Showing papers on "Cover (telecommunications) published in 2021"

Robust Reversible Watermarking in Encrypted Image with Secure Multi-party based on Lightweight Cryptography

Abstract: With the rapid development of network media, increasing research on reversible watermarking has focused on improving its robustness to resisting attacks during digital media transmission. There are some other reversible watermarking schemes that work in the encrypted domain for preserving the privacy of the cover image. The robustness of the watermarking and the privacy preserving of the cover image have become the key factors of reversible watermarking. However, there are few robust reversible watermarking schemes in the encrypted domain that could resist common attacks (such as JPEG compression, noise addition) and preserve privacy at the same time. In addition, the embedding capacity of a robust watermark and the efficiency of the encryption method must be considered. Recently, cloud computing technology has led to the rapid growth of network media, and many multimedia properties are owned by multiple parties, such as a film’s producer and multiple distributors. Multi-party watermarking has become an important demand for network media to protect all parties’ rights. In this paper, a Robust Reversible Watermarking scheme in Encrypted Image with Secure Multi-party (RRWEI-SM) based on lightweight cryptography is first proposed. Additive secret sharing and block-level scrambling are developed to generate the encrypted image. Then, the robust reversible watermarking based on significant bit Prediction Error Expansion (PEE) is performed by Secure Multi-party Computation (SMC). For applications with high robustness, a Modified RRWEI-SM is proposed by exploiting a two-stage architecture. Furthermore, both the RRWEI-SM scheme and Modified RRWEI-SM scheme are separable and can be applied to multiparty copyright protection. The experimental results and theoretical analysis demonstrate here that the RRWEI-SM and the Modified RRWEI-SM are secure, robust and effective.

Coverless Image Steganography Based on Optical Mark Recognition and Machine Learning

Abstract: The most significant factor to consider during private information transmission through the internet (i.e., insecure channel) is security. So, to keep this data from unauthorized access during transmission, steganography is used. Steganography is the scheme of securing sensitive information by concealing it within carriers such as digital images, videos, audio, text, etc. Current image steganography methods work as follows; it assigns cover image then embeds the secret message within it by pixels’ modifications, creating the resultant stego-image. These modifications allow steganalysis algorithms to detect the embedded secret message. So, a coverless data hiding concept is proposed to solve this problem. Coverless does not mean that the secret message will be transmitted without using a cover file, or the cover file can be discarded. Instead, the secret message will be embedded by generating a cover file or a secret message mapping. In this paper, a novel, highly robust coverless image steganography method based on optical mark recognition (OMR) and rule-based machine learning (RBML) is proposed.

Transform Domain-Based Invertible and Lossless Secret Image Sharing With Authentication

Abstract: Secret Image Sharing (SIS) as a secure data sharing scheme in multiple cover images, has become an increasing researchers’ concern. In traditional SIS, the cover image can’t be recovered losslessly. The distorted cover images would reduce the practicability of the scheme, especially in medical and military images. The lossless recovery of cover images is required since all details of these images are very critical. In current Invertible SIS (ISIS), the secret image and the cover image may not be reconstructed losslessly. In addition, the authentication capability, visual quality of the stego cover image and embedding rate are limited in spatial domain-based ISIS. As an important carrier, the binary cover image is desired in real applications. Therefore, this paper proposes Transform domain-based Invertible and Lossless Secret Image Sharing schemes with Authentication (T-ILSISA), namely Integer Wavelet Transform-based ILSISA (IWT-ILSISA) and Binarization Transform-based ILSISA (BT-ILSISA) respectively. In (k,n) threshold IWT-ILSISA, the pixels of secret image and the data of cover image are regarded as the coefficients of the (k-1) degree polynomial. The values of generated share are embedded into IWT domain of the cover image. In BT-ILSISA, many different cover images are applied. The generated shares are transformed to the meaningful images since noise-like shares are easy to attract the attacker’s attention, are suspected to censors and are difficult for identification and management. In the two schemes, the original secret image and the cover image can be recovered losslessly. The experimental results and theoretical analysis demonstrate that the performances of IWT-ILSISA are better than other similar schemes in the terms of embedding capacity, authentication capability and visual quality of the stego cover image. The BT-ILSISA has a lower computational complexity of the recovery.

