost imaging and phase retrieval in the Fresnel domain

A multiple-image encryption method is proposed that is based on row scanning compressive ghost imaging, (t, n) threshold secret sharing, and phase retrieval in the Fresnel domain. In the encryption process, after wavelet transform and Arnold transform of the target image, the ciphertext matrix can be first detected using a bucket detector. Based on a (t, n) threshold secret sharing algorithm, the measurement key used in the row scanning compressive ghost imaging can be decomposed and shared into two pairs of sub-keys, which are then reconstructed using two phase-only mask (POM) keys with fixed pixel values, placed in the input plane and transform plane 2 of the phase retrieval scheme, respectively; and the other POM key in the transform plane 1 can be generated and updated by the iterative encoding of each plaintext image. In each iteration, the target image acts as the input amplitude constraint in the input plane. During decryption, each plaintext image possessing all the correct keys can be successfully decrypted by measurement key regeneration, compression algorithm reconstruction, inverse wavelet transformation, and Fresnel transformation. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations both verify the feasibility of the proposed method.     

Visual Secure Image Encryption Scheme Based on Compressed Sensing and Regional Energy

The network security transmission of digital images needs to solve the dual security problems of content and appearance. In this paper, a visually secure image compression and encryption scheme is proposed by combining compressed sensing (CS) and regional energy. The plain image is compressed and encrypted into a secret image by CS and zigzag confusion. Then, according to the regional energy, the secret image is embedded into a carrier image to obtain the final visual secure cipher image. A method of hour hand printing (HHP) scrambling is proposed to increase the pixel irrelevance. Regional energy embedding reduce the damage to the visual quality of carrier image, and the different embedding positions between images greatly enhances the security of the encryption algorithm. Furthermore, the hyperchaotic multi-character system (MCS) is utilized to construct measurement matrix and control pixels. Simulation results and security analyses demonstrate the effectiveness, security and robustness of the propose algorithm.     

Image sharing scheme based on discrete fractional random transform

We present a novel image sharing algorithm based on the discrete fractional random transform (DFRNT). The secret image is shared into several shadow images in the DFRNT domain together with some noise images as the encryption keys to increase the security. The decryption only requires a part of shadow images and therefore is independent of those noise images. The (t,n) threshold sharing scheme can be implemented completely by the proposed algorithm. The numerical simulations have demonstrated the effectiveness of this image sharing scheme.     

Multiple-image encryption algorithm based on mixed image element and permutation

To improve encryption efficiency and facilitate the secure transmission of multiple digital images, by defining the pure image element and mixed image element, this paper presents a new multiple-image encryption (MIE) algorithm based on the mixed image element and permutation, which can simultaneously encrypt any number of images. Firstly, segment the original images into pure image elements; secondly, scramble all the pure image elements with the permutation generated by the piecewise linear chaotic map (PWLCM) system; thirdly, combine mixed image elements into scrambled images; finally, diffuse the content of mixed image elements by performing the exclusive OR (XOR) operation among scrambled images and the chaotic image generated by another PWLCM system. The comparison with two similar algorithms is made. Experimental results and algorithm analyses show that the proposed MIE algorithm is very simple and efficient, which is suitable for practical image encryption.     

Multiple-image encryption by two-step phase-shifting interferometry and spatial multiplexing of smooth compressed signal

A multiple-image encryption method based on two-step phase-shifting interferometry(PSI) and spatial multiplexing of a smooth compressed signal is proposed. In the encoding and encryption process, with the help of four index matrices to store original pixel positions, all the pixels of four secret images are firstly reordered in an ascending order; then, the four reordered images are transformed by five-order Haar wavelet transform and performed sparseness operation. After Arnold transform and pixels sampling operation, one combined image can be grouped with the aid of compressive sensing(CS)and spatial multiplexing techniques. Finally, putting the combined image at the input plane of the PSI encryption scheme,only two interferograms ciphertexts can be obtained. During the decoding and decryption, utilizing all the secret key groups and index matrices keys, all the original secret images can be successfully decrypted by a wave-front retrieval algorithm of two-step PSI, spatial de-multiplexing, inverse Arnold transform, inverse discrete wavelet transform, and pixels reordering operation.     

Color image encryption and decryption for twin images in fractional Fourier domain

We propose a method for the encryption of twin color images using fractional Fourier transform (FRT). The color images to be encrypted are converted into the indexed image formats before being processed through twin image encryption algorithm based on the FRT. The proposed algorithm uses one random code in the image domain and one random phase code in the FRT domain to perform double image encryption. The conversion of both the input RGB images into their indexed formats facilitates single-channel processing for each image, and is more compact and robust as compared to multichannel techniques. Different fractional orders, the random masks in image- and FRT domain are the keys to enhance the security of the proposed system. The algorithms to implement the proposed encryption and decryption schemes are discussed, and results of digital simulation are presented. We examine sensitivity of the proposed scheme against the use of unauthorized keys (e.g. incorrect fractional orders, incorrect random phase mask etc.). Robustness of the method against occlusion and noise has also been discussed.     

Chaos-based image encryption using a hybrid genetic algorithm and a DNA sequence

The paper studies a recently developed evolutionary-based image encryption algorithm. A novel image encryption algorithm based on a hybrid model of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) masking, a genetic algorithm (GA) and a logistic map is proposed. This study uses DNA and logistic map functions to create the number of initial DNA masks and applies GA to determine the best mask for encryption. The significant advantage of this approach is improving the quality of DNA masks to obtain the best mask that is compatible with plain images. The experimental results and computer simulations both confirm that the proposed scheme not only demonstrates excellent encryption but also resists various typical attacks.