LSB Embedding Research Articles

Performance of Logarithmic Magnitude of Centre-Element-Based Steganography over OFDM constituted Wireless Communication Channel

Hiding crucial information is today's utmost concern and transmitting through wired or wireless medium is another attentive subject. Quality secret hiding requires robustness and better perceptual visuals of the host image. Also, a secret embedding mechanism should offer higher immunity to noises. The work proposes a robust and efficient patch-based secured steganography (P-BSS) mechanism. The stego image is transmitted over an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based Wireless Communication system governed by 802.11 WLAN. The stenography framework uses center element (CE) information to embed secret bits in its 3x3 neighborhood. The strategy is based on the magnitude and natural logarithm of the center element. The statistical operation on the center element defines the position in the neighborhood from where the embedding process should be initiated. The secret binary information is then hidden using the LSB embedding approach. The stego image when transmitted over a Binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulated OFDM wireless communication system, the stego image was immune to Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) above 10 dB. The proposed logarithmic magnitude of the center-element-based steganography (LM-CEB-S) framework maintains a proper balance between imperceptibility and security.

LSB Embedding with Hillbert Curve

Information security has pulled in open consideration within the past decade, effective strategies for information security assurance are in request. This method inserts the secret information into the pixels and the pixel order for embedding is by Hillbert Curve. With standard petitcola images many experiments are carried out. The prevalence of ciphertext and encrypted images in cyberspace has led to increased interest from academics towards RDH algorithms in encrypted images

Invisible Video Watermarking Based on Frame Selection and LSB Embedding

Invisible Video Watermarking Based on Frame Selection and LSB Embedding

Patch-based Reversible Steganography for Secured Communication over Wireless Channels

Securing the perceptual quality of the cover image (CI) and acquiring higher security for hidden information in stego images (STIs) are two sides of the same coin. There is always a trade-off between perceptual quality and level of security when secret bits (SBs) of the secret image (SI) are embedded in a CI. Non-reversible techniques are adopted where a higher level of security is required as in communication, while reversible schemes are preferred to maintain the visual quality of the CI. This article proposes a novel Patch-Based LSB Embedding (LSBE) Data Hiding (PB-LSB-EDH) scheme that provides better security to SBs and maintains stego quality. The scheme embeds a secret byte in a 3x3 patch of the CI. The starting byte in the neighborhood where the SBs are hidden is computed from the center pixels of the 3x3 patch window and continues to embed pixels clockwise. The PB-LSB-DH scheme is highly immune to external noise or attacks when the intensity value of the center pixels is equal to or greater than 12 since the starting index of bit embedding is computed using a natural logarithm. Experimental analysis of four different CIs and SIs showed that the proposed PB-LSB-DH scheme maintains the better perceptual quality of the CI and a higher peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) above 50.

