Securing Transactions in E-Commerce using Visual Cryptography and Steganography

Abstract

The Contemporary world has seen a tremendous usage of E-Commerce because of its appliance. The Information confidentiality is one of the major requirements to the users of Online Banking Systems. The issue with traditional Online banking applications is that they need to send the sensitive contents associated with the transaction such as Personal Identification Number (PIN), One Time Password (OTP) to the targeting customers in the form of plaintext, which is vulnerable to unauthorized access. Personal Identity theft and phishing attack are common threats of online shopping. Phishing is a technique which involves unauthorized gaining of sensitive information like password, bank details, credit card details from victims, often for malicious reasons, by pretending as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. It is a social engineering technique used to mislead users. The solution to the above consequences requires a software application that holds proficient encryption procedures. To enhance the security of the content on the internet, this paper proposes a technique that introduces an idea of Visual Cryptography and Steganography. These methods represent a new approach which would provide a confined information for the fund transfer. The method ensures the security to the customer's data and decreases customer's risk thus preventing identity theft.

Keywords: Online shopping; identity theft; Phishing; Visual Cryptography; Steganography