A Self-Authenticating Multi-Tone Secret Sharing Scheme Using Meaningful Shares for Satellite Images

In today’s era of far-reaching usage of satellite imagery across diverse fields such as remote sensing, environmental monitoring, and national security, the authenticity and integrity of these images have become paramount. However, ensuring the trustworthiness of satellite images remains a challenge, particularly in scenarios where unauthorized access or tampering can lead to severe consequences. This paper proposes a novel solution to address this challenge by means of a self-authenticating multi-tone secret sharing visual cryptography (VC) scheme with meaningful shares. The proposed approach incorporates novel processes, i.e., SPICE (secure pixel integration for covert embedding) and EX-CEP (extraction of covertly embedded pixels) for generation and extraction of secret shares at the sender and receiver side, respectively. Prior to share generation, the satellite image is encrypted and processed to generate a secret hash value which is used for establishing the authenticity and integrity of the received satellite image. The presented work delineates an innovative approach which integrates a comprehensive set of features, i.e., Image Encryption, Self-Authentication, Integrity Verification, Meaningful Shares Construction (from full 8-bit grayscale Meaningless Shares), 100% Original Secret Reconstruction, No Contrast Loss, No Share Expansion, under one umbrella. This approach is distinguished by its holistic one-stop solution strategy, which seamlessly amalgamates multiple novel techniques into a singular, cohesive framework. Exhaustive set of experiments have been performed to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach and to substantiate it’s superiority over the existing state-of-the-art VC approaches. Through comprehensive experimentation, the presented work underscores the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in safeguarding sensitive satellite imagery.