A Novel Approach for Concealing Image by Utilizing the Concept of Secret Sharing Scheme and Steganography

Data hiding is a process of concealing recognizable digital data into indiscernible form i.e. imperceptible to the human eye. Secret sharing with steganography is a hot topic of discussion. In this paper, we proposed a secure image hiding scheme to deceive attacker using the concept of steganography and secret sharing. As to recover secret image, we have to apply decryption technique at two levels. Decryption at first level is done on the concept of secret sharing scheme. At first level, n+1 shared image are generated by using n cover images and a secret image. By performing operations on these n+1 shared images, we get n recovered images and one stego image, this process is homologousto classic secret sharing scheme. As the method is alike to secret sharing scheme, it deceives attacker and leads him to fall into our trap. He can consider that n recover images to be output and follow his lead, which will end in the wrong direction. But to recover the secret image, the output data from level one have to undergo through level two. In level two, we used the concept of steganography. The input to the second step is n recovered cover images and one stego image. The experimental result shows the proposed scheme is highly secured at both the levels, altering with any n shares will not reveal any partial information. For checking the effectiveness of proposed scheme, Correlation, MSE and PSNR techniques are used. The proposed scheme efficiently works for grayscale and coloured images.