Traditional image steganography often leans interests towards safely embedding hidden information into cover images with payload capacity almost neglected. This paper combines recent deep convolutional neural network methods with image-into-image steganography. It successfully hides the same size images with a decoding rate of 98.2% or bpp (bits per pixel) of 23.57 by changing only 0.76% of the cover image on average. Our method directly learns end-to-end mappings between the cover image and the embedded image and between the hidden image and the decoded image. We~further show that our embedded image, while with mega payload capacity, is still robust to statistical analysis.
In most steganographic methods, increasing in the capacity leads to decrease in the quality of the stego-image, so in this paper, we propose to combine two existing techniques, Pixel value differencing and Gray Level Modification, to come up with a hybrid steganography scheme which can hide more information without having to compromise much on the quality of the stego-image. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach has larger capacity while its results are imperceptible. In comparison with original PVD method criterion of the quality is declined by 2% dB averagely while the …
Steganography is the science of invisible communication. The purpose of Steganography is to maintain secret communication between two parties. The secret information can be concealed in content such as image, audio, or video. This paper provides a novel image steganography technique to hide multiple secret images and keys in color cover image using Integer Wavelet Transform (IWT). There is no visual difference between the stego image and the cover image. The extracted secret images are also similar to the original secret images. Very good PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) values are obtained f…
Image steganography is the art of hiding secret message in grayscale or color images. Easy detection of secret message for any state-of-art image steganography can break the stego system. To prevent the breakdown of the stego system data is embedded in the selected area of an image which reduces the probability of detection. Most of the existing adaptive image steganography techniques achieve low embedding capacity. In this paper a high capacity Predictive Edge Adaptive image steganography technique is proposed where selective area of cover image is predicted using Modified Median Edge Detecto…
Performance indicators characterizing modern steganographic techniques include capacity (i.e. the quantity of data that can be hidden in the cover medium), stego quality (i.e. artifacts visibility), security (i.e. undetectability), and strength or robustness (intended as the resistance against active attacks aimed to destroy the secret message). Fibonacci based embedding techniques have been researched and proposed in the literature to achieve efficient steganography in terms of capacity with respect to stego quality. In this paper, we investigated an innovative idea that extends Fibonacci-lik…
This paper is concerned with secret hiding in multiple image bitplanes for increased security without undermining capacity. A secure steganographic algorithm based on bitplanes index manipulation is proposed. The index manipulation is confined to the first two Least Significant Bits of the cover image. The proposed algorithm has the property of un-detectability with respect to stego quality and payload capacity. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed technique is secure against statistical attacks such as pair of value (PoV), Weighted Stego steganalyser (WS), and Multi Bitplane Wei…
The demand for keeping the information secure and confidential simultaneously has been progressively increasing. Among various techniques- Audio Steganography, a technique of embedding information transparently in a digital media thereby restricting the access to such information has been prominently developed. Imperceptibility, robustness, and payload or hiding capacity are the main character for it. In earlier, LSB techniques increased payload capacity would hamper robustness as well as imperceptibility of the cover media and vice versa. The proposed technique overcomes the problem. It provi…
Steganography is one of the methods used for secret communication. Steganography attempts to hide the existence of the information. The object used to hide the secret information is called as cover object. Images are the most popular cover objects used for steganography. Different techniques have to be used for color image steganography and grey scale image steganography since they are stored in different ways. Color image are normally stored with 24 bit depth and grey scale images are stored with 8 bit depth. Color images can hold large amount of secret information since they have three color…
LSB steganography is a one of the most widely used methods for implementing covert data channels in image file exchanges [1][2]. The low computational complexity and implementation simplicity of the algorithm are significant factors for its popularity with the primary reason being low image distortion. Many attempts have been made to increase the embedding capacity of LSB algorithms by expanding into the second or third binary layers of the image while maintaining a low probability of detection with minimal distortive effects [2][3][4]. In this paper, we introduce an advanced technique for cov…
Secret information sharing through image carrier has aroused much research attention in recent years with images' growing domination on the Internet and mobile applications. However, with the booming trend of convolutional neural networks, image steganography is facing a more significant challenge from neural-network-automated tasks. To improve the security of image steganography and minimize task result distortion, models must maintain the feature maps generated by task-specific networks being irrelative to any hidden information embedded in the carrier. This paper introduces a binary attenti…
Image steganography is a procedure for hiding messages inside pictures. While other techniques such as cryptography aim to prevent adversaries from reading the secret message, steganography aims to hide the presence of the message itself. In this paper, we propose a novel technique for hiding arbitrary binary data in images using generative adversarial networks which allow us to optimize the perceptual quality of the images produced by our model. We show that our approach achieves state-of-the-art payloads of 4.4 bits per pixel, evades detection by steganalysis tools, and is effective on image…
