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By Mohit Rajput, Maroti Deshmukh,

Neeta Nain, and Mushtaq Ahmed

Securing Data Through

Steganography and
Secret Sharing Schemes
Trapping and misleading potential attackers.

D
ata hiding is the process of con-
cealing recognizable digital data
by converting it into indiscernible
forms, i.e., those that are impercep-
tible to the human eye, and it uses
numerous techniques to accomplish this task.
In this article, we propose a new data-hiding
technique that uses the concept of steganogra-
phy and secret image-sharing schemes. The
encryption and decryption is carried out at
two levels: at the first level, the encryption
process is done using steganography; it is then
followed by a secret-sharing scheme at the
second level. The decryption process is the
opposite of the encryption process; according-
ly, we use secret sharing at the first level and
steganography in the second level. In the
encryption process, n + 1 shared images are
generated using n cover images and a secret
image. By performing the decryption algo-
rithm on these n + 1 shared images, we get n
recovered images and one stego image. The
proposed scheme is similar to a secret-sharing
scheme because it deceives the attacker by
producing pseudo images. In addition to
de­c eiving the a t t a c ke r, it also provides an

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCE.2017.2716412

©iStockphoto.com/dane_mark
Date of publication: 9 August 2018

40 IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine ^ september 2018 2162-2248/18©2018IEEE

additional advantage to the user by capturing the attacker.
The attacker considers n recovered images to be output and
follows his/her wrong intuition. The experimental results
demonstrate that the proposed scheme is secure at both levels
and altering any of the n shares will not reveal even a portion
of secret information. To check the effectiveness of the pro-
posed scheme, which works efficiently for grayscale and color
images, correlation, mean-square error (MSE), and peak sig-
nal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) techniques were used.
DATA-HIDING TECHNIQUES
The 21st century is an era of digitalization. Day by day, the
use of digital media for communication increases, thereby
expanding the need for effective security measures. Various
data-hiding techniques have been created to meet this chal-
lenge [1]. One can find data-hiding techniques in various
daily life applications [2] like in digital bank transactions,
user authentication, securing the cloud, and securing sensitive
and highly classified data. Some of the data-hiding methods
are watermarking, steganography, and cryptography. These
techniques have inherent flaws, e.g., in watermarking, the
separation of noise-tolerant signals from digital media becomes
impossible for the user. Likewise, steganography fails to
recover unaltered data at the receiver side. Therefore, to over-
come these barriers, cryptography is used. But the downside
of this technique is the effort associated with securing the
key. What happens if an unauthorized person gets access to
the key? He or she can easily crack the cipher and reveal the
message. To overcome this flaw and enhance this technique,
the advancement of cryptography was introduced, known as
visual cryptography. Visual cryptography was introduced in
[3]. It is used to hide data in such a way that when the shared
images are stacked together, only then does it reveal the hid-
den data. But tampering with shared images iteratively may
sometimes reveal partial information to an attacker. The
aforementioned discussed data-hiding techniques have no
defense for this issue.
A good data-hiding technique must not only provide
effective security protection from an intruder but should also
mislead him or her toward the wrong path. This ensures that
there will be no further attacks from that intruder. The pro-
posed scheme provides extra security by using a secret-shar-
ing scheme and steganography, and it also deceives the
attacker. To achieve improved security from attackers, we
have introduced two levels. In both levels, we used the basic
principles of a secret-sharing scheme and steganography for
the encryption and decryption processes. The output of the
first level tricks the attacker, while the output of the second
level deciphers the encrypted secret data. Some of the appli-
cations of the proposed method are shown in Figure 1.
STATE-OF-ART IN IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY
Data security has been an issue since the beginning of the
digital era, and researchers have considered many ways to
approach it. Visual secret sharing is a method that has risen in
popularity with the increased use of digital media. Numerous
One can find data-hiding
­techniques in various daily life
applications like in digital bank
transactions, user authentication,
securing the cloud, and ­securing
sensitive and highly ­classified data.
articles have been published exploring the possibility of steg-
anography and secret sharing as a solution for data security.
Some researchers have suggested the concept of least-signifi-
cant bit modification and the secret key, while others advo-
