Vague Sets Security Measure for Steganographic System Based on High-Order Markov Model

Abstract

Security measure is of great importance in both steganography and steganalysis. Considering that statistical feature perturbations caused by steganography in an image are always nondeterministic and that an image is considered nonstationary, in this paper, the steganography is regarded as a fuzzy process. Here a steganographic security measure is proposed. This security measure evaluates the similarity between two vague sets of cover images and stego images in terms of n-order Markov chain to capture the interpixel correlation. The new security measure has proven to have the properties of boundedness, commutativity, and unity. Furthermore, the security measures of zero order, first order, second order, third order, and so forth are obtained by adjusting the order value of n-order Markov chain. Experimental results indicate that the larger n is, the better the measuring ability of the proposed security measure will be. The proposed security measure is more sensitive than other security measures defined under a deterministic distribution model, when the embedding is low. It is expected to provide a helpful guidance for designing secure steganographic algorithms or reliable steganalytic methods.