Securing matrix counting-based secret-sharing involving crypto ...

Abstract
The privacy and confidentiality of our data are more fundamental to our existence than ever, especially with our growing dependence on online services and the transfer of information, be it for convenience or the unfortunate COVID 19 pandemic. Traditional security measures such as cryptography and steganography are essential. However, they are not sufficient anymore as when one party maintains complete control over the data, they may intentionally, or not, lose or reveal it. Thus, secret sharing schemes were introduced to address applications that require collective agreement by authorized personnel to access or modify, such as missile launching, sophisticated medical agreements, or high-level bank transfers. In standard secret sharing, the target key is distributed among several authorized participants in a way that only the intended group of them are needed to reconstruct the original target key. These schemes became popular as they fortified the security of both cryptography and steganography and accomplished extraordinary results combined with each. This work focuses on two particular secret sharing techniques known as counting-based secret sharing and matrix-based secret sharing, which is based on the former. These methods are simple and intuitive. Consequently, they are prone to attacks that may result in the successful guessing of the key. In this work, not only are the shares hidden but they are also encrypted beforehand so that should they be intercepted, the adversary cannot decipher them. In other words, two layers of security are added to the secret-sharing method: steganography and cryptography. We studied two image steganography methods: least significant bit (LSB) and discrete wavelet transform (DWT), each combined with XOR encryption for security and robustness acceptability verification. The research results demonstrated that the use of steganography and encryption along with the matrix-based secret sharing did not affect the quality of operation nor compromised the security of information presenting attractive remarks.
Keywords
Counting-based secret sharing
Image-based steganography
Secret sharing
LSB
DWT
Encryption
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Faiza Abdu Ahmed Al-Shaarani is a graduate student, working on the Master of Sciences (MS) degree in Computer Engineering, offered by College of Computers and Information Systems, at Umm Al Qura University (UQU) under the umbrella of Ministry of Education – Saudi Arabia. Her graduate studies program at UQU is currently specialized in Information Security, with MS thesis entitled: Combining Steganography and Matrices to Improve Counting-Based Secret-Sharing under supervision of Prof. Adnan Gutub hoping to complete her degree during 2021.
Prof. Adnan Abdul-Aziz Gutub is ranked as Full Professor in Computer Engineering specialized in Information and Computer Security within College of Computers and Information Systems at Umm Al-Qura University (UQU). He has been working as the Vice Dean of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Institute of the Hajj & Omrah Research, Known publicly as Hajj Research Institute (HRI), within (UQU), Makkah Al-Mukarramah, all Muslims religious Holy City located within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Adnan’s academic experience in Computer Engineering was gained from his previous long-time work as Associate Professor, Assistant Professor, Lecturer, and Graduate Assistant, all in Computer Engineering at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He received his Ph.D. degree (2002) in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Oregon State University, USA. He had his BS in Electrical Engineering and MS in Computer Engineering both from KFUPM, Saudi Arabia. Adnan's research work can be observed through his 110+ publications (international journals and conferences) as well as his 5 US patents registered officially by USPTO. His main research interests involved optimizing, modeling, simulating, and synthesizing VLSI hardware for crypto and security computer arithmetic operations. He worked on designing efficient integrated circuits for the Montgomery inverse computation in different finite fields. He has some work in modeling architectures for RSA and elliptic curve crypto operations. His interest in computer security also involved steganography and secret-sharing focusing on image based steganography and Arabic text steganography as well as counting based secret sharing. Adnan’s research interest in computing and information technology have been broaden to also relate to smart crowd management and intelligent transportation engineering systems because of the involvement in Hajj and Omrah Research at UQU - Makkah. Administratively, Adnan Gutub filled many executive and managerial academic positions at KFUPM as well as UQU. At KFUPM - Dhahran, he had the experience of chairing the Computer Engineering department (COE) for five years until moving to Makkah in 2010. Then, at UQU - Makkah, Adnan Chaired the Information Systems Department at the College of Computers & Information Systems followed by his leadership of the Center of Research Excellence in Hajj and Omrah (HajjCoRE) serving as HajjCoRE director for around 3-years until the end of 2013. Then, he was assigned his last position (until March 2016) as the Vice Dean of HRI, i.e. the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Institute of the Hajj & Omrah Research.