Securing information flow in content delivery networks with visual and quantum cryptography

Abstract

Steganography, a science of visual cryptography, was historically originated from the times of war when in one country a messenger's head would be shaved to write a secret message on it and hair grown again before he was sent to the other country carrying the message in his head as it was impossible to be revealed unless the head was shaved again on the other end. Luckily the Steganography used these days learnt a lot from this concept but made sure no one needed to shave their heads. Though Steganography is an old concept it is a powerful one and can be practiced where long classical secret keys need to be avoided and sense of simplicity while strong cryptography is vital. However one of the biggest challenges of Steganography and other Visual Cryptography techniques is that an attacker in the middle can hijack the image and forward a fake image. This again means that we need large classical keys or so to secure the channel. However large keys are no longer going to be suitable for future next generation networks as they require light weight key distribution systems which are also free from eavesdropping. Besides, in recent studies it is suggested that in near future quantum computers would be able to break classical cryptographic techniques such as RSA. With quantum computers, quantum cryptography also came into light and now seems to be promising based on its unique features that make it free from eavesdropping or any other third party intrusion in the key distribution system. Our paper proposes a technique where we show how an old technique such as Steganography can be promising when we combine it with the unique key distribution mechanism of Quantum Cryptography with some other additional security features. © 2016 IEEE.