Embedding Ratio Research Articles

Blind Steganalysis Method Using Image Spectral Density and Differential Histogram Correlative Power Spectral Density

Recent research has demonstrated the success of employing neural networks for the purpose of detecting image tampering. Nevertheless, the utilization of reference-free steganalysis has become increasingly popular as a result of the challenges associated with obtaining an annotated dataset. This dataset is crucial for the classification process using neural networks, which aims to detect and identify instances of tampering. This paper introduces a robust approach to blind steganalysis, utilizing image spectral density and differential histogram correlative power spectral density. The proposed method employed two distinct forms of image data, namely a gray-scale image and true-color image data. The results indicate that the proposed methodology successfully achieved the anticipated outcomes in identifying manipulated images as evidenced by its successful application on the two distinct datasets. In the experiment results, the proposed technique succeeded quite well in terms of accuracy at low embedding ratios. Also, it successfully recognized sequential and random least significant bit steganography.

Data hiding steganography model based on hyper chaos 2D compressive sensing inhabited with manchester encoder/decoder using circular queue exploiting modification direction

Reversible data hiding (RDH) based on Steganography is considered as one of the future related aspects in the field of security for the information hiding paradigm. Existing research work has been carried out based on secure data transmission as well as reducing the dataloss from one user to other users. But due to encryption data expansion over non-linear transformation, complexity in attacking caused due to keyspace, ineffective image compression, poor embedding ratio, poor quality, overflow/underflow problems, data loss etc., leads to inefficient data transmission causing a security risk. This paper proposes a novel method named Triple Secured Data Hiding Steganography Model which provides solutions to the above challenges. This work is initiated with Hyper Chaos 2D Compressive Sensing that performs image compression and encryption simultaneously. It provides control over low dimension chaos system bearing secure risks with suffering from data encrypted expansion while adopt non-linear transformation. In addition to reduce the error rate and providing signal synchronization as well as system reliability over the transmission channel, Manchester Encoder/Decoder is initiated. To cope up with data embedding and extraction our work has proposed Circular Queue Exploiting Modification Direction(CQEMD). Thus, overall proposed model enhances effective secure data transmission under RDH by inhabiting a triple secured system.

Microcapsules of chitosan-loaded luffa seed oil for improving the mold-resistance of bamboo

Mold infestation-induced degradation of quality and performance of bamboo remains a persistent and unresolved issue in the bamboo engineering industry. Herein, an effective strategy was proposed to prepare mold resistant bamboo by luffa seed oil (LSO) microcapsules impregnation method. First, microcapsules were prepared by ionic gelation method, with LSO as the core and chitosan as the shell. Second, the microwave-pretreated bamboo slices were vacuum impregnated with the microcapsules. Microcapsules exhibited good slow-release properties, with a maximum embedding ratio of 17.65% and an average particle size of less than 500 nm. Microcapsules got adsorbed, bonded to, or fused with the bamboo fiber cell wall, and they exhibited less effect on the moisture absorption ratio, moisture desorption ratio, and mechanical properties of bamboo. However, the microcapsule impregnation treatment led to significant improvement in the mold resistance of the bamboo slices, so that the infection level was still level 1 after 30 d of inoculation with mold. This strategy lays a strong foundation for further research on mold-resistant bamboo materials and encourages new applications in green engineering.

Dual-image reversible data hiding method using maximum embedding ability of each pixel

Compared to conventional reversible data hiding (RDH) methods, dual-image RDH methods have greater embedding capacity, better stego image quality and higher security. Among existing dual-image RDH methods, three methods of Lu et al., Yao et al. and Kim et al. are remarkable. These three methods have much higher embedding capacities than other methods, while still maintaining stego image quality. However, these three methods all have a limitation that in order to avoid underflow/overflow, they have to ignore pixels around two pixels with values 0 and 255. In many cases, the number of such pixels is not small and this limits the embedding capacity of all three methods above. In this paper, the maximum number of bits that can be embedded in each pixel is evaluated correctly. Embedding a number of bits less than or equal to the maximum number at each pixel will not cause the underflow/overflow. Therefore the proposed method can embed data bits in all pixels of an original image. As a result, the proposed method has not only a larger embedding capacity, but also better stego image quality than mentioned above methods. With an embedding ratio of 3.45 bits per a pixel, the proposed method has a greater embedding capacity than existing dual image reversible data hiding methods while maintaining good image quality.