A Review on Data hiding using Steganography and Cryptography

Abstract: Nowadays we are sending lot of data through internet. The data can be image file, video file, text file and audio file. Some of the data which is transferred through internet might be confidential or may not be confidential data. However everyone expects their data should be secured and it should not be hacked by others. There are lots of techniques to defend from unauthorized users. One of the techniques to protect the data from unlicensed user is cryptography. In cryptography, the data will be converted to encrypted data in the sender side. Encryption means converting original message to scribbled message, which is not in the readable format. The encrypted data will be sending through communication channel. If any unauthorized person access the data, the original data will not be visible. Only the receiver can decrypt the data. Steganography is another technique, in which the original data will be embedded into Cover file. The cover file can be text file or video file or image file. If any unauthorized person, try to access the message, the original data will not be visible instead cover file will be visible. Various steganography and cryptographic technique is presented in this literature review. Among that few are steganography based and few used both steganography and cryptography. The methodology in which both steganography and cryptography gives best performance

Uncover the cover to recover the hidden secret - A separable reversible data hiding framework

Abstract: The volatile development in the multimedia cognitive content is changing the global set-up towards a cloud-based architecture which is helped us with a massive amount of computer storage and the highest computational platform. Cost-saving and elasticity of services will be provided by progressive cloud computing technology for users. With the advancement in multimedia technology, the data owners outsource their private multimedia data on the hybrid cloud. Meantime the cloud servers also carry out some highly computationally expensive tasks. Nevertheless, there is an opportunity for security infracts possible in the public cloud environment. It makes an alarm for a cloud environment in security aspects. Before outsourcing multimedia data, an encryption technique is needed for safeguarding against several attacks. But performing the same is a significant challenge. A new research area was recently awakened on privacy-preserving Reversible Data Hiding (RDH) especially for multimedia data over the outsourced environment. A novel RDH for an encrypted image was proposed in this paper by using the (Most Significant Bit) MSB difference of the pixel value. By using this method, any third-party people can embed the ciphertext in the cipher image without the knowledge of the cover and secret. A person with decryption keys can get back the secret and the cover without any loss. The proposed work achieves the embedding capacity up to 1 bpp (bits per pixel) with the encryption quality of near-zero correlation and uniform histogram. The decrypted image is also retrieved with infinite Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), unit Structural Similarity Index Metric (SSIM) and zero Bit Error Rate (BER).

Cover independent image steganography in spatial domain using higher order pixel bits

Abstract: In spatial domain image steganography, Least Significant Bits (LSB) of cover image pixels are used to embed a secret message due to minimal distortion and higher payload capacity. In this paper, we have introduced an exclusive-OR (XOR) based encoding of encrypted secret message bits using varying higher-order pixel intensity bits. Encoding and LSB embedding is done block-wise by dividing the cover image into a number of blocks. The secret message is first encrypted using symmetric key cryptography and then encoded those encrypted bits by XORing them with randomly selected higher-order pixel bis of the cover image to obscure the secret bits further. Next, an inversion technique is applied to the encoded bits block-wise to keep the LSB bit changes to a minimum. The stego-key consists of the symmetric encryption key and the encode-key containing parameter settings such as the number_of_blocks, starting_block, start_pixel_offset, block_selection_rule, etc. This stego-key is shared prior to the actual communication using public-key cryptography to ensure the key’s authenticity and integrity. The extraction process does not require the cover image; the stego-image and the stego-key are sufficient. Experimental results show the visual imperceptibility along with improved image quality metrics such as Mean Square Error (MSE), Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Normalized Cross-Correlation (NCC), and Structural Similarity (SSIM) index in comparison to other well-known techniques. The average PSNR value remains above 51dB, even with 90% of the capacity utilized. The proposed scheme successfully eludes many standard steganalysis attacks such as histogram-based analysis (PDH), chi-square based embed probability test, Regular and Singular groups (RS) analysis, sample pair test, etc. on the tested stego-images.

