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 digital steganography schemes for embedding secret images in cover image files tend not to exploit various redundancies in the secret image bit-stream to deal with the various conflicting requirements on embedding capacity, stego-image quality, and un-detectibility. This paper is concerned with the development of innovative image procedures and data hiding schemes that exploit, as well as increase, similarities between secret image bit-stream and the cover image LSB plane. This will be achieved in two novel steps involving manipulating both the secret and the cover images,prior to embedding, to achieve higher 0:1 ratio in both the secret image bit-stream and the cover image LSB plane. The above two steps strategy has been exploited to use a bit-plane(s) mapping technique, instead of bit-plane(s) replacement to make each cover pixel usable for secret embedding. This paper will demonstrate that this strategy produces stego-images that have minimal distortion, high embedding efficiency, reasonably good stego-image quality and robustness against 3 well-known targeted steganalysis tools.
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…
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…
Steganography represents the art of unobtrusively concealing a secrete message within some cover data. The key scope of this work is about visual steganography techniques that hide a full-sized color image / video within another. A majority of existing works are devoted to the image case, where both secret and cover data are images. We empirically validate that image steganography model does not naturally extend to the video case (i.e., hiding a video into another video), mainly because it completely ignores the temporal redundancy within consecutive video frames. Our work proposes a novel sol…
This paper presents a novel 2-3-3 LSB insertion method. The image steganography takes the advantage of human eye limitation. It uses color image as cover media for embedding secret message.The important quality of a steganographic system is to be less distortive while increasing the size of the secret message. In this paper a method is proposed to embed a color secret image into a color cover image. A 2-3-3 LSB insertion method has been used for image steganography. Experimental results show an improvement in the Mean squared error (MSE) and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) values of the prop…
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…
To provide an added security level most of the existing reversible as well as irreversible image steganography schemes emphasize on encrypting the secret image (payload) before embedding it to the cover image. The complexity of encryption for a large payload where the embedding algorithm itself is complex may adversely affect the steganographic system. Schemes that can induce same level of distortion, as any standard encryption technique with lower computational complexity, can improve the performance of stego systems. In this paper we propose a secure secret image sharing scheme, which bears …
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…
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…
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 …
In this paper, the authors propose a new algorithm to hide data inside image using steganography technique. The proposed algorithm uses binary codes and pixels inside an image. The zipped file is used before it is converted to binary codes to maximize the storage of data inside the image. By applying the proposed algorithm, a system called Steganography Imaging System (SIS) is developed. The system is then tested to see the viability of the proposed algorithm. Various sizes of data are stored inside the images and the PSNR (Peak signal-to-noise ratio) is also captured for each of the images te…
A Video Steganography for H.265/HEVC Based on Multiple CU Size and Block Structure Distortion
Engineering Research Center of Digital Forensics, Ministry of Education, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology（南京信息工程大学教育部数字取证工程研究中心）；Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology（南京信息工程大学）；School of Artificial Intelligence, Guangzhou University（广州大学人工智能学院）；Guangzhou University（广州大学）
Audio steganography is a collection of techniques for concealing the existence of information by embedding it within a non-secret audio, which is referred to as carrier. Distinct from cryptography, the steganography put emphasis on the hiding of the secret existence. The existing audio steganography methods mainly depend on human handcraft, while we proposed an audio steganography algorithm which automatically generated from adversarial training. The method consists of three neural networks: encoder which embeds the secret message in the carrier, decoder which extracts the message, and discrim…
