A Note on Multiple Secret Sharing Using Chinese Remainder Theorem and Exclusive-OR

Abstract

This paper reviews the former existing scheme on (n,n) -multiple secret sharing (MSS) for color images along with its slight limitation. This scheme generates a set of n shared images from a set of n secret images using the Chinese remainder theorem (CRT) and Boolean exclusive-OR (XOR) operation. This scheme works well if the number of secret images n is even number. However, the former scheme has a slight problem while the number of secret images n is an odd number. This paper proposes a new technique to overcome this problem by introducing symmetric and transferred masking coefficients to generate a set of shared images. To further improve the security level of the proposed method, a set of secret images is first transformed with hyperchaotic scrambling method before generating shared images. The security of the proposed (n,n) -MSS can also be increased by merging a shared color image into 2-D matrix representation. As documented in the experimental results, the proposed method offers a promising result on (n,n) -MSS scheme regardless of the number of secret images n is odd or even number. In addition, the proposed method outperforms the former existing (n,n) -MSS schemes in terms of quantitative measurements.