Advanced 3-Bit LSB Based on Data Hiding Using Steganography

Abstract: Nowadays, security plays a main role for data hiding and makes it confidential from unauthorized access. So steganography and cryptography techniques are used for data security. In this paper, 3-bit least significant bits technique is used for embedding secrete image into the cover image. The resultant image after embedding the secrete image into cover image is a “Stego Image.” Using Vvisual Cryptography, transferring the stego image over the wireless channel or Internet becomes more securable because it divides the encrypted message and transfers it into two shares based threshold. In this paper, ECC algorithm is used to kept data more secure and secrete which makes very hard to get secrete message even if the secrete message is disclose. These proposed systems will work on large size of image and result with high performance and accuracy with high PSNR for color image.

Traid-bit embedding process on arabic text steganography method

Abstract: The enormous development in the utilization of the Internet has driven by a continuous improvement in the region of security. The enhancement of the security embedded techniques is applied to save the intellectual property. There are numerous types of security mechanisms. Steganography is the art and science of concealing secret information inside a cover media such as image, audio, video and text, without drawing any suspicion to the eavesdropper. The text is ideal for steganography due to its ubiquity. There are many steganography embedded techniques used Arabic language to embed the hidden message in the cover text. Kashida, Shifting Point and Sharp-edges are the three Arabic steganography embedded techniques with high capacity. However, these three techniques have lack of performance to embed the hidden message into the cover text. This paper present about traid-bit method by integrating these three Arabic text steganography embedded techniques. It is an effective way to evaluate many embedded techniques at the same time, and introduced one solution for various cases.

Multi-image steganography and authentication using crypto-stego techniques

Abstract: It is a necessity to protect sensitive information in digital form from an adversary who may indulge in cyber-crimes such as modification, masquerading, and replaying of data. Security systems designed to counter such attacks must keep abreast of the adversary. In this paper, we have proposed a novel multi-image crypto-stego technique using Rabin cryptosystem and Arnold transform that provides a mechanism to hide digital data in the form of text, image, audio, and video. The proposed technique is a novel approach for (n,n) secret sharing that prevents attack by an intruder impersonating as a shareholder. In the proposed technique, the header information is created to retrieve data in the correct order. Randomized encrypted data and partial header information are camouflaged in the edges of multiple images in an adaptive manner. Minimal and distribution sequence keys distribute data in shares. Experimental results yield high values of PSNR and low values of MSE for the audio, image, video signals. Further, as the entropy values for original cover image coincide with the crypto-stego image up to the third place of decimal, the secret message will go unnoticed. Sensitivity analysis reveals that even a minor variation in a single share makes the recovery of the secret message infeasible. Comparison with the state of the art techniques indicates that the proposed technique either scores over its competitors or performs equally well in terms of standard evaluation metrics.

Ensemble learning updating classifier for accurate land cover assessment in tropical cloudy areas

Abstract: Land use/cover information is fundamental for the sustainable management of resources Notwithstanding the advancement of remote sensing, analysts daunt to generate sufficient-quality land use/cove

Learning to Generate Steganographic Cover for Audio Steganography Using GAN

Abstract: Audio steganography aims to exploit the human auditory redundancy to embed the secret message into cover audio, without raising suspicion when hearing it. However, recent studies have shown that the existing audio steganography can be easily exposed with the deep learning based steganalyzers by extracting high-dimensional features of stego audio for classification. The existing GAN-based steganography approaches mainly studied in images cover, less work is conducted on audio cover. In addition, though a few GAN-based audio steganography methods have been proposed, they still have room for improvements in perceptual quality and undetectability. In this work, we propose an audio steganography framework that could automatically learn to generate superior steganographic cover audio for message embedding. Specifically, the training framework of the proposed framework consists of three components, namely, generator, discriminator and trained deep learning based steganalyzer. Then the traditional message embedding algorithm LSBM, is employed to embed the secret message into the steganographic cover audio to obtain stego audio, which is delivered to the trained steganalyzer for misclassifying as cover audio. Once the adversarial training is completed among these three parties, one can obtain a well-trained generator, which could generate steganographic cover audio for subsequent message embedding. In the practice of our proposed method, the stego audio is produced by embedding the secret message into the steganographic cover audio using a traditional steganography method. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed audio steganography can yield steganographic cover audio that preserves a quite high perception quality for message embedding. We have compared the detection accuracies with the existing audio steganography schemes as presented in our experiment, the proposed method exhibits lower detection accuracies against the state-of-the-art deep learning based steganalyzers, under various embedding rates. Codes are publicly available at https://github.com/Chenlang2018/Audio-Steganography-using-GAN .

