ENHANCED SECURITY SYSTEM USING SYMMETRIC ENCRYPTION AND VISUAL CRYPTOGRAPHY

In this paper, the authors have introduced a novel visual cryptographic technique. This method is applicable for both Bitmap Color and Grayscale images. This method uses the concept of Residual Number System (RNS) based on Chinese Remainder Theorem for share creation and share stacking of a given image. Secret image is hidden in cover image to get stego-image. A pixel of the Stego-image is taken and added with an eight bit key to get a cipher pixel. The key is generated using a pseudo random number generator and Mixed Key Generation technique. After encryption, the cipher pixel is mapped into an RNS of 'n' Shares. These 'n' Shares are stored or transmitted to the destination. The proposed approach, like any other visual cryptographic approach, is very secure, efficient, reliable, fast and easy to implement. The performance analysis of this visual cryptographic technique is done with respect to Histograms.