The art of information hiding has been around nearly as long as the need for covert communication. Steganography, the concealing of information, arose early on as an extremely useful method for covert information transmission. Steganography is the art of hiding secret message within a larger image or message such that the hidden message or an image is undetectable; this is in contrast to cryptography, where the existence of the message itself is not disguised, but the content is obscure. The goal of a steganographic method is to minimize the visually apparent and statistical differences betwee…
Steganography is a general term referring to all methods for the embedding of additional secret content into some form of carrier, with the aim of concealment of the introduced alterations. The choice of the carrier is nearly unlimited, it may be an ancient piece of parchment, as well as a network protocol header. Inspired by biological phenomena, adopted by man in the ancient times, it has been developed over the ages. Present day steganographic methods are far more sophisticated than their ancient predecessors, but the main principles have remained unchanged. They typically rely on the utili…
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…
Steganography is the art and science of hiding secret messages in public communication so that the presence of the secret messages cannot be detected. There are two distribution-preserving steganographic frameworks, one is sampling-based and the other is compression-based. The former requires a perfect sampler which yields data following the same distribution, and the latter needs explicit distribution of generative objects. However, these two conditions are too strict even unrealistic in the traditional data environment, e.g. the distribution of natural images is hard to seize. Fortunately, g…
Steganography is the art of hiding the fact that communication is taking place, by hiding information in other information. Different types of carrier file formats can be used, but digital images are the most popular ones because of their frequency on the internet. For hiding secret information in images, there exists a large variety of steganography techniques. Some are more complex than others and all of them have respective strong and weak points. Many applications may require absolute invisibility of the secret information. This paper intends to give an overview of image steganography, it'…
Steganography is an information hiding technique in which secret data are secured by covering them into a computer carrier file without damaging the file or changing its size. The difference between steganography and cryptography is that steganography is a stealthy method of communication that only the communicating parties are aware of; while, cryptography is an overt method of communication that anyone is aware of, despite its payload is scribbled. Typically, an irrecoverable steganography algorithm is the algorithm that makes it hard for malicious third parties to discover how it works and …
Steganography involves hiding a secret message or image inside another cover image. Changes are made in the cover image without affecting visual quality of the image. In contrast to cryptography, Steganography provides complete secrecy of the communication. Security of very sensitive data can be enhanced by combining cryptography and steganography. A new technique that uses the concept of Steganography to obtain the position values from an image is suggested. This paper proposes a new method where no change is made to the cover image, only the pixel position LSB (Least Significant Bit) values …
Retention of secrecy is one of the significant features during communication activity. Steganography is one of the popular methods to achieve secret communication between sender and receiver by hiding message in any form of cover media such as an audio, video, text, images etc. Least significant bit encoding is the simplest encoding method used by many steganography programs to hide secret message in 24bit, 8bit colour images and grayscale images. Steganalysis is a method of detecting secret message hidden in a cover media using steganography. RS steganalysis is one of the most reliable stegan…
The needs for steganographic techniques for hiding secret message inside images have been arise. This paper is to create a practical steganographic implementation to hide text inside grey scale images. The secret message is hidden inside the cover image using Five Modulus Method. The novel algorithm is called (ST-FMM. FMM which consists of transforming all the pixels within the 5X5 window size into its corresponding multiples of 5. After that, the secret message is hidden inside the 5X5 window as a non-multiples of 5. Since the modulus of non-multiples of 5 are 1,2,3 and 4, therefore; if the r…
This paper presents the preliminary of a novel scheme of steganography, and introduces the idea of combining two secret keys in the operation. The first secret key encrypts the text using a standard cryptographic scheme (e.g. IDEA, SAFER+, etc.) prior to the wavelet audio decomposition. The way in which the cipher text is embedded in the file requires another key, namely a stego-key, which is associated with features of the audio wavelet analysis.