A SYSTEMATIZED APPROACH TO DATA HIDING USING IMPROVED LSB

Aim: This paper mainly focused on introducing a new framework for image and text hiding using a simple Least Significant Bit (LSB) substitution method.  Results: Six 24-bit images are used as reference images. XOR operation is used in the stego key to generate new bit planes of the stego images. An RGB color image is used as a secret cover image. The proposed method dramatically increases the embedding capacity without significantly decreasing the Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) value.  Conclusion: This method increased the compression ratio, embedding ratio, PSNR and Space 24%, 53%, 36% and 47%, respectively. The result shows that the newly developed method improved the value of accuracy by 30% and sensitivity by 16% for the hidden images.  Keywords: LSB, PSNR, FNR (False Negative Rate), Sensitivity, MSE (Mean Square Error), Specificity HIGHLIGHTS: The newly developed method with simple Least Significant Bit (LSB) improved the accuracy value by 30%, and sensitivity by 16% for the hidden image. The improved LSB method increased security and preserved the quality of hidden images.

4D chaotic system-based secure data hiding method to improve robustness and embedding capacity of videos

Chaotic systems are used in various applications due to their high security and complexity. Because minor changes in parameters have a significant effect on the output values and the dynamic behavior of the system. Besides, security and robustness are the most important requirements of data hiding. Therefore, in this paper, it is proposed to use chaos-based data hiding for videos. The merits of the proposed method are selection of embedding location with robust system, increasing the secret data capacity, and keep the visual quality, which are in trade-off for existing methods. Because, in the existing methods the secret message is embedded into pixels of a consecutive, a selected or a random frame. Another deficiency of existing methods is embedding capacity. They embed fewer secret data to keep the visual quality of the stego object. However, compared to the drawback of existing literature, in the proposed method the secret message is embedded in entire video with 4D chaotic system, which is also an important novelty of this paper.The proposed method evaluated by objective criteria and achieved valuable results. The histogram analysis proves our method is undetectable. For different high ratios of embedding capacity, the visual quality of the stego videos is high where the average PSNR is about 55 dB, and MS-SSIM is closed to 1. The proposed method's results compared chaotic and non-chaotic video steganography methods. Our methods achieve 54.92 dB for embedding ratio 8.08% where the results are 53.57 dB and 5% for the best existing non-chaotic method and 49.99 dB and 0.001% for the best chaotic method, for similar capacity the proposed method gives superior visual performance over the chaotic literature. Finally, the robustness analysis with pixel value attack and lsb attack shows the proposed method appears to be resistant to these types of attacks.

Dual Reversible Data Hiding Based on AMBTC Using Hamming Code and LSB Replacement

The existing data hiding schemes conceal the data in the cover image and then communicate secretly on the channel. The weakness of these methods is that the security aspect is somewhat lacking, and there is a limit to hiding enough data. In this paper, we propose a reversible data hiding method based on dual AMBTC images. It improves security, which is a weakness of data hiding. AMBTC has strengths in low-bandwidth channel environments with simple calculations and efficient data performance. HC(7,4) and LSB replacement methods are applied to each block of AMBTC to hide secret data. After the embedding process, the two AMBTC-marked images are obtained, and these images are sent to different recipients. The recipients can extract hidden messages and restore the cover AMBTC image by using the proposed method and two marked images. Our proposed data hiding method guarantees sufficient data hiding, proper cover image quality, and restoration of the original cover image. Experimental results show that our method is efficient in terms of image quality and embedding ratio.

Ternary Memory Behavior of Carbazole‐Based Donor–Acceptor Polymer and CdS NPs Composites

AbstractMulti‐level memory can greatly improve information density, so it has been widely studied. In this study, a carbazole‐based donor–acceptor polymer poly[2,7‐9‐(heptadecan‐9‐yl)‐9H‐carbazole‐alt‐7H‐benzimidazo[2,1‐a]benz[de]isoquinolin‐7‐one] (PCz‐BB) is synthesized, which exhibits flash‐type ternary memory behavior. Further, CdS nanoparticles (NPs) are embedded into the prepared polymer to enhance the storage performance. The current–voltage (I–V) characteristics of memory devices based on PCz‐BB:CdS composites and the effect of the embedding ratio of CdS NPs on the memory devices are studied. It is verified that the ON2/ON1/OFF current ratios of the devices at low CdS embedding concentrations are improved, and the threshold voltages are also reduced. The memory device based on the optimal embedding concentration (3 wt% CdS) exhibits a high ON2/ON1/OFF current ratio of 18631:72:1, a low threshold voltage of −0.40/−1.20 V, and excellent stability. The mechanism of resistive switching is explained by the theory of charge traps and conductive filaments. This work provides a new avenue for high‐performance multi‐level organic electrical storage materials.