Image steganography plays a vital role in securing secret data by embedding it in the cover images. Usually, these images are communicated in a compressed format. Existing techniques achieve this but have low embedding capacity. Enhancing this capacity causes a deterioration in the visual quality of the stego-image. Hence, our goal here is to enhance the embedding capacity while preserving the visual quality of the stego-image. We also intend to ensure that our scheme is resistant to steganalysis attacks. This paper proposes a Compressed Sensing Image Steganography (CSIS) scheme to achieve our…
The capacity and security of the confidential message on the channel are two important challenges in steganography. In this paper, a new block steganography model is presented using the bargain method so that a competitive model is introduced. In this game, the blocks are the same players. The bargain is provided with the aim of embedding information without reducing capacity as well as increasing security. The proposed model shows that it can be used both of the special domain and the transform domain, which are two important methods of steganography. For this purpose, an example of a special…
Reveal.ai (Recognition, Vision \& Learning) Lab\ University of Computer \& Emerging Sciences (NUCES-FAST), Islamabad, Pakistan.
All the existing image steganography methods use manually crafted features to hide binary payloads into cover images. This leads to small payload capacity and image distortion. Here we propose a convolutional neural network based encoder-decoder architecture for embedding of images as payload. To this end, we make following three major contributions: (i) we propose a deep learning based generic encoder-decoder architecture for image steganography; (ii) we introduce a new loss function that ensures joint end-to-end training of encoder-decoder networks; (iii) we perform extensive empirical evalu…
Information security has become a cause of concern because of the electronic eavesdropping. Capacity, robustness and invisibility are important parameters in information hiding and are quite difficult to achieve in a single algorithm. This paper proposes a novel steganography technique for digital color image which achieves the purported targets. The professed methodology employs a complete random scheme for pixel selection and embedding of data. Of the three colour channels (Red, Green, Blue) in a given colour image, the least two significant bits of any one of the channels of the color image…
In this paper, an effective method was introduced to steganography of text document in the host image. In the available steganography methods, the message has a random form. Therefore, the embedding capacity is generally low. In the proposed method, the main underlying idea was the sparse property of scanned documents. The scanned documents were converted from gray-level form to binary values by halftoning idea and then the information-included parts were extracted using the improved quadtree and separated from document context. Next, in order to compress the extracted parts, an algorithm was …
This paper proposes an improved steganography approach for hiding text messages in lossless RGB images. The objective of this work is to increase the security level and to improve the storage capacity with compression techniques. The security level is increased by randomly distributing the text message over the entire image instead of clustering within specific image portions. Storage capacity is increased by utilizing all the color channels for storing information and providing the source text message compression. The degradation of the images can be minimized by changing only one least signi…
Image steganography is the art of hiding information into a cover image. This paper presents a novel technique for Image steganography based on Block-DCT, where DCT is used to transform original image (cover image) blocks from spatial domain to frequency domain. Firstly a gray level image of size M x N is divided into no joint 8 x 8 blocks and a two dimensional Discrete Cosine Transform (2-d DCT) is performed on each of the P = MN / 64 blocks. Then Huffman encoding is also performed on the secret messages/images before embedding and each bit of Huffman code of secret message/image is embedded …
Steganography plays a vital role in achieving secret data security by embedding it into cover media. The cover media and the secret data can be text or multimedia, such as images, videos, etc. In this paper, we propose a novel $\ell_1$-minimization and sparse approximation based blind multi-image steganography scheme, termed $\ell_1$SABMIS. By using $\ell_1$SABMIS, multiple secret images can be hidden in a single cover image. In $\ell_1$SABMIS, we sampled cover image into four sub-images, sparsify each sub-image block-wise, and then obtain linear measurements. Next, we obtain DCT (Discrete Cos…
The science of hiding secret information in another message is known as Steganography; hence the presence of secret information is concealed. It is the method of hiding cognitive content in same or another media to avoid recognition by the intruders. This paper introduces new method wherein irreversible steganography is used to hide an image in the same medium so that the secret data is masked. The secret image is known as payload and the carrier is known as cover image. X-OR operation is used amongst mid level bit planes of carrier image and high level bit planes of data image to generate new…
As communication channels are increasing in number, reliability of faithful communication is reducing. Hacking and tempering of data are two major issues for which security should be provided by channel. This raises the importance of steganography. In this paper, a novel method to encode the message information inside a carrier image has been described. It uses Karhunen-Loève Transform for compression of data and Least Bit Substitution for data encryption. Compression removes redundancy and thus also provides encoding to a level. It is taken further by means of Least Bit Substitution. The algo…
This paper presents a new approach for hiding information in digital image in spatial domain. In this approach three bits of message is embedded in a pixel using Lucas number system but only one bit plane is allowed for alternation. The experimental results show that the proposed method has the larger capacity of embedding data, high peak signal to noise ratio compared to existing methods and is hardly detectable for steganolysis algorithm.