cate the encryption of secret images into shared images by
using random grids [4]. In [5], (n, n) and (t, n) secret-sharing
schemes are discussed. In (n, n) schemes, n shares are gener-
ated and distributed among n participants. If these n shares
are combined, only n secrets can be obtained. The same con-
cept is used in (t, n) [6], the only difference being that any t
or more shares are required to reveal the secret. Many of
these schemes fail to provide adequate security, like when
some partial information is revealed when less than desired
shares are combined [7]. To overcome this flaw, many schemes
are proposed to hide the secret image. In [9], a secure scheme
has been proposed using the concept of steganography with
visual secret sharing. The idea behind this scheme is that no
fake shadows can pass the authentication mechanism, which
will provide authenticity so that no other member can gain
access. The major flaw in this scheme is that, on stacking any
t images, the secret is revealed, and no encryption is done on
the cover images, which makes an attacker’s job of decrypt-
ing the information easy. In [10], a secure scheme is discussed,
the introduction of false data with true data, so that an attack-
er can not interpret which data is genuine and which is not.
This scheme uses an additive modulo operator, which is fast-
er than the conventional XOR operation. This secure scheme
does not provide any security to the cover image, which
makes it easy for an attacker to apply cryptanalysis on a
cover image and get the secret.
PROPOSED METHOD
New approaches are always necessary to overcome the flaws
of previous approaches. As a result, new schemes, some of
which are related to steganography and others to secret shar-
ing have been introduced. These schemes are less secure, as
only a single technique is used. Because of this, an intruder
can repeatedly try to reveal the secret by continuously tamper-
ing with shared information. The proposed strategy incorpo-
rated both secret sharing and steganography.
The proposed method used the concept of a secret-
sharing scheme to encrypt a secret image SI with n cover
images C i, i = 1, 2, f, n, to produce n + 1 shared images S j
j = 1, 2, f, n, n + 1. The same concept was used to decrypt
september 2018 ^ IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine 41
 n + 1 shared images S j j = 1, 2, f, n, n + 1 to get n recov-
ered cover images R i i = 1, 2, f, n and a stego image ST. This
complete process of encryption and decryption using secret
sharing is labeled as level 1. In level 2, the steganography
was used to get recovered secret image G by performing an
additive modulo operation on recovered cover images R i
i = 1, 2, f, n and stego image ST.
The proposed encryption algorithm for n + 1 share gener-
ation, S j j = 1, 2, f, n, n + 1, is given in Figure 1. Initially, an
additive inverse modulo operation was performed on secret
image SI and n cover images C i, to get the temporary secret
image, X; X = SI - (1C 1 + 2C 2 + 3C 3 + g + nC n) . The
temporary secret image X was generated to conceal secret
image SI. In the second step, temporary cover image
M i, i = 1, 2, f, n were generated. We initially assigned M 1
equal to C 1 and subsequently performed an additive modulo
operation on M j - 1, j = 2, 3, f, n - 1 and C j, j = 2, 3, f, n,
respectively, to get M j, j = 2, 3, f, n. The generalized
equation for generating temporary cover image M i is
i = 1, 2, f, n; M j = M j - 1 + C j . Thereafter, to get temporary
shared image T, we had to apply additive inverse modulo
on temporary secret image, X with (n + 1 - j) times of
M j, where j = 1, 2, f, n, the generalized equation for T;
T = X (n + 1 - j) M j for j = 1, 2, f, n. Then, to reduce pixel
size, a division operator was performed on T by (n + 1) to get
our first shared image S 1 . In the next step, we generated the
next shared image by using a temporary cover image and a
previously generated shared image, e.g., to generate S 2, we
used T1 and S 1, and similarly for S 3, we used T2 and S 2, which
was generated in the previous step; kept executing this pro-
cess until we got all of the n + 1 shared images. The general-
ized equation became S i + 1 = S i + M i for i = 1, 2, f, n, with
S 1 = T/ (n + 1) . After applying the encryption technique, we
got n + 1 shared images S j, j = 1, 2, f, n, n + 1 from n cover
images C i, i = 1, 2, f, n and secret image SI.
The decryption process to recover secret images is differ-
ent from the encryption process. This also adds a barrier
to prevent an intruder from accessing the secret image from
shared images. Initially, we used a secret-sharing concept to
produce stego image ST and n recovered cover images R i,

SI – C1 + 2C2+ 3C3 + .... +nCn

– = Additive Inverse Modulo
+ = Additive Modulo
1 2 3 .... n
* = Multiplication Operator
* * * * / = Division Operator
C1 C2 C3 .... Cn SI = Secret Image
X = Temporary Secret Image
X Ci = i th Cover Image
M1 Mi = i th Temporary Cover Image
+
T = Temporary Shared Image
Si = Shared Image
M2 +

M3 .... +

Mn

* * * ...... *

n n–1 n–2 1

– nM1 + (n –1)M2 + (n –2)M3 + .... + Mn

n+1

T/(n + 1) + + + + +

....
S1 S2 S3 S4 Sn Sn+1

FIGURE 1. The proposed encryption technique.

