Cheating prevention using genetic feature based key in secret sharing schemes

Abstract

Shamir proposed a t out of n secret sharing scheme where secrets are encrypted into scrambled images called shares or shadows. The secrets can be reconstructed when t or more participants pool their shares or shadow images together. Major drawbacks in such schemes are if a forged share is pooled then it leads to reconstruction of wrong secret. Cheating is also possible by some participants who can deceive the remaining participants by pooling forged shares. Many cheating prevention schemes have been proposed which uses authentication bits, hash codes etc. This paper proposes a new biometric personal authentication technique which prevents the cheating of participants. The results of the system and the security analysis shows that the proposed scheme gives secret sharing participants the confidence of the recovered original secret without the need to worry about forging of shadow images or dishonest participants.