A COMPREHENSIVE INVESTIGATION OF VISUAL CRYPTOGRAPHY AND ITS ROLE IN SECURE COMMUNICATIONS

Abstract: Secret sharing approach and in particular Visual Cryptography (VC) try to address the security issues in dealing with images. In fact, VC is a powerful technique that combines the notions of perfect ciphers and secret sharing in cryptography. VC takes an image (secret) as an input and encrypts (divide) into two or more pieces (shares) that each of them can not reveal any information about the main input. The decryption way in this scenario is done through superimposing shares on top of each other to receive the input image. No computer participation is required, thus showing one of the distinguishing features of VC. It is claimed that VC is a unique technique in the sense that the encrypted message can be decrypted directly by the human visual system.

Keywords: Visual cryptography, secret sharing, image encryption, secure communications.