A Novel Approach on Efficient Data Transfer in Multimedia Communication Network

In the Wireless sensor networks, the main crucial part as we observe based on literature analysis managing Real-time data, load balancing, security of data, managing data, and also transmitting large (multimedia data) from source to destination using WMSN. Using the proposed system work on energy efficiency and robustness of the system and based on result analysis achieve the better result as compared to the existing system.
 Introduction: The growth of wireless sensor networks during the past ten years has altered how data is gathered and retrieved from different areas. With the expansion of communication infrastructure, the requirement and use of Multimedia Wireless Sensor Networks is becoming more widespread on these days. These networks confront a number of difficulties in ensuring user data is secure, trustworthy, and private, just like any other WMSNs.
 Objectives: This paper works on multimedia data transmission in WMSN and for that works on 3-bit LSB Embedding for transmitting large-size data with min energy consumption rate as compared to other methods like AES, ECC, etc.
 Methods: 3-bit LSB Embedding will be done which provides secrecy of the data and then we will implement the Energy Efficient routing to the embedded multimedia data for WMSN .
 Results: The shortest path optimization, using energy efficient routing protocol, by sensor nodes to transfer multimedia-data from source-node to destination-node achieved in WMSN. The average energy consumption and throughput of 400 multimedia sensor nodes transferring large amount multimedia-data transfer from source-to-destination WMSN. Existing work shows that it has high energy consumption and low throughput as compare to the proposed work.
 Conclusions: In this paper, work on energy-efficient real time multimedia data trans receive using Wireless sensor network use 3-bit LSB data embedding in multimedia data transmission in a wireless sensor network for compress data. Based 3-bit LSB data embedding for digital audio, image, video, and 3D media. Given the tremendous developments in digital media communications ranging from conventional digital audio to immersive media, LSB data hiding plays an important role in providing high capacity and maintaining imperceptibility by considering mechanisms of the HAS and HVS. This paper uses a hybrid approach for secure data as well as compressing it using a 3-bit LSB embedding approach as well as for making energy optimization using a trust mechanism for set initial threshold values of parameters like min energy required, transmission power, location, transmission power, etc. in the transmission side source node and another surrounding node will be selected based on a parameter that we reserve than apply 3-bit LSB embedding on data and on the receiver and apply same de-embedding after selecting receiver node. And for establishing communication select the most appropriate and optimized path based on energy and location-based estimation. With the proposed structure we achieve significantly improve in results as achieve more throughput and less energy consumption as compared to the existing system.

Information Hiding in Color Image Using Steganographic technique

Steganography is one of the important research subjects in the field of information security. It enables secret communication by embedding messages in the texts, images, audio, video files or other digital carriers. Among all the image information hiding methods, LSB embedding is widely used for its high hiding capacity and it is with great significance to detect the images with hidden messages produced by LSB embedding effectively, accurately and reliably. Therefore, many experts made efforts on the LSB steganography and steganalysis research over the years. This research presents a steganographic technique based on using LSB of one of the pixel color components in the image and changes them according to the message’s bits to hide. The rest of bits in the pixel color component selected are also changed in order get the nearest color to the original one in the scale of colors. This new method has been tested with others that work in the spatial domain through applying some common metrics which give us good result as a compared with the other steganographic tools.

Securing LSB embedding against structural steganalysis

This work explores the extent to which LSB embedding can be made secure against structural steganalysis through a modification of cover image statistics prior to message embedding. LSB embedding disturbs the statistics of consecutive k-tuples of pixels, and a kth-order structural attack detects hidden messages with lengths in proportion to the size of the imbalance amongst sets of k-tuples. To protect against kth-order structural attacks, cover modifications involve the redistribution of k-tuples among the different sets so that symmetries of the cover image are broken, then repaired through the act of LSB embedding so that the stego image bears the statistics of the original cover. We find this is only feasible for securing against up to 3rd-order attacks since higher-order protections result in virtually zero embedding capacities. To protect against 3rd-order attacks, we perform a redistribution of triplets that also preserves the statistics of pairs. This is done by embedding into only certain pixels of each sextuplet, constraining the maximum embedding rate to be ⩽ 2 / 3 bits per channel. Testing on a variety of image formats, we report best performance for JPEG-compressed images with a mean maximum embedding rate undetectable by 2nd- and 3rd-order attacks of 0.21 bpc.

Embedding in medical images: an efficient scheme for authentication and tamper localization

In e-healthcare applications integrity of the received information is of prime importance for ensuring the accurate diagnosis. The integrity of electronic medical record (EMR) is possible only when the medical images and other relevant data received are tamper free. Reversibility of medical images after certain degree of processing is always a desired property in medical images as it aids proper diagnosis. This paper proposes a novel reversible image authentication (RIA) scheme for tamper detection and authentication of medical images. In the proposed RIA scheme, the medical image is divided into 4 × 4 blocks followed by embedding fragile watermark bit (for authentication) in each of these blocks. Along with authentication, the localization of tamper is achieved accurately by using LSB embedding along with mean modification approach. The security of the watermark has been enhanced with Arnold cat map, Gray coding and AES-128 encryption. The experimental results show that the scheme offers better fragility against all intentional/unintentional signal processing attacks. The comparison results between proposed RIA scheme and similar state-of-the-art schemes show superiority of our scheme in terms of imperceptivity, fragility and tamper localization. For a payload of 16 kb, the average PSNR achieved for 50 Gray scale images of size 512 × 512 is more than 47 dB. In addition, the scheme offers very less complexity; the embedding and extraction times are around 0.6 s and 0.5 s respectively. Given the features of proposed scheme it could serve as a potential candidate for transfer of EMR in an e-healthcare system.

