A Meaningful (n, n)-Threshold Visual Secret Sharing Scheme Based on QR Codes and Information Hiding

Visual secret sharing (VSS) schemes can enhance the security of image transmission over networks. Conventional VSS schemes often generate meaningless shares, which can raise suspicion among potential attackers. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel VSS scheme that integrates information hiding techniques with quick response (QR) codes to generate meaningful shares. The first n−1 shares are encoded as standard QR codes, while the n-th share is embedded into a grayscale carrier image using a reversible information hiding method, ensuring the carrier remains visually meaningful. During transmission, the n−1 QR codes and the hidden image are distributed. At the receiver end, the hidden n-th share is extracted losslessly from the carrier image using the n−1 QR codes, and the original secret image is perfectly reconstructed by bitwise XORing all n shares. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility, security, and visual quality of the proposed scheme.