A verifiable threshold secret image sharing (SIS) scheme with combiner verification and cheater identification

Image transmission is gaining importance with the advancement of information communication technology. Transmission of sensitive images in diverse applications like military, diplomatic, and medical sector requires special attention so that those are not placed in the wrong hands. Secret sharing is a technique in information security applicable for group use of a secret. In secret sharing, all the actors are considered to be trusted but in a real scenario, there is the possibility of cheating. In this current research, a verifiable secret image sharing (VSIS) is proposed which is a threshold scheme and can identify a cheater. The sharing is done by bitwise OR and verifiability is added using XOR and hash operation. The participants are provided only shadow shares not the original and combiner authentication is done by the participants before submitting information. Experimental results and security analysis provides acceptability and comparison analysis with some existing schemes provides it a strong base. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.