Tailoring microwave absorption bandwidth of SiCN based composite ceramic fibers by tuning the embedding ratio of Ni3Si

In order to expand the application prospects of SiCN ceramics in the field of microwave (MW) absorption materials, a series of Ni3Si embedded SiCN ceramic fibers composites (NSF) were prepared by controlling Ni conversion rate through the electrospinning technique and polymer derivation, with the intention of improving the impedance matching degree, enhancing the conductivity and polarization, and further promoting the dielectric loss ability and MW absorption performance of ceramic materials. The microstructure, phase composition, conductivity, MW absorption properties and mechanism of the material were analyzed by a variety of characterization methods. The results show that NSF exhibited high dielectric loss efficiency and desirable effective absorption bandwidth (EAB) when the conversion rate of Ni was 0.5 wt%: The MW of the entire Ku band (12–18 GHz, 6 GHz) could be effectively absorbed by the sample with a thickness of 2.64 mm, and its EAB could cover 6–18 GHz by adjusting its thickness from 1 mm to 5 mm, so its performance is significantly superior to a number of similar SiCN based composite ceramic materials previously reported. To sum up, the NSF prepared in this work exhibits suitable impedance matching degree, good conductivity, obvious polarization effect, excellent dielectric loss ability, and gratifying EAB in MW, and it is expected to become a powerful candidate in the field of broadband MW absorption materials in the future.

Controlling the reaction microenvironments through an embedding strategy to strengthen the chemical looping reforming of methane based on decoupling process

Aiming at the complexity of traditional biomass gasification technology with low conversion efficiency and high tar content and realizing the directional conversion of biomass into syngas, this paper proposed a new decoupling process of biomass pyrolysis and chemical looping reforming of volatile components. Designing a high activity and selective oxygen carrier is the key to the chemical looping reforming process. This study used an embedding strategy to develop the oxygen carrier. NiFe2O4 was embedded in SBA-15 to control the reaction microenvironment. The reaction performance of NiFe2O4@SBA-15 under different conditions was investigated via a combination of fixed-bed reactor and on-line mass spectrometry. The results showed that the CO selectivity was close to 100%. The CH4 conversion and CO selectivity of NiFe2O4@SBA-15 were increased by 121.29% and 114.40% than NiFe2O4, respectively. The optimal embedding ratio (20%) and reaction temperature (900 °C) were determined during the experiment, which was consistent with the thermodynamic simulation results. The gas–solid reaction model was used to solve the reaction kinetics of the oxygen carrier, and the activation energy was 118.23 kJ·mol−1. This study gives a research basis for screening oxygen carrier and the design of reactor in the directional conversion of biomass pyrolysis full volatiles into syngas via chemical looping reforming.

Effect of sediment embedding ratio on the cathode electrochemical performance in marine microbial fuel cells on ocean floor

In the long-term electricity generation and driving sensor work process of marine sediment microbial fuel cells(MSMFCs), its cathode in the seawater may be embedded into the marine sediment, which will affect the electrochemical performance and lead to MSMFCs failure. The article simulated the embedding ratio of cathodes in sediment in the laboratory: 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, in order to investigate the changes of the electrochemical performance of the cathode and the electricity generation performance of MSMFCs. The results show that: the open circuit potential dropped and the required longer steady time with the higher embedding ratio of the cathode. Its capacitance decreased gradually, and the minimum capacitance was 32 F/cm2 (2/3 group), which was 0.72 times of the Blank. The kinetic activity decreased firstly and then increased, and its maximum activity was 1.61 times of the Blank (2/3 group); The maximum power density of the MSMFCs was 140.83 mW/m2 (1/3 group), which was 1.21 times of the Blank. With the increase of embedding ratio of the cathode in the marine sediment, its electrochemical performance and electricity generation performance of MSMFCs both fluctuates, but the normal operation of MSMFCs can still be ensured.

LSBR Speech Steganalysis Based on Percent of Equal Adjacent Samples

Wide utilization of audio files has attracted the attention of cyber-criminals to employ this media as a cover for their concealed communications. As a countermeasure and to protect cyberspace, several techniques have been introduced for steganalysis of various audio formats, such as MP3, VoIP, etc. The combination of machine learning and signal processing techniques has helped steganalyzers to obtain higher accuracies. However, as the statistical characteristics of a normal audio file differ from the speech ones, the current methods cannot discriminate clean and stego speech instances efficiently. Another problem is the high numbers of extracted features and analysis dimensions that drastically increase the implementation cost. To tackle these, this paper proposes the Percent of Equal Adjacent Samples (PEAS) feature for single-dimension least-significant-bit replacement (LSBR) speech steganalysis. The model first classifies the samples into speech and silence groups according to a threshold which has been determined through extensive experiments. It then uses an MLP classifier to detect stego instances and determine the embedding ratio. PEAS steganalysis detects 99.8% of stego instances in the lowest analyzed embedding ratio — 12.5% — and its sensitivity increases to 100% for the ratios of 37.5% and above.