Image Steganography for Confidential Data Communication

Abstract: In the present-day communication system, one of the most important tasks is securing confidential data through a communication channel. Many adequate encryption and decryption algorithms have been developed. But due to growth in technology, these algorithms are prone to attack and there would be loss of information. This led to the development of the steganography method which hides the existence of confidential data. This paper mainly concentrates on steganography using the LSB algorithm. The process involves hiding a secret image in a cover image and then transferring it over the internet. This method can use multimedia such as text, images, audio files, and video files. Here, steganography is developed to hide a location of an area (ex in form of a map) in a cover image and transfer the image through the internet. The performance of this technique has been analyzed through MSE and PSNR values for its utility in security-based applications.

Secure E-Health using Images Steganography

Abstract: The main aim is to secure the medical records by ensuring safe communication between the sender and the receiver by adding multiple layers of security. This project is a combined approach of both encryption and steganography to give security the utmost importance. In the sender, only the authorized person can send the secret image to the receiver. In the first stage, an image steganography system is processed using confidential medical X-ray images which are hidden under the cover images. The encryption method used is based on Random Number Generator and the pixel indicator, in other words, by moving the position of the pixel in the image to encrypt the image on the transmitting side. Whereas on the receiver side, this project proposes a method to authenticate the receiver by incorporating Email Authentication and OTP Verification to decrypt the encrypted image.

A Secured Steganography Algorithm for Hiding an Image and Data in an Image Using LSB Technique

Abstract: Recent advances in computer security have shown that the most effective way to secure information is to hide information rather than encrypt it. Hiding facts is that the art and technological know-how of hidden writing is a manner to hide records in a completely specific form of data. In addition, hidden textual content or pictures with the cover photograph and change some objects from the preliminary bit to the recipient. A record report or picture is hidden in the cowl photograph will steady the attacker's authentic facts or statistics. The least significant bit technique (LSB) may be an unremarkably used technique of activity data and is prone to attack owing to its simplicity. During this analysis, it shows that the way to use the operator's image to cover a picture and different knowledge. In this, a tendency to compare the signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and the error squared error (MSE) to determine the level at which the stego image is masked with the cover image.

Lossless Database Watermarking Based on Order-preserving Encryption

Abstract: With the development of information technology and the popularity of Internet applications, the database outsourcing service is gaining popularity. However, since the database services provided by third parties are not completely trusted, the outsourced database model has to face a series of security issues such as privacy leakage, data theft, malicious tampering, and so forth. To both provide privacy protection and copyright tracking, this paper proposes a lossless database watermarking method based on order-preserving encryption. In the proposed method, the data owner encrypts the original data using order-preserving encryption algorithms. The outsourced database administrator then embeds the watermark bits by modifying the parities of the cover encrypted attribute values. At the database client, the database user extracts the embedded watermark bits based on the majority voting mechanism. The original database is recovered by directly decrypting the marked encrypted database. The experimental results and analysis show that the proposed method has the advantages of lossless, strong robustness, high embedding rate, no auxiliary message and low computational complexity.