Information security is concerned with maintaining the secrecy, reliability and accessibility of data. The main objective of information security is to protect information and information system from unauthorized access, revelation, disruption, alteration, annihilation and use. This paper uses spatial domain LSB substitution method for information embedding and modified forms of Arnold transform are applied twice in two different phases to ensure security. The system is tested and validated against a series of standard images and the results show that the method is highly secure and provides h…
Digital steganography is becoming a common tool for protecting sensitive communications in various applications such as crime(terrorism) prevention whereby law enforcing personals need to remotely compare facial images captured at the scene of crime with faces databases of known criminals(suspects); exchanging military maps or surveillance video in hostile environment(situations); privacy preserving in the healthcare systems when storing or exchanging patient medical images(records); and prevent bank customers accounts(records) from being accessed illegally by unauthorized users. Existing digi…
Indian Institute of Information Technology, Lucknow（印度信息技术学院勒克瑙分校）；GLA University（GLA大学）
Steganography methods in general terms tend to embed more and more secret bits in the cover images. Most of these methods are designed to embed secret information in such a way that the change in the visual quality of the resulting stego image is not detectable. There exists some methods which preserve the global structure of the cover after embedding. However, the embedding capacity of these methods is very less. In this paper a novel feature based blind image steganography technique is proposed, which preserves the LBP (Local binary pattern) feature of the cover with comparable embedding rat…
This paper deals with public-key steganography in the presence of a passive warden. The aim is to hide secret messages within cover-documents without making the warden suspicious, and without any preliminar secret key sharing. Whereas a practical attempt has been already done to provide a solution to this problem, it suffers of poor flexibility (since embedding and decoding steps highly depend on cover-signals statistics) and of little capacity compared to recent data hiding techniques. Using the same framework, this paper explores the use of trellis-coded quantization techniques (TCQ and turb…
By cross-coupling two logistic maps a novel method is proposed for the public key steganography in JPEG image. Chaotic maps entail high complexity in the used algorithm for embedding secret data in a medium. In this paper, discrete cross- coupled chaotic maps are used to specifying the location of the different parts of the secret data in the image. Modifying JPEG format during compressing and decompressing, and also using public key enhanced difficulty of the algorithm. Simulation results show that in addition to excessive capacity, this method has high robustness and resistance against hacke…
In the past, steganography was to embed text in a carrier, the sender Alice and the recipient Bob share the key, and the text is extracted by Bob through the key. If more information is embedded, the image is easily distorted. In contrast, if there is less embedded information, the image maintains good visual integrity, but does not meet our requirements for steganographic capacity. In this paper, we focus on tackling these challenges and limitations to improve steganographic capacity. An image steganography method based on Fully Convolutional Dense Network(FC-DenseNet) was proposed by us. The…
In order to achieve high practical security, Natural Steganography (NS) uses cover images captured at ISO sensitivity $ISO_{1}$ and generates stego images mimicking ISO sensitivity $ISO_{2}>ISO_{1}$. This is achieved by adding a stego signal to the cover that mimics the sensor photonic noise. This paper proposes an embedding mechanism to perform NS in the JPEG domain after linear developments by explicitly computing the correlations between DCT coefficients before quantization. In order to compute the covariance matrix of the photonic noise in the DCT domain, we first develop the matrix repres…
Steganography usually modifies cover media to embed secret data. A new steganographic approach called generative steganography (GS) has emerged recently, in which stego images (images containing secret data) are generated from secret data directly without cover media. However, existing GS schemes are often criticized for their poor performances. In this paper, we propose an advanced generative steganography network (GSN) that can generate realistic stego images without using cover images. We firstly introduce the mutual information mechanism in GS, which helps to achieve high secret extraction…
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications（北京邮电大学）
Nowadays, there are plenty of works introducing convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to the steganalysis and exceeding conventional steganalysis algorithms. These works have shown the improving potential of deep learning in information hiding domain. There are also several works based on deep learning to do image steganography, but these works still have problems in capacity, invisibility and security. In this paper, we propose a novel CNN architecture named as \isgan to conceal a secret gray image into a color cover image on the sender side and exactly extract the secret image out on the rece…
