MSKS for Data Hiding and Retrieval using Visual Cryptography

Secret message in the form of image can be concealed into two or more images in Visual Cryptography (VC) schemes. The secret image can be recovered simply by stacking the shares together without any complex computation involved. The shares do not reveal any information about the secret image if they are viewed separately. In this paper, a color visual cryptography scheme using a combination of Meaningful Shares (MS) and a Key Share (KS) is proposed. These MS will not provoke the attention of hackers. The proposed scheme makes use of the XOR operation to create KS from the MS and secret image. The secret image can be decrypted by stacking the n-1 meaningful shares and key shares together by performing XOR operation. Experimental results show that the new scheme is perfectly applicable and achieves a high two level security