A Novel and Robust Hybrid Blockchain and Steganography Scheme

Abstract: Data security and data hiding have been studied throughout history. Studies show that steganography and encryption methods are used together to hide data and avoid detection. Large amounts of data hidden in the cover multimedia distort the image, which can be detected in visual and histogram analysis. The proposed method will solve two major drawbacks of the current methods: the limitation imposed on the size of the data to be hidden in the cover multimedia and low resistance to steganalysis after stego-operation. In the proposed method, plaintext data are divided into fixed-sized bits whose corresponding matching bits’ indices in the cover multimedia are accumulated. Thus, the hidden data are composed of the indices in the cover multimedia, causing no change in it, thus enabling considerable amounts of plaintext to be hidden. The proposed method also has high resistance to known steganalysis methods because it does not cause any distortion to the cover multimedia. The test results show that the performance of the proposed method outperforms similar conventional stenographic techniques. The proposed Ozyavas–Takaoglu–Ajlouni (OTA) method relieves the limitation on the size of the hidden data, and hidden data is undetectable by steganalysis because it is no longer embedded in the cover multimedia.

SIP: An Efficient and Secure Information Propagation Scheme in E-Health Networks

Abstract: Electronic healthcare (e-health) networks are increasingly popular, particular during pandemics such as COVID-19. This reinforces the importance of ensuring security and privacy for data-in-transit. One such solution is steganography-based schemes that utilize biological signals (e.g., ECG) as cover signals to preserve the privacy of patient personal information without affecting the diagnostic features. There are various limitations in existing steganography-based schemes, and in this study we present an effective privacy protection scheme leveraging both multidimensional steganography and shared keys. To enhance security and accelerate signal processing in our design, the Fast Walsh-Hadamard transform (FWHT) is employed to decompose ECG signals into a set of coefficients, of which the less-significant coefficients are used to construct the multidimensional space. The negotiated shared keys facilitate the embedding of encrypted data in the constructed space. We then evaluate the proposed scheme using different categories of ECG signals in the MIT-BIH database. It is observed that the signal distortion is minimal (i.e., less than 1%), even if the embedded data reaches the maximum embedding capacity. The security analysis also demonstrates that unauthorized retrieval of hidden information is not practical, within a short period of time.

Efficient and secure data hiding in video sequence with three layer security: an approach using chaos

Abstract: The fast development of communication and technology has created new challenges to transfer data securely. The techniques widely used to secure the data are cryptography and steganography. This paper presents a video steganography method to secure the information to be transmitted. Information transmitted can be an image, audio, text or video. This article presents a new technique that embeds data in the spatial domain of the cover video frame. The method employs chaotic maps to generate Random Positions (RP) to hide the information bits, random numbers for selecting the frames at which the information to be hidden and confusion order to encrypt the cover frame. The video frame is first selected based on Frame Selection (FS) is encrypted by applying Confusion Order (CO) and then embedding is carried out on the random positions generated. After embedding, the decrypted cover frame is replaced in a video sequence for transmission. This method provides three-level security in extracting the hidden secret information and also 25% of embedding capacity. Experimental outcomes (PSNR and payload) confirm that the method is competent.

A Hybrid Technique based on RSA and Data Hiding for Securing Handwritten Signature

Abstract: Data exchange has been significantly encouraged by the development of communication technology and the wide use of social media over the Internet. Therefore, it is important to hide the data transmitted, especially the data that requires a person’s signature. Where the signature is an increasingly needed item that is used in our daily life to achieve some paper-based authentication in departments, the individual himself needs the signature. Cryptography and steganography are commonly considered to be the most important data hiding methodologies. Steganography is used to hide the secret message in the carrier media, such as text, audio, video, and image files, without the carrier media being distorted, and cryptography is used to conceal the purpose of the secret message. A hybrid data hiding (image steganography) and encryption technique is implemented in this research on the time domain. The secret handwritten signature image is first encrypted using the public key algorithm (RSA) in the proposed technique, then randomly inserted using Embedding data process to be concealed in one of the last three bits of that pixel(1st Least Significant Bit, 2nd LSB, and 3rd LSB) based on mathematical randomized formula over all pixels of the carrier media (image). It is assumed that the process of randomization will increase the protection provided by the technique. The suggested technique is implemented on gray level cover images. As a consequence of the random scattering of bits and using encryption, it is noted that the proposed technique achieves enhanced data hiding results in terms of performance, protection, and imperceptibility properties and the histogram of the proposed technique is better and provides more protection and security than the ordinary sequential Least Significant Bit (LSB).