Statistical feature-based steganalysis for pixel-value differencing steganography

Pixel-value differencing (PVD) steganography is a popular spatial domain technology. Several PVD-based studies have proposed extended PVD steganography methods. The majority of these studies have verified their security against the regular-singular (RS) analysis. However, RS analysis is aimed at the feature of the least significant bit substitution method, which is relatively less significant for PVD steganography. The pixel difference histogram (PDH) is generally utilized to attack PVD steganography. If the embedding capacity is high, then the features on the PDH are evident; otherwise, the features are less obvious. In this paper, we propose a statistical feature-based steganalysis technique for the original PVD steganography. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared with existing steganalysis technique with weighted stego-image (WS) method, the proposed method effectively detects PVD steganography at low embedding ratios, such that there is no need of using the original embedding parameters. Furthermore, the accuracy and precision of the method are better than those of existing PVD steganalysis techniques. Therefore, the proposed method contributes to the security analysis of the original PVD steganography as an alternative to the commonly used RS, PDH and WS attack techniques.

A Hidden DCT-Based Invisible Watermarking Method for Low-Cost Hardware Implementations

This paper presents an invisible and robust watermarking method and its hardware implementation. The proposed architecture is based on the discrete cosine transform (DCT) algorithm. Novel techniques are applied as well to reduce the computational cost of DCT and color space conversion to achieve low-cost and high-speed performance. Besides, a watermark embedder and a blind extractor are implemented in the same circuit using a resource-sharing method. Our approach is compatible with various watermarking embedding ratios, such as 1/16 and 1/64, with a PSNR of over 45 and the NC value of 1. After Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) compression with a quality factor (QF) of 50, our method can achieve an NC value of 0.99. Results from a design compiler (DC) with TSMC-90 nm CMOS technology show that our design can achieve the frequency of 2.32 GHz with the area consumption of 304,980.08 μm2 and power consumption of 508.1835 mW. For the FPGA implementation, our method achieved a frequency of 421.94 MHz. Compared with the state-of-the-art works, our design improved the frequency by 4.26 times, saved 90.2% on area and increased the power efficiency by more than 1000 fold.

Chi-square-based steganalysis method against modified pixel-value differencing steganography

Pixel-value differencing (PVD) steganography can embed a large quantity of information and effectively resist regular/singular (RS) detection. Recent steganography techniques that are based on PVD have only focused on improving embedding capacity and image quality. In terms of security, PVD steganography has typically only been tested against well-known RS detection analysis or pixel difference histogram attacks. Modified PVD (MPVD) is an improved method that eliminates certain detectable features of PVD, thereby increasing security. State-of-the-art studies in steganalysis have attempted to detect MPVD steganography by using features of the differences between cover images and stego images, and they have generated models to test suspicious images. However, these methods have low accuracy when the embedding capacity is low. In this study, we propose a chi-square goodness-of-fit-based steganalysis technique that can be applied to MPVD steganography. Experimental results demonstrate that the method effectively detects MPVD steganography even when the embedding ratio is low. Furthermore, the accuracy, precision, and implementation of the method are better than those of existing state-of-the-art techniques in detecting data hidden using MPVD steganography. Therefore, the proposed method contributes to the security analysis of PVD-extended steganography.

An Efficient Dual-image Reversible Data Hiding Scheme Based on Exploiting Modification Direction

Reversible data hiding (RDH) subtly alter the cover image for embedding the secret data, after extracting the secret data, the cover image can also be completely restored. In this work, we propose a novel RDH scheme based on Exploiting Modification Direction (EMD) with dual images. The characteristics of EMD matrix is exploited, one secret bit and a base-5 digit can be concealed in a cover pixel to generate a pixel pair which will be assigned to two stego images. Without any overhead message, the reversibility can be achieved. In the experiment, the proposed scheme outperforms some state-of-the-art methods in terms of measuring in embedding ratio (ER) or peak-signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). In addition, the proposed scheme has good performance on resisting static attacks on pixel-value differencing histogram (PDH) and regular singular (RS) analysis.

