Visual Cryptography Security for Human Authentication

Visual cryptography is a cryptographic technique which allows visual information i.e. pictures, text, etc. to be encrypted in such a way that decryption can be done by human visual system without the use of computers. Visual Cryptography is a visual secret sharing scheme, where an image was broken up into n shares. The individual with all the n shares only can decrypt the image, while any n-1 shares cannot reveal information about original image. Visual Cryptography uses two transparent images: One image contains random pixels, and Other image contains the secret information. Both the transparent images are required to reveal the information. Both the layers are to be printed onto a transparent sheet, which thus can be easily recognized by human eye.

How Visual Cryptography Works:

A plain text in the forms of images is encrypted in Visual cryptography. The encrypted text creates shares which are passed through a channel i.e. fax or email and sent to decryption process. The decryption process of Visual Cryptography contains a human visual system.

Each pixel of the images is divided into smaller blocks.[same number of white and black blocks] either horizontally or vertically. If the pixel is divided into two, one is black and the other will be white one. If is divided into four, there will be two white and two black parts. The information pixel will be completely black, also called the overlayed version of pixels.

Advantages of Visual Cryptography

Visual cryptography offers absolute secrecy according to the information theory. There is no need of computer in order to detect the information at the receiver end in visual cryptography. Secure ways of encrypting is possible with the help of visual cryptography. Visual cryptography is simple to implement. In Visual Cryptography, encryption doesnt require any NP-Hard problem dependency. Infinite computational power cannot predict the message in visual cryptography. We can send cipher text in visual cryptography through fax or e-mail. In Visual Cryptography, decryption algorithm is not required. Therefore a person unknown to cryptography can decrypt the message.

Applications of Visual Cryptography

Visual cryptography is used in bank customer identification. Anti spam-bot measure can be done by visual cryptography. Visual cryptography is used in electronic voting machines/ remote voting machines to verify receipts. Visual cryptography has wide range of applications in both private and public sectors of our society.