An efficient low bit rate image watermarking and tamper detection for image authentication

Abstract: This study presents the vulnerability of digital documents and its effective way to protect the ownership and detection of unauthorized modification of multimedia data. Watermarking is an effective way to protect vulnerable data in a digital environment. In this paper, a watermarking algorithm has been proposed based on a lossy compression algorithm to ensure authentication and detection of forgery. In this proposed method, the CDF9/7 biorthogonal wavelet is used to transform the watermark image and encoded the wavelet coefficients using Set Partition in Hierarchical Tree algorithm. Then, the encoded bits are encrypted by shuffling and encrypting using symmetric keys. After that the encrypted bits are inserted into the Least Significant Bit position of the cover image. In addition, two tamper detection bits are generated based on texture information and pixel location and inserted in the watermarked image. The proposed algorithm reconstructs the watermark and the tampering region more efficiently and achieved 56.5463 dB PSNR for STARE database. Experimental result shows that the proposed algorithm is effectively prevented different attacks and ensure the integrity of watermark bits within the watermarked image. Also finds the tampered region more efficiently compared with the existing state of art algorithms.

PGGAN: Improve Password Cover Rate Using the Controller

Abstract: Password generation model based on generative adversarial network usually has the problem of high duplicate rate, which further leads to low cover rate. In this regard, we propose PGGAN model. It sets up an additional controller network which is similar to the discriminator in the aspect of structure and function. The discriminator and the controller respectively learn the measure between the distribution of generated password with the real password distribution and the uniform distribution, and then use two measures to teach generator meanwhile. By changing the activation function and loss function of the controller, different measure functions can be selected. The experimental results show that compared with GAN, our PGGAN performs better both in cover rate and duplicate rate. Moreover, Wasserstein distance usually has a better effect to the other measure in model. Specifically, PGGAN with Wasserstein distance can increase the cover rate by 3.57% and reduce the duplicate rate by 30.85% on rockyou dataset.

Steganography in Color Animated Image Sequence for Secret Data Sharing Using Secure Hash Algorithm

Abstract: Steganography is one of the leading strategy that is employed to hide restricted content into a cover media so that the person unaware of the fact can’t predict that the cover media can acquire some secret information. The effectiveness of any steganographic approach is appraised on imperceptibility of the stego-media, payload of the cover media, integrity of the secret information, security, and computational complexity. The work presented in this paper focuses on these important concerns of secured data transmission. The proposed steganographic approach uses multimedia files including animated image sequences as cover media for concealing secret messages. The entire secret information to be embedded is converted to a code using Secure Hash Algorithm-1 (SHA-1) (National Institute of Standards, and Technology (US). Technology Administration. Secure hash standard, 1993) and shared with the secret message to validate the authenticity of the transmitted secret information. The whole secret message is converted to its ASCII to embed them by replacing the least significant digit (LSD) (Liu et al. In Proceedings of the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), IEEE, 2012). The receiver validates the transmitted information with SHA-1 again generating a code, which validates with the existing code sent over from the transmitting end. The proposed algorithm is worked upon a variety of text messages with a large set of color animated image sequences as cover media and also has been tested carefully by different parametric measures. This algorithm gives robust outputs in terms of visual imperceptibility, safety, and embedding capability.

Future Optical Networks in a 10 Year Time Frame

Abstract: We describe the evolution of the network over a time-scale of 10 years. We cover the merger of photonics and electronics, optical switching, reliance on data-center technologies and architectural evolution.