An Experimental Approach to Conceal Confidential Data using LSB Embedding Technique

Security of our data is very important in current time, so to provide the security of our data should be on first priority. To conceal confidential information is very important in the present era. Steganography provides the features to conceal our confidential information into the cover medium. In this paper I used the LSB embedding technique to hide the data and also try to improve the quality of stego image with increased payload capacity. Here I am trying to provide authenticity, confidentiality, and integrity.

Combining LSB embedding with modified Octa-PVD embedding

This paper proposes a new image steganographic method that effectively combines LSB embedding with Octa-PVD embedding. A cover image is divided into non-overlapping 3 × 3 sub-blocks, the n least significant bits of the center pixel of each sub-block is first substituted by secret data (n-LSB substitution). Then, the differences between the center pixel and its eight neighbors are calculated. For each direction, if the difference is equal or larger than a threshold (predefined by users or automatically determined by image analysis), secret data is embedded into the neighbor pixel by n-LSB substitution. Otherwise, secret data is embedded by PVD embedding, but into the neighbor pixel only. Consequently, depending on the conditions of each sub-block, a single embedding method can be used to the whole sub-block, or two embedding methods can be used alternately within a sub-block. Comparisons with existing LSB or multi-directional PVD embedding methods demonstrate that the proposed method has more optimized and higher embedding capacity and PSNR.

Multi-Layered ‘Odd-Even’ Reversible Embedding for Encrypted Images

Reversible Data Hiding (RDH) has been under research for the past two decades. Recently RDH in encrypted images (RDH-EI) draws more attention among the researchers. Since it is used effectively in privacy protection and cloud computing. In this paper, a RDH-EI using LSB based odd-even embedding technique scheme is proposed. Initially the cover image is encrypted using block and pixel scrambling and bit plane mix ordering. Block and pixel scrambling is done through four random walks/Space Filling Curves (SFCs). Each block and pixel is tested for randomness of information source through each random walk. Finally the secret message is embedded in each block of image based on testing the pixel value and position value in the block using LSB embedding. This method avoids overflow/underflow issues that usually happens in RDH/LSB embedding.

QR-like Secret Data Hiding in Integer Wavelet Transform Domain Images

Steganography is the process of hiding secret information in other multimedia files, like image, audio and video, such that any unauthorized person does not have any clue of the hidden secret data. Due to the recent computational advancements, there has been an increased risk in secure communication and thus, steganography has become one of the most researched domains in information security. In this paper, a novel method of steganography is approached where the cover image is scrambled using graph theory; then the secret data is embedded in the LH, HL and HH planes using LSB embedding of the cover image after applying Haar forward transform to get the embedded image. The secret data hidden in the cover image is first converted to a QR-like (Quick Response) image and then to be embedded in the cover media. The stego image is obtained after reverse Haar transform and descrambling of the embedded image. The proposed method when applied to a set of grayscale images, not only gave us stego images with greater embedding capacity but also high Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and a low Mean Square Error (MSE) and very appreciable Normalized Cross-Correlation (NCC) along with a good Structural Similarity Index Matrix (SSIM) when compared to the cover images.