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…
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…
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…
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…
The distortion in steganography that usually comes from the modification or recoding on the cover image during the embedding process leaves the steganalyzer with possibility of discriminating. Faced with such a risk, we propose generative steganography with Kerckhoffs' principle (GSK) in this letter. In GSK, the secret messages are generated by a cover image using a generator rather than embedded into the cover, thus resulting in no modifications in the cover. To ensure the security, the generators are trained to meet Kerckhoffs' principle based on generative adversarial networks (GAN). Everyt…
In the era of Information Technology, cyber-crime has always been a worrying issue for online users. Phishing, social engineering, and third party attacks have made people reluctant to share their personal information, even with trusted entities. Messages that are sent via Short Message Service (SMS) are easily copied and hacked by using special software. To enforce the security of sending messages through mobile phones, one solution is SMS steganography. SMS Steganography is a technique that hides a secret message in the SMS. We propose a new approach for SMS steganography that uses a mathema…
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…
Steganography is the art of hiding a secret message inside a publicly visible carrier message. Ideally, it is done without modifying the carrier, and with minimal loss of information in the secret message. Recently, various deep learning based approaches to steganography have been applied to different message types. We propose a deep learning based technique to hide a source RGB image message inside finite length speech segments without perceptual loss. To achieve this, we train three neural networks; an encoding network to hide the message in the carrier, a decoding network to reconstruct the…
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…
Traditional adaptive steganography is a technique used for covert communication with high security, but it is invalid in the case of stego images are sent to legal receivers over networks which is lossy, such as JPEG compression of channels. To deal with such problem, robust adaptive steganography is proposed to enable the receiver to extract secret messages from the damaged stego images. Previous works utilize reverse engineering and compression-resistant domain constructing to implement robust adaptive steganography. In this paper, we adopt modification with re-compression scheme to improve …
Currently, cryptography is in wide use as it is being exploited in various domains from data confidentiality to data integrity and message authentication. Basically, cryptography shuffles data so that they become unreadable by unauthorized parties. However, clearly visible encrypted messages, no matter how unbreakable, will arouse suspicions. A better approach would be to hide the very existence of the message using steganography. Fundamentally, steganography conceals secret data into innocent-looking mediums called carriers which can then travel from the sender to the receiver safe and unnoti…
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…
Seoul National University（首尔大学）；Ewha Womans University（梨花女子大学）；Kangwon National University（江原大学）；Ziovision
Recently, the field of steganography has experienced rapid developments based on deep learning (DL). DL based steganography distributes secret information over all the available bits of the cover image, thereby posing difficulties in using conventional steganalysis methods to detect, extract or remove hidden secret images. However, our proposed framework is the first to effectively disable covert communications and transactions that use DL based steganography. We propose a DL based steganalysis technique that effectively removes secret images by restoring the distribution of the original image…
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…
Steganography derives from the Greek word steganos, meaning covered or secret, and graphy (writing or drawing). Steganography is a technology where modern data compression, information theory, spread spectrum, and cryptography technologies are brought together to satisfy the need for privacy on the Internet. This paper is an attempt to analyse the various techniques used in steganography and to identify areas in which this technique can be applied, so that the human race can be benefited at large.
Steganography is the science of unnoticeably concealing a secret message within a certain image, called a cover image. The cover image with the secret message is called a stego image. Steganography is commonly used for illegal purposes such as terrorist activities and pornography. To thwart covert communications and transactions, attacking algorithms against steganography, called steganalysis, exist. Currently, there are many studies implementing deep learning to the steganography algorithm. However, conventional steganalysis is no longer effective for deep learning based steganography algorit…
A new technique for data hiding in digital image is proposed in this paper. Steganography is a well known technique for hiding data in an image, but generally the format of image plays a pivotal role in it, and the scheme is format dependent. In this paper we will discuss a new technique where irrespective of the format of image, we can easily hide a large amount of data without deteriorating the quality of the image. The data to be hidden is enciphered with the help of a secret key. This enciphered data is then embedded at the end of the image. The enciphered data bits are extracted and then …
Steganography refers to the art of concealing secret messages within multiple media carriers so that an eavesdropper is unable to detect the presence and content of the hidden messages. In this paper, we firstly propose a novel key-dependent steganographic scheme that achieves steganographic objectives with adversarial training. Symmetric (secret-key) and Asymmetric (public-key) steganographic scheme are separately proposed and each scheme is successfully designed and implemented. We show that these encodings produced by our scheme improve the invisibility by 20% than previous deep-leanring-ba…
Steganography is an ancient art that encompasses various techniques of information hiding, the aim of which is to secret information into a carrier message. Steganographic methods are usually aimed at hiding the very existence of the communication. Due to the rise in popularity of IP telephony, together with the large volume of data and variety of protocols involved, it is currently attracting the attention of the research community as a perfect carrier for steganographic purposes. This paper is a survey of the existing VoIP steganography (steganophony) methods and their countermeasures.
