Visual Crypto Displays Enabling Secure Communications

In this paper we describe a low-tech and user friendly solution for secure two-way communication between two parties over a network of untrusted devices. We present a solution in which displays play a central role. Our approach guarantees privacy and allows to check the authenticity of information presented on displays. Furthermore, we provide the user with a secure return channel. To this end we propose to provide every user with a small decryption display which is, for example, integrated in a credit card and requires very limited computing power. The authentication and security are based on visual cryptography which was first introduced by Naor and Shamir in 1994. We solve some practical shortcomings of traditional visual cryptography and develop protocols for two-way authentication and privacy in untrusted environments.