A novel fused coupled chaotic map based confidential data embedding-then-encryption of electrocardiogram signal

In telecardiology applications, research has been underway to protect the patient's confidential information from unauthorized access using Electrocardiogram (ECG) steganography or encryption approaches. A novel Fused Coupled Chaotic Map (FCCM) structure based integrated embedding-then-encryption approach is proposed for patient's confidential data embedding in ECG and its subsequent encryption. The proposed ECG embedding-then-encryption algorithm consists of four phases: confidential data ciphering, LSB embedding, substitution, and permutation. Four FCCMs under different initial conditions and control parameters undergoes level shifting or sorting based quantization. The updation of control parameters made to be ECG content aware of security enhancement. The generated {FCCMi,: i∈(1–4)} are applied to (i) cipher confidential data, (ii) craft the embedding locations to hide segmented-ciphered confidential data, (iii) substitution and (iv) permutation processes for data embedding-then-encryption of ECG. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated over MIT-BIH Arrhythmia and self-recorded ECG (lead-II) database. The test suites NIST-800 and 0-1 are employed to check randomness of chaotic sequences. The PRD, PRDN, PRD1024, RMS, SNR, PSNR, WWPRD, WEDD, and BERs were 0.04, 1.05, 0.75, 5.55×10−4, 41.21, 70.17, 3.02×10−2, 5.91×10−3, and 0.00 for MIT-BIH Arrhythmia ECG database (Lead-II) at payload 2.4Kb. Performance measures for Self-recorded dataset are 0.04, 2.62, 2.62, 5.49×10−4, 32.16, 68.72, 9.36×10−2, 1.93×10−2, and 0.00 respectively. Experimental results, security analysis and comparison with existing state-of-art methods prove the effectiveness of the proposed approach for assured patient's confidential data security. Furthermore, the efficiency of the proposed approach has also been evaluated on compressed ECG.

Thermal Image Encryption Based on Region of Interest (ROI) and Chaotic map

Most of the thermal image information concentrated on a particular region and 50% of image information stored in Most Significant Bit (MSB) plane. Based on these two strategy, proposed an thermal image encryption based on region of interest (ROI) and chaotic map. Firstly extract the MSB bit plane of thermal input image. This MSB bit plane undergo ROI calculation method. This method involves the partition of MSB bit plane into several 16*16 blocks. Apply the thresholding function to each block to separate the ROI blocks. Then selected part from input thermal image undergo XOR operation between random image generated from chaotic map. For lossless decryption at the receiver side, embedded the index of ROI blocks using LSB embedding algorithm. Simulation results shows the proposed algorithm achieves good security and more efficiency.

Secure Audio Cryptosystem Using Hashed Image LSB watermarking and Encryption

The paper proposes a secure audio cryptosystem that realize integrity, authentication and confidentiality. The proposed audio cryptosystem achieves integrity by applying a message digest algorithm, authentication by employing LSB watermarking and confidentiality through encryption with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) or RC6. The main concept of the proposed audio cryptosystem relays on XORing the plain-audio with one selected image from a private image database. Then, the mixed plain-audio blocks are LSB watermarked with the selected image hash value prior to ciphering. The proposed audio cryptosystem is prepared with the potential of increasing immunity against brute force attacks and providing integrity, authentication and confidentiality through the selected image hash value addition using LSB embedding as an extra key. Also, the extra XORing step removes residual intelligibility from the plain-audio blocks, fills the speechless intervals of audio conversation and helps in destroying format and pitch information. The proposed audio cryptosystem is compared with audio encryption using AES, and RC6 through encryption key performance indicators. The comparison outcomes ensured the superiority of the proposed audio cryptosystem. Security investigation of the proposed audio cryptosystem is studied from a precise cryptographic standpoint and tests ensured the superiority of the proposed audio cryptosystem from a cryptographic standpoint.

