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Visual Cryptography

Models, Issues, Applications and New Directions

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Book cover Innovative Security Solutions for Information Technology and Communications (SECITC 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 10006))

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Abstract

Since its introduction, visual cryptography has received considerable attention within the cryptographic community. In this paper we give a quick look at the salient moments of its history, focusing on the main models, on open issues, on its applications and on some prospectives.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    White pixels are actually transparent pixels, but we refer to them as to white pixels.

  2. 2.

    Kafri and Keren proposed three constructions for sharing a secret image between two parties. Naor and Shamir, on the other hand, gave a general model, formalizing the properties that visual cryptography schemes need to satisfy, and constructions and bounds for threshold schemes. They also coined the term Visual Cryptography.

  3. 3.

    In the other two constructions proposed by Kafri and Keren there are errors of both types, i.e., white pixels are reconstructed as black and black pixels are reconstructed as white. However, reconstruction is still possible as long as the errors are “not too many”.

  4. 4.

    We stress that for deterministic visual cryptography it must be \(m\ge 2\), i.e., the pixel expansion is unavoidable. The probabilistic and the random grid visual cryptography models instead allow \(m=1\).

  5. 5.

    In a more general form, it is possible to consider access structures where there are some subsets that are neither qualified nor forbidden; in such a case we simply don’t care about what those subsets of parties can do with the shares.

  6. 6.

    Recall that in the model, for sharing a secret image, a random black and white image (a random grid) is used as starting point.

  7. 7.

    We remark that the adjective “extended” has been used also to denote other types of visual cryptography schemes with different additional properties; for example, in [33], “extended” schemes allow to share different secrets, one for each qualified subset.

  8. 8.

    An encryption scheme allowing to verify whether a decryption is successful, providing a correctly decrypted value, or fails, providing garbage, is used.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Informatica, University of Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II, 132, 84084, Fisciano, SA, Italy

    Paolo D’Arco & Roberto De Prisco

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  1. Paolo D’Arco
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Correspondence to Paolo D’Arco .

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  1. Military Technical Academy , Bucharest, Romania

    Ion Bica

  2. NEC Laboratories Europe , Heidelberg, Germany

    Reza Reyhanitabar

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D’Arco, P., De Prisco, R. (2016). Visual Cryptography. In: Bica, I., Reyhanitabar, R. (eds) Innovative Security Solutions for Information Technology and Communications. SECITC 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10006. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47238-6_2

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