Secure and optimal secret sharing scheme for color images

Due to contemporary communication trends, the amount of multimedia data created and transferred in 5G networks has reached record levels. Multimedia applications communicate an enormous quantity of images containing private data that tend to be attacked by cyber-criminals and later used for illegal reasons. Security must consider and adopt the new and unique features of 5G/6G platforms. Cryptographic procedures, especially secret sharing (SS), with some extraordinary qualities and capacities, can be conceived to handle confidential data. This paper has developed a secured (k, k) multiple secret sharing (SKMSS) scheme with Hybrid Optimal SIMON ciphers. The proposed SKMSS method constructs a set of noised components generated securely based on performing hash and block ciphers over the secret image itself. The shares are created and safely sent after encrypting them through the Hybrid Optimal SIMON ciphers based on the noised images. This is a lightweight cryptography method and helps reduce computation complexity. The hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization-based Cuckoo Search Optimization Algorithm generates the keys based on the analysis of the peak signal to noise ratio value of the recovered secret images. In this way, the quality of the secret image is also preserved even after performing more computations upon securing the images.