Self-embedding fragile watermarking based on reference-data interleaving and adaptive selection of embedding mode

In this paper, we propose a novel self-embedding fragile image watermarking scheme for tampering recovery based on reference-data interleaving mechanism and adaptive selection of embedding mode. During watermark embedding, reference bits are derived from the interleaved, scrambled MSB bits of original image, and then are combined with authentication bits to form the watermark bits for LSB embedding. Different with the reported schemes with the fixed embedding mode, the proposed scheme not only has two types of embedding modes, i.e., overlapping-free embedding and overlapping embedding, but also utilizes the adaptively flexible numbers of MSB and LSB layers to achieve satisfactory performances for different tampering rates. Also, detailed analyses are given to provide the theoretical values of watermarked-image quality, perfect recovery probability, and recovered-image quality, which are used to conclude the optimal choice of embedding modes. Experimental results show the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed scheme compared with some state-of-the-arts schemes.

Ideal Sampling Rate to Reduce Distortion in Audio Steganography

This report presents a method to embed and extract digital data in an audio file using LSB embedding technique. The intended use of this system regards for reducing noise level that is added during audio steganography process. The aim was to study the effects of sampling rate on audio cover during the process of digitization.The motivation came from our human auditory system (HAS) which is sensitive towards distortions added during steganography process and making the process suspicious. We first show how to embed the text data into audio file by LSB embedding techniques by applying cipher key. Basic audio sampling is discussed. We further segment audio by using Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem. The report concludes that our system successfully preforms audio steganography with decreased noise level in terms of Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) when sampled at the rate proposed in Nyquist–Shannon techniques.

Modified LSB Watermarking for Image Authentication

This paper mainly aims at developing an authentication scheme for digital images. The LSB scheme is chosen base for our proposed work. Through literature survey it is found that conventional LSB scheme provides low embedding rat low distortion and is irreversible. Because of its irreversibility, the conventional LSB scheme cannot be used for critic applications where reversibility is mandatory. Through this literature survey, we learnt that this conventional LSB scheme us only one bit in every pixel for embedding. Our proposed scheme presents a modified LSB embedding strategy that satisfies th reversibility and improves the embedding rate by using two bits in every pixel for embedding.

Nonlinear secret image sharing scheme.

Over the past decade, most of secret image sharing schemes have been proposed by using Shamir's technique. It is based on a linear combination polynomial arithmetic. Although Shamir's technique based secret image sharing schemes are efficient and scalable for various environments, there exists a security threat such as Tompa-Woll attack. Renvall and Ding proposed a new secret sharing technique based on nonlinear combination polynomial arithmetic in order to solve this threat. It is hard to apply to the secret image sharing. In this paper, we propose a (t, n)-threshold nonlinear secret image sharing scheme with steganography concept. In order to achieve a suitable and secure secret image sharing scheme, we adapt a modified LSB embedding technique with XOR Boolean algebra operation, define a new variable m, and change a range of prime p in sharing procedure. In order to evaluate efficiency and security of proposed scheme, we use the embedding capacity and PSNR. As a result of it, average value of PSNR and embedding capacity are 44.78 (dB) and 1.74t⌈log2⁡m⌉ bit-per-pixel (bpp), respectively.

ECG Steganography based privacy protection of medical datas for telemedicine application

Over 20 million people worldwide have abnormal electrocardiogram (ECG) signals, i.e., arrhythmias, each year. Most of the cardiac patients are elders.And if they increasingly move to nursing homes, it is a necessary tendency to reduce the medical labor cost by deploying self-organized wireless cardiac- monitoring hardware/ software systems in an area with a radius of hundreds of feet. Such medical information networks could allow the doctors to immediately capture the arrhythmia events of any patient without leaving their offices. In this paper, a wavelet based steganography technique has been introduced which combines encryption and LSB embedding technique to protect patient confidential data.Huge amount of ECG signal collected by Body Sensor Networks (BSNs) from remote patients at homes will be transmitted along with other physiological readings such as blood pressure, temperature, glucose level etc. and diagnosed by those remote patient monitoring systems. An added benefit is the freedom of movement for patients due to the wireless networking technologies. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed technique on the ECG signal, distortion measurement metrics, the Percentage Residual Difference (PRD) has been used.