Steganography Based Visual Cryptography (SBVC)

A digital signature performs the function of conventional handwritten signatures for authentication of documents, data integrity and non-repudiation. Most of the conventional digital signature schemes are based on complex mathematical computations to generate the keys and verify signatures. In late nineteen century comparatively less computation based scheme known as visual cryptography (VC) is introduced. VC has high security and requires comparatively less complex computations. In this paper, we consider a new digital signature scheme, based on the concept of Visual Secret Sharing associated to XOR-based non-expansion visual cryptography systems. Our proposed scheme is towards enhancement of security of born digital and digitized document by generating visual shares and embedding them within a cover image using steganographic techniques rather than complicated mathematical computations. The proposed scheme could be applied for ownership protection, copy control, authentication of digital media etc.