VISUAL SECRET SHARING SCHEME USING ENCRYPTING MULTIPLE IMAGES

Due to advancements in digital communication, securely transmitting visual content has become increasingly difficult. Serious security breaches occur when information is transmitted; therefore, unauthorized users have more chances to receive transmitted information, data is intercepted, and information has been compromised. Typically when using traditional types of image data encryption and image data hiding, the image is usually only protected as a single-secret image and, therefore, the encryption methods are weak due to having only to protect a single secret image. Not only does this allow for the possibility of visual distortion, but it can also provide an avenue for unauthorized users to access the secret information as it is being transmitted to the intended receiver. Finally, since most of the existing methods provide no adequate access control, many of the people who receive a copy of the transmitted secret image may still have partial access to the transmitted secret image before or after they have been formally authorized to view the original secret image. Finally, there has been an increasing requirement for being able to transmit multiple secret images at one time without requiring any additional bandwidth or degrading the quality of the original transmitted image. As highlighted above, there is now a critical need for a more advanced visual secret sharing framework that will provide a means for encrypting multiple secret images into a single cover image as little visual distortion or perceptual change as possible. Additionally, there is a critical need for independently reconstructing the secret images via the authorized individuals accessing the original secret images. To facilitate the achievement of these objectives, it is critical to combine encryption and image hiding and secret sharing systems to achieve visual data communications with a higher level of security and increased resistance to attacks while maintaining the specific privacy of visual data communications.