42 IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine ^ september 2018

i = 1, 2, f, n, from n + 1 shared images. The n recovered
images are similar to n cover images and have a high proba-
bility of deceiving an attacker. Because the output of the pro-
Data security has been an issue
posed scheme was identical to the output of the conventional since the beginning of the digital
secret-sharing scheme, it stopped the attacker from using var- era, and researchers have consid-
ious attack methods on shared images to reveal the secret
image. After applying the concept of secret sharing, stegan- ered many ways to approach it.
ography was used on n recovered images R i, i = 1, 2, f, n
and the stego image ST, to get the recovered secret image. To
generate stego image ST, an additive modulo operation was
used on n + 1 shared images S j, j = 1, 2, f, n, n + 1. After ST +
generation of n + 1 shared images, temporarily recov-
ered images were generated by using the additive modulo
operation on shared images S j, j = 1, 2, f, and n, n + 1,
respectively. Thus, the generalized equation for produ­­ S1 S2 S3 .... Sn Sn+1
cing temporarily recovered images TR i, is i = 1, 2, f, n;
TR i = S i + 1 - S i, i = 1, 2, f, n. Subsequently, on the tempo- ....
rarily shared images TR i, i = 1, 2, f, n, the additive inverse – – – –
modulo was implemented to generate n recovered images R i,
i = 1, 2, f, n. In level 2, cryptography was used for decryp-
TR1 TR2 TRn–1 TRn
tion. The additive modulo operation was used on stego image
ST with i times of n recovered images R i, i = 1, 2, f, n to get
recovered secret image G. The proposed decryption technique R1 –

diagram is given in Figure 2.

R2 ....
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND ANALYSIS * –
The proposed scheme worked efficiently on both color and 1
grayscale images. For experimentation, we used grayscale * Rn–1 –
images of dimension 512 # 512 pixels. For binary images, we
had to make some changes in the algorithm, such as remov- 2 ....
ing the multiplication and division operator when updating Rn
the modulo value to two. The experimental results of the pro- *
posed scheme are illustrated in Figure 3. We used a secret
n –1
image SI [Figure 3(a)] and four cover images C 1, C 2, C 3, C 4,
*
as illustrated in Figure 3(b)–(e). Figure 3(f)–(j) illustrates
five shared images S 1, S 2, S 3, S 4, S 5, respectively. No shares + n
revealed any information about the secret image or cover
images. Recovered cover images RC 1, RC 2, RC 3, RC 4 are dis- G
played in Figure 3(k)–(n), with Figure 3(o) as stego image
ST. Recovered secret image, G, which is the same as secret – = Additive Inverse Modulo
image SI, is shown in Figure 3(p). + = Additive Modulo
* = Multiplication Operator
SIMILARITY MEASURES ST = Stego Image
Here, we discuss the general characteristics and efficiency of Si = i th Shared Image
the proposed method by checking the analogy using correla- TRi = i th Temporary Recover Image
Ri = i th Recover Image
tion, PSNR, and MSE. The proposed scheme shared a single
secret image using n cover images to generate n + 1 shares G = Recoverd Secret Image
and worked efficiently for grayscale and color images. The
secret image was not revealed when less than n + 1 shared FIGURE 2. The proposed decryption technique.
images were stacked, and the computation time for encryp-
tion and decryption was approximately the same. The pro- check the similarity between the input and output of both lev-
posed scheme used an additive modulo operation, which took els. For correlation, the closer the value to +1 or −1, the more
less computation time than the Boolean XOR operation. For they are related to each other. A value close to 0 represents
the four cover images, the time taken for encryption and that they are not related to each other. In the MSE, the lower
decryption was . 0.125 and 0.127 s, respectively. We use the value, the higher the similarity between the compared
three similarity measures, correlation, MSE, and PSNR, to objects. In PSNR, excellent values range from 30 to 50 dB,

september 2018 ^ IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine 43

 (a)

(b) (c) (d) (e)

(f) (g) (h) (i) (j)

(k) (l) (m) (n) (o)

(p)

FIGURE 3. The results of the proposed scheme for grayscale images with n = 4: (a) the secret image, (b)–(e) the cover images
^C 1, C 2, C 3, C 4 h, (f)–(j) the shared images ^S 1, S 2, S 3, S 4, S 5 h, (k)–(n) the recovered cover images ^RC 1, RC 2, RC 3, RC 4 h, (o) the stego image
(ST ), and (p) the recovered secret image (G) . (Images courtesy of Image Processing Place and the USC-SIPI Image Database.)