An Approach for Attaining Content Confidentiality on Medical Images Through Image Encryption with Steganography

Abstract: The process of content confidentiality of the medical diagnostic reports and the scanned image of patients among doctors with balancing proficiency for mutual dealing will provide utmost care through faster and significant decisions. The medical field's present-day technology with information technology has made it possible to deliver and distribute digital information in a more comfortable way at a faster rate. This simpleness of the content makes the issue of exhibiting the transmitted digital content on the network with the chance of illegal interception. Traditional cryptographic mechanisms follow the trend of encrypting the content before transmission to improve content confidentiality. However, the encrypted information's visual aspect makes the intruder focus more on the range, leading to malicious attacks. Hence the routine of data hiding has received substantial aid as an alternative way to ensure information security. This paper presents a biomedical data concealment procedure with Sudoku based scrambling on Biomedical DICOM image and Queen Traversal pattern for locating the pels over the DICOM image. It hides the confidential medical data in the scrambled or encrypted cover images. Experimental outcomes establish the efficacy of the system viz-a-viz respective parameters of interest.

Multiple Secret Image Communication Using Visual Cryptography

Abstract: Usage of Internet has increased enormously in this decade due to the pandemic began due to COVID19. Data in the form of Text, Image and Video are communicated across the world through mails, chat applications and meeting applications etc. Such third-party applications are vulnerable while sensitive information such as personal, financial, medical and military communications occurs. Visual Cryptography (VC) is an encryption scheme that protects data in the form of image. In source, VC encrypts the image by dividing into shares and distributes to the receiver side. At the destination, the shares are stacked together physically or digitally to reveal the original data. VC also uses cover images to enhance security. VC supports secret sharing of multiple images. In this research paper, a new Multiple grayscale Secret Image Sharing (MSIS) strategy is proposed for secure transmission of more than one grayscale secret image data to the destination. MSIS uses color cover images to enhance the security. It also minimizes the number of shares and cover images to reduce the complexity.

A new high capacity and secure image realization steganography based on ASCII code matching

Abstract: Digital Steganography is the art of hiding secret messages behind an innocent looking digital media that do not raise suspicions. In this paper, a new proposed image realization steganography method is introduced which is a mapping-based method that hides in an unrevealed manner and without any change in the image cover file. The image cover is only used for referencing. The proposed method generates the cover-secret mapping that will realize the concealed secret message without embedding the real message. A mapping between the American Standard Code of Information Interchange (ASCII) codes of a secret message and an image is performed and the positions of the secret message in the image is noted in a position array. This reference positions are then sent to the receiver after first being compressed by Huffman algorithm and then encrypted using Advanced Encryption Standard with 128 bits key (AES-128). The position array and the cover image are transferred separately, so that the interception of any one file alone will not conceal any information. In addition, it has unlimited capacity as specific matching positions can be used more than once. Furthermore, the proposed method has a reduced size of position key and mapping table, hence having high-speed searching and matching compared to prevailing methods. Furthermore, several experimental tests have been applied to assess the efficiency and performance of the new proposed method to evaluate it according to the widely used metrics: Mean Squared Error (MSE) and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR). From the security point of view, Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM) together with Histogram have been performed. Moreover, it is critiqued showing its pros and cons and further compared with existing state-of-the-art research. The experimental results verified the efficacy of the new proposed method.

Novel Secure Hybrid Image Steganography Technique Based on Pattern Matching

Abstract: The secure communication of information is a major concern over the internet. The information must be protected before transmitting over a communication channel to avoid security violations. In this paper, a new hybrid method called compressed encrypted data embedding (CEDE) is proposed. In CEDE, the secret information is first compressed with Lempel Ziv Welch (LZW) compression algorithm. Then, the compressed secret information is encrypted using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) symmetric block cipher. In the last step, the encrypted information is embedded into an image of size 512 × 512 pixels by using image steganography. In the steganographic technique, the compressed and encrypted secret data bits are divided into pairs of two bits and pixels of the cover image are also arranged in four pairs. The four pairs of secret data are compared with the respective four pairs of each cover pixel which leads to sixteen possibilities of matching in between secret data pairs and pairs of cover pixels. The least significant bits (LSBs) of current and imminent pixels are modified according to the matching case number. The proposed technique provides double-folded security and the results show that stego image carries a high capacity of secret data with adequate peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and lower mean square error (MSE) when compared with existing methods in the literature.