Extended Capabilities for XOR-Based Visual Cryptography

Abstract

The XOR-based visual cryptography (VC) is a possible methodology to solve the poor visual quality problem without darkening the background in VC. However, investigations on XOR-based VC are not sufficient. In this paper, we exploit some extended capabilities for XOR-based VC. Actually, two XOR-based VC algorithms are proposed, namely XOR-based VC for general access structure (GAS) and adaptive region incrementing XOR-based VC. The first algorithm aims to implement complicated sharing strategy using GAS, while maintaining merits such as perfect reconstruction of secret, no pixel expansion, and no code book requirement. In the second algorithm, the concept of adaptive security level is first introduced, where the security levels are recovered in accordance with the qualified sets instead of the quantity of stacked shares. Adaptive region incrementing XOR-based VC further enriches the application scenarios. Theoretical analysis on the proposed algorithms are provided, as well as extensive experimental results and evaluations for demonstrating the effectiveness and advantages of the two methods.Index Terms-Visual cryptography, visual secret sharing, XOR, general access structure, region incrementing, pixel expansion, adaptive security level.

A Novel XOR-Based Threshold Visual Cryptography with Adjustable Pixel Expansion

“…When such mobile devices are available, a (k, n)-XVC schemes can be widely adopted to substitute a (k, n)-OVC scheme. Many schemes focused on a (k, n)-XVC scheme to decrease the construction complexity [21,[23][24][25][26]. Let "⊗" denote the Boolean "XOR" operation and ⊗(B i |U) denote the Boolean XOR-ing of the row j, j ∈ U of B i , i = 0, 1.…”

“…A good strategy was proposed to improve the contrast, which introduced the "XOR" operation in recovering the secret [11,19,[22][23][24][25]. It is investigated that the contrast for a (k, n)-XVC scheme is 2 k−1 times the contrast for the (k, n)-OVC scheme if the the basis matrices of the latter scheme are adopted [26].…”

Major Developments in Visual Cryptography

“…The paper [34] addresses VC algorithms based on XOR for general access structure and adaptive region incrementing XOR based VC. This paper reviews the visual cryptography schemes and their performance.…”

“…The paper [34] analyses the performance of XOR-based cryptography has been exploited and two variants of XOR-based cryptography gets introduced namely XOR-based VC for GAS and adaptive region incrementing XOR based VC. The paper further concludes that complicated sharing strategy by using General Access Structure (GAS) implemented in XOR based VC for GAS.…”

XOR-Based Visual Cryptography

“…De Santis, and D. R. Stinson [, where an access structure is a specification of all qualified and forbidden subsets of 'n' shares. Any subset of 'k' or more qualified shares can decrypt the secret image but no information can be obtained by stacking lesser number of qualified shares or by stacking disqualified share [1].…”