Abstract
Least significant bit (LSB) substitution is a method of information hiding. The secret message is embedded into the last <svg style="vertical-align:-0.1638pt;width:8.6750002px;" id="M1" height="12.4375" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 8.6750002 12.4375" width="8.6750002" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <g transform="matrix(.017,-0,0,-.017,.062,12.162)"><path id="x1D458" d="M480 416q0 -21 -18 -41q-9 -11 -17 -7q-20 9 -42 9q-62 0 -140 -78q23 -69 88 -192q17 -31 27 -42t20 -11q16 0 62 46l17 -20q-64 -92 -119 -92q-35 0 -70 66q-41 73 -84 187q-36 -30 -62 -61q-27 -115 -35 -172q-41 -8 -78 -20l-6 6l140 612q7 28 0.5 34t-37.5 7l-34 1
l5 26q38 4 74 13.5t57 17t25 7.5q12 0 4 -32l-104 -443h2q35 38 97 93q39 35 65.5 56t62 41.5t58.5 20.5q19 0 30.5 -10t11.5 -22z" /></g> </svg> bits of a cover-image in order to evade the notice of hackers. The security and stego-image quality are two main limitations of the LSB substitution method. Therefore, some researchers have proposed an LSB substitution matrix to address these two issues. Finding the optimal LSB substitution matrix can be conceptualized as a problem of combinatorial optimization. In this paper, we adopt a different heuristic method based on other researchers’ method, called enhanced differential evolution (EDE), to construct an optimal LSB substitution matrix. Differing from other researchers, we adopt an HVS-based measurement as a fitness function and embed the secret by modifying the pixel to a closest value rather than simply substituting the LSBs. Our scheme extracts the secret by modular operations as simple LSB substitution does. The experimental results show that the proposed embedding algorithm indeed improves imperceptibility of stego-images substantially.
Highlights
The internet provides an easy way to exchange information with others
The secret was transformed with an optimal substitution matrix and embedded and extracted by means of simple Least significant bit (LSB) substitution
The optimal substitution matrix was constructed by enhanced differential evolution (EDE) with peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) as the fitness function
Summary
The internet provides an easy way to exchange information with others. information is prone to eavesdropping from hackers. The secret message can be extracted by performing modular operation to each pixel of the stego-image This method is very simple and easy to implement; sometimes the stego-image is not imperceptible enough when more least significant bits are substituted. The improvement of the imperceptibility may be limited These researchers adopt peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) as a fitness function to measure how the stego-image is near the cover-image. The way of extracting is easy and the same as that of simple LSB substitution Another heuristic method, called enhanced differential evolution (EDE) [12], is adopted to search for the optimal substitution matrix.
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