A Verifiable Steganography-Based Secret Image Sharing Scheme in 5G Networks

With the development and innovation of new techniques for 5G, 5G networks can provide extremely large capacity, robust integrity, high bandwidth, and low latency for multimedia image sharing and storage. However, it will surely exacerbate the privacy problems intrinsic to image transformation. Due to the high security and reliability requirements for storing and sharing sensitive images in the 5G network environment, verifiable steganography-based secret image sharing (SIS) is attracting increasing attention. The verifiable capability is necessary to ensure the correct image reconstruction. From the literature, efficient cheating verification, lossless reconstruction, low reconstruct complexity, and high-quality stego images without pixel expansion are summarized as the primary goals of proposing an effective steganography-based SIS scheme. Compared with the traditional underlying techniques for SIS, cellular automata (CA) and matrix projection have more strengths as well as some weaknesses. In this paper, we perform a complimentary of these two techniques to propose a verifiable secret image sharing scheme, where CA is used to enhance the security of the secret image, and matrix projection is used to generate shadows with a smaller size. From the steganography perspective, instead of the traditional least significant bits replacement method, matrix encoding is used in this paper to improve the embedding efficiency and stego image quality. Therefore, we can simultaneously achieve the above goals and achieve proactive and dynamic features based on matrix projection. Such features can make the proposed SIS scheme more applicable to flexible 5G networks. Finally, the security analysis illustrates that our scheme can effectively resist the collusion attack and detect the shadow tampering over the persistent adversary. The analyses for performance and comparative demonstrate that our scheme is a better performer among the recent schemes with the perspective of functionality, visual quality, embedding ratio, and computational efficiency. Therefore, our scheme further strengthens security for the images in 5G networks.

Payload Capacity Scheme for Quran Text Watermarking Based on Vowels with Kashida

The most sensitive Arabic text available online is the digital Holy Quran. This sacred Islamic religious book is recited by all Muslims worldwide including non-Arabs as part of their worship needs. Thus, it should be protected from any kind of tampering to keep its invaluable meaning intact. Different characteristics of Arabic letters like the vowels (), Kashida (extended letters), and other symbols in the Holy Quran must be secured from alterations. The cover text of the Quran and its watermarked text are different due to the low values of the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Embedding Ratio (ER). A watermarking technique with enhanced attributes must, therefore, be designed for the Quran’s text using Arabic vowels with kashida. The gap addressed by this paper is to improve the security of Arabic text in the Holy Quran by using vowels with kashida. The purpose of this paper is to enhance the Quran text watermarking scheme based on a reversing technique. The methodology consists of four phases: The first phase is a pre-processing followed by the second phase-the embedding process phase—which will hide the data after the vowels. That is, if the secret bit is “1”, then the kashida is inserted; however, the kashida is not inserted if the bit is “0”. The third phase is the extraction process and the last phase is to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme by using PSNR (for the imperceptibility) and ER (for the capacity). The experimental results show that the proposed method of imperceptibility insertion is also optimized with the help of a reversing algorithm. The proposed strategy obtains a 90.5% capacity. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm attained 66.1% which is referred to as imperceptibility.

Stego key recovery method for F5 steganography with matrix encoding

When embedding secret message into image by steganography with matrix encoding, there are still no effective methods to recover the stego key because it is difficult to statistically distinguish the stego coefficient sequences selected by true and false keys. Therefore, this paper proposes a method for recovering the stego key of a typical JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) image steganography—F5 which composes of the check matrix and shuffling key. Firstly, the check matrix is recovered based on the embedding ratio estimated by quantitative steganalysis. The shuffling key is then recovered based on the distribution difference between the bit sequences extracted by the true and false shuffling keys. Additionally, the cardinality of the shuffling key space is significantly reduced by examining the extracted encoding parameter and message length. Experimental results show that the proposed method can recover the stego key accurately and efficiently, even when the existing Xu’s method fails for the high or very low embedding ratio.

Electrospun poly(vinyl alcohol) nanofiber films containing menthol/β-cyclodextrin inclusion complexes for smoke filtration and flavor retention

Nanofibrous membranes for smoke filtration and flavor retention is developed from poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and menthol/β-cyclodextrin inclusion complexes by solution electrospinning. The inclusion complexes of menthol and β-cyclodextrin with an embedding ratio of 64.6% are first prepared by a coprecipitation method, followed by mixing with PVA aqueous solutions for subsequent electrospun fabrication of nanofibrous films. The optimized nanofibrous films possess a high menthol content of 3.9 wt% and satisfied mechanical properties. The flavor compound, menthol, can be efficiently retained in the inclusion complexes and nanofibrous films while free menthol volatilizes rapidly under ambient condition. In addition to the sustained flavor release, the nanofibrous films show promise for air filtration, as evidenced by the reduced harmful substance contents when cigarette smoke as a model substance passes through the film. Moreover, this nanofibrous film is a biocompatible material, which could be potentially useful in the fields of nanofiltration and tobacco processing.