Information security is one of the most challenging problems in today's technological world. In order to secure the transmission of secret data over the public network (Internet), various schemes have been presented over the last decade. Steganography combined with cryptography, can be one of the best choices for solving this problem. This paper proposes a new steganographic method based on gray-level modification for true colour images using image transposition, secret key and cryptography. Both the secret key and secret information are initially encrypted using multiple encryption algorithms…
With the recent development of deep learning on steganalysis, embedding secret information into digital images faces great challenges. In this paper, a secure steganography algorithm by using adversarial training is proposed. The architecture contain three component modules: a generator, an embedding simulator and a discriminator. A generator based on U-NET to translate a cover image into an embedding change probability is proposed. To fit the optimal embedding simulator and propagate the gradient, a function called Tanh-simulator is proposed. As for the discriminator, the selection-channel aw…
In this paper, a novel data-driven information hiding scheme called generative steganography by sampling (GSS) is proposed. Unlike in traditional modification-based steganography, in our method the stego image is directly sampled by a powerful generator: no explicit cover is used. Both parties share a secret key used for message embedding and extraction. The Jensen-Shannon divergence is introduced as a new criterion for evaluating the security of generative steganography. Based on these principles, we propose a simple practical generative steganography method that uses semantic image inpaintin…
mage steganography is the process of hiding information which can be text, image, or video inside a cover image. The advantage of steganography over cryptography is that the intended secret message does not attract attention and is thus more suitable for secret communication in a highly-surveillant environment such as civil disobedience movements. Internet memes in social media and messaging apps have become a popular culture worldwide, so this folk custom is a good application scenario for image steganography. We try to explore and adopt the steganography techniques on the Internet memes in t…
National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar（贾朗达尔国家技术学院）
In this paper, A new image steganography scheme is proposed which is a kind of spatial domain technique. In order to hide secret data in cover-image, the first component alteration technique is used. Techniques used so far focuses only on the two or four bits of a pixel in a image (at the most five bits at the edge of an image) which results in less peak to signal noise ratio and high root mean square error. In this technique, 8 bits of blue components of pixels are replaced with secret data bits. Proposed scheme can embed more data than previous schemes and shows better image quality. To prov…
In recent years, steganography has emerged as one of the main research areas in information security. Least significant bit (LSB) steganography is one of the fundamental and conventional spatial domain methods, which is capable of hiding larger secret information in a cover image without noticeable visual distortions. In this paper, a combined algorithm based on LSB steganography and chaotic encryption is proposed. Experimental results show the feasibility of the proposed method. In comparison with existing steganographic spatial domain based algorithms, the suggested algorithm is shown to hav…
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…
Style as Cover: Deep Image Steganography via Stylized Transmission
Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences)（齐鲁工业大学（山东省科学院））；Shandong Computer Science Center（山东省计算中心）；Shandong Fundamental Research Center for Computer Science（山东省计算机科学基础研究中心）
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…
In the past few years, the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) which proposed in 2014 has achieved great success. GAN has achieved many research results in the field of computer vision and natural language processing. Image steganography is dedicated to hiding secret messages in digital images, and has achieved the purpose of covert communication. Recently, research on image steganography has demonstrated great potential for using GAN and neural networks. In this paper we review different strategies for steganography such as cover modification, cover selection and cover synthesis by GANs, and…
This paper is to create a practical steganographic implementation to hide color image (stego) inside another color image (cover). The proposed technique uses Five Modulus Method to convert the whole pixels within both the cover and the stego images into multiples of five. Since each pixels inside the stego image is divisible by five then the whole stego image could be divided by five to get new range of pixels 0..51. Basically, the reminder of each number that is not divisible by five is either 1,2,3 or 4 when divided by 5. Subsequently, then a 4-by-4 window size has been implemented to accomm…
Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology（斯科尔科沃科学技术研究院）
Steganography is collection of methods to hide secret information ("payload") within non-secret information "container"). Its counterpart, Steganalysis, is the practice of determining if a message contains a hidden payload, and recovering it if possible. Presence of hidden payloads is typically detected by a binary classifier. In the present study, we propose a new model for generating image-like containers based on Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks (DCGAN). This approach allows to generate more setganalysis-secure message embedding using standard steganography algorithms. Exp…