while an acceptable range in wireless transmission settles at
roughly 25 dB for 8-bit data.
The correlation, MSE, and PSNR values between secret
image SI and shared images S i, i = 1, f, n, n + 1 are illustrated
in Table 1. Both came out to be not related as the correlation
coefficient for each pair was . 0, which means both compared
images were not related to each other. The MSE and PSNR
came out to be greater than 9,500 and less than 8.5 dB, respec-
tively, which represents a high dissimilarity between secret
image SI and shared images S i, i = 1, f, n, n + 1. Hence, no
data of the secret image was partially revealed.
Quality measure techniques were used on secret image SI
and stego image ST in a combination of recovered cover
images R i, i = 1, 2, f, n. When all n recovered cover images
were combined with the stego image, the secret was recov-
ered. The recovered secret image was identical to the secret
image as the correlation value for this pair came out to be
0.9998, which was approximately . 1, i.e., fully correlated to

44 IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine ^ september 2018

 only secure but also helped a user trap and mislead an attack-
Table 1. A comparison of secret images with er. The concept of secret sharing was used to provide better
shared images. security and to deceive the attacker by giving pseudo images
as a result. Steganography was used to conceal secret images
Secret and
Shared Image Correlation MSE PSNR (dB)
into a stego image.
The limitations of the proposed scheme are 1) the pro-
SI, S 1 0.0003 14,455.15 6.56 posed scheme uses a division operator that reduces pixel size,
SI, S 2 –0.0062 10,232.37 8.07 allowing a user to use this algorithm for fewer than 255 images
at one time (if more than 255 are used, the algorithm will not
SI, S 3 0.0036 9,616.29 8.33
work) and 2) the stego image comes out to be ­random, which
SI, S 4 0.0035 9,638.36 8.32 could alert an intruder that they are being deceived. In future
SI, S 5 0.0001 9,799.87 8.25 tests, we will use an alternative for the division operator. We
will make a stego image systematic so that an intruder will
not know they are being tricked.

Table 2. A comparison of a secret image with stego ABOUT THE AUTHORS

in combination with recovered cover images. Mohit Rajput (mrajput7@gatech.edu) is with the Georgia
Institute of Technology, Atlanta.
Secret, Stego, and Maroti Deshmukh (marotideshmukh@nituk.ac.in) is with
­Recovered Cover Image Correlation MSE PSNR (dB)
the National Institute of Technology, Uttarakhand, India.
SI, ST 0.0130 9,588.17 8.35 Neeta Nain (nnain.cse@mnit.ac.in) is with the Malaviya
SI, (ST, R 1) –0.0289 10,050.06 8.14 National Institute of Technology Jaipur, India.
Mushtaq Ahmed (mahmed.cse@mnit.ac.in) is an assis-
SI, (ST, R 1, R 2) 0.0282 9,546.88 8.14
tant professor in the Department of Computer Science
SI, (ST, R 1, R 2, R 3) –0.0588 10,529.23 7.94 and Engineering, Malaviya National Institute of Technol-
SI, (ST, R 1, R 2, R 3, R 4) 0.9998 1.99 45.77 ogy Jaipur, India.

the secret image. The MSE and PSNR for the pair came out
to be . 1.99 and 45.17 dB, respectively, which indicates both
images were nearly identical. But all of the other combina-
tions of the stego image and the recovered cover images with
secret images showed the exact opposite result, as the corre-
lation value came out to . 0, with the root MSE (RMSE) and
PSNR being greater than 9,500 and fewer than 8.35 dB,
respectively. This indicates that the other combinations were
completely different from the secret image. The < n shared
images in combination with the stego image did not reveal
any information about the secret image. The results obtained
from applying quality measures on the secret image, the
stego image, and the recovered cover images are illustrat-
ed in Table 2.
The time complexity increased with the increase of the
cover images. The time complexity T was dependent on
image dimension (D), image type (I ), and the number of
cover images (N ), T ? (D # I # N). The space complexity
was dependent on the cover images, i.e., as the cover images
increased, the space complexity increased. Due to the two
levels of encryption, the space complexity was high. To
reduce the space complexity and increase the security of
shared and recovered cover images, we will disseminate the
shared and recovered cover images into different servers.
CONCLUSION
In this article, we proposed a novel encryption technique
using secret sharing and steganography. This scheme was not
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