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya（加泰罗尼亚理工大学）；UC Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；Dolby Laboratories（杜比实验室）
The field of steganography has experienced a surge of interest due to the recent advancements in AI-powered techniques, particularly in the context of multimodal setups that enable the concealment of signals within signals of a different nature. The primary objectives of all steganographic methods are to achieve perceptual transparency, robustness, and large embedding capacity - which often present conflicting goals that classical methods have struggled to reconcile. This paper extends and enhances an existing image-in-audio deep steganography method by focusing on improving its robustness. Th…
An efficient 2-step steganography technique is proposed to enhance stego image quality and secret message un-detectability. The first step is a preprocessing algorithm that reduces the size of secret images without losing information. This results in improved stego image quality compared to other existing image steganography methods. The proposed secret image size reduction (SISR) algorithm is an efficient spatial domain technique. The second step is an embedding mechanism that relies on Fibonacci representation of pixel intensities to minimize the effect of embedding on the stego image qualit…
Establishing hidden communication is an important subject of discussion that has gained increasing importance nowadays with the development of the internet. One of the key methods for establishing hidden communication is steganography. Modern day steganography mainly deals with hiding information within files like image, text, html, binary files etc. These file contains small irrelevant information that can be substituted for small secret data. To store a high capacity secret data these carrier files are not very supportive. To overcome the problem of storing the high capacity secret data with…
National Institute of Informatics（国立信息学研究所）；Feng Chia University（逢甲大学）；University of Jinan（济南大学）；Fujian Polytechnic Normal University（福建技术师范学院）；University of Warwick（华威大学）；Deakin University（迪肯大学）
Deep learning is regarded as a promising solution for reversible steganography. There is an accelerating trend of representing a reversible steo-system by monolithic neural networks, which bypass intermediate operations in traditional pipelines of reversible steganography. This end-to-end paradigm, however, suffers from imperfect reversibility. By contrast, the modular paradigm that incorporates neural networks into modules of traditional pipelines can stably guarantee reversibility with mathematical explainability. Prediction-error modulation is a well-established reversible steganography pip…
National Institute of Informatics（国立信息学研究所）；Feng Chia University（逢甲大学）；Fujian Polytechnic Normal University（福建技术师范学院）；Tokyo Metropolitan University（东京都立大学）
Artificial neural networks have advanced the frontiers of reversible steganography. The core strength of neural networks is the ability to render accurate predictions for a bewildering variety of data. Residual modulation is recognised as the most advanced reversible steganographic algorithm for digital images. The pivot of this algorithm is predictive analytics in which pixel intensities are predicted given some pixel-wise contextual information. This task can be perceived as a low-level vision problem and hence neural networks for addressing a similar class of problems can be deployed. On to…
FGAS: Fixed Decoder Network-Based Audio Steganography with Adversarial Perturbation Generation
School of Communication & Electronic Engineering, East China Normal University（东华大学通信与电子工程学院）；Shanghai Innovation Institute（上海创新研究院）；School of Computer Science, Fudan University（复旦大学计算机科学学院）；School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学电子信息与电气工程学院）
Traditional image steganography modifies the content of the image more or less, it is hard to resist the detection of image steganalysis tools. To address this problem, a novel method named generative coverless information hiding method based on generative adversarial networks is proposed in this paper. The main idea of the method is that the class label of generative adversarial networks is replaced with the secret information as a driver to generate hidden image directly, and then extract the secret information from the hidden image through the discriminator. It's the first time that the cov…
While many games were designed for steganography and robust watermarking, few focused on reversible watermarking. We present a two-encoder game related to the rate-distortion optimization of content-adaptive reversible watermarking. In the game, Alice first hides a payload into a cover. Then, Bob hides another payload into the modified cover. The embedding strategy of Alice affects the embedding capacity of Bob. The embedding strategy of Bob may produce data-extraction errors to Alice. Both want to embed as many pure secret bits as possible, subjected to an upper-bounded distortion. We investi…
