Indirect visual cryptography scheme

Visual cryptography (VC), a new cryptographic scheme for image. Here in encryption, image with message is encoded to be N sub-images and any K sub-images can decode the message in a special rules (N>=2, 2<=K<=N). Then any K of the N sub-images are printed on transparency and stacked exactly, the message of original image will be decrypted by human visual system, but any K-1 of them get no information about it. This cryptographic scheme can decode concealed images without any cryptographic computations, and it has high security. But this scheme lacks of hidden because of obvious feature of sub-images. In this paper, we introduce indirect visual cryptography scheme (IVCS), which encodes sub-images to be pure phase images without visible strength based on encoding of visual cryptography. The pure phase image is final ciphertexts. Indirect visual cryptography scheme not only inherits the merits of visual cryptography, but also raises indirection, hidden and security. Meanwhile, the accuracy alignment is not required any more, which leads to the strong anti-interference capacity and robust in this scheme. System of decryption can be integrated highly and operated conveniently, and its process of decryption is dynamic and fast, which all lead to the good potentials in practices.