Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The widespread use of smart devices, such as phones and live-streaming cameras, has ushered in an era where digital images can be captured and shared on social networks anytime and anywhere. Sharing images demands more bandwidth and stricter security than text. This prevalence poses challenges for secure image forwarding, as it is susceptible to privacy leaks when sharing data. While standard encryption algorithms can safeguard the privacy of textual data, image data entail larger volumes and significant redundancy. The limited computing power of smart devices complicates the encrypted transmission of images, creating substantial obstacles to implementing security policies on low-computing devices. To address privacy concerns regarding image sharing on social networks, we propose a lightweight data forwarding mechanism for resource-constrained environments. By integrating large-scale data forwarding with visual cryptography, we enhance data security and resource utilization while minimizing overhead. We introduce a downsampling-based non-expansive scheme to reduce pixel expansion and decrease encrypted image size without compromising decryption quality. Experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves a peak signal-to-noise ratio of up to 20.54 dB, and a structural similarity index of 0.72, outperforming existing methods such as random-grid. Our approach prevents size expansion while maintaining high decryption quality, addressing access control gaps, and enabling secure and efficient data exchange between interconnected systems.
Source: Applied Sciences
DOI: 10.3390/app15084150
Authors: Lijing Ren, Denghui Zhang
Language: English
Subfield: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,896
Funder: Ministry of Education, India
OpenAlex ID: W4409313553