Secret Message Bits Research Articles

A Secure and High Capacity Image Steganography Approach Using Huffman Coding and RSA Encryption

Steganography is the practice of hiding data, such as images, videos, or text, within a cover image without it being detectable by the human eye. Several factors, such as the capacity, security, and robustness of the technique, are essential when transferring information using this method. In this study, we propose a new approach to image steganography that improves the Least Significant Bit (LSB) technique by utilizing images of 24 bits in each pixel. Improving the capacity and security of LSB-based steganography requires a combination of techniques, such as indirect embedding, embedding in multiple channels, and applying cryptographic and compression techniques. This approach conducts by encrypting each compressed secret message bit with the most significant bit of the red channel and then saving the output bit (hidden bit) in the least significant bit of the (green/blue) channel according to the row value (odd/ even). To further security, the suggested approach uses multi-level encryption; employs RSA to encrypt the secret message before applying the Huffman compression and encrypting the hidden bit by (XOR/XNOR) in the embedding method based on the row value of the pixel. Meanwhile, it is planned to use the Huffman coding technique to shorten the length of the encrypted message that will be inserted in the cover image. For the color photos in this work, the standard images were acquired from a standard dataset (USC-SIPI). The suggested approach performs better when measured in terms of mean square error (MSE), peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), and comparison to findings from related prior efforts.

Improved LSB image steganography with high imperceptibility based on cover‐stego matching

AbstractInformation security is an important factor when critical information is transferred. This paper concentrates on finding a method that can hide a message in an image without making any changes to it. The proposed method is novel and based on the Least Significant Bit (LSB) method with a high imperceptibility and capacity. Initially, the secret message bits are compressed using the LZW technique, then the compressed message bits are embedded into the LSB of the edge pixels in the cover image which have the same bit values. As a result, the cover image pixels remain unchanged and the stego image matches the cover image. The addresses of pixels that contain the compressed secret bits are maintained in a file called “location addresses” which the receiver uses to retrieve the compressed secret message. It is possible that the stego image will not be transmitted if it was previously specified by the sender and the receiver. Image quality metrics are applied to several standard images. The obtained PSNR for the stego image is infinity, SSIM and NCC are one, MSE and AD are zero for different embedding capacities in all images, which ensures the stego image's excellent imperceptibility.

A New Generative Mathematical Model for Coverless Steganography System Based on Image Generation

The ability of any steganography system to correctly retrieve the secret message is the primary criterion for measuring its efficiency. Recently, researchers have tried to generate a new natural image driven from only the secret message bits rather than using a cover to embed the secret message within it; this is called the stego image. This paper proposes a new secured coverless steganography system using a generative mathematical model based on semi Quick Response (QR) code and maze game image generation. This system consists of two components. The first component contains two processes, encryption process, and hiding process. The encryption process encrypts secret message bits in the form of a semi-QR code image whereas the hiding process conceals the pregenerated semi-QR code in the generated maze game image. On the other hand, the second component contains two processes, extraction and decryption, which are responsible for extracting the semi-QR code from the maze game image and then retrieving the original secret message from the extracted semi-QR code image, respectively. The results were obtained using the bit error rate (BER) metric. These results confirmed that the system achieved high hiding capacity, good performance, and a high level of robustness against attackers compared with other coverless steganography methods.

User data privacy in multimedia domain using 3–3 LSB-based color image steganography with RC4 and Bernoulli map protection

Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. have become commonplace in everyday life. With the emergence of the internet, the amount of data being created and communicated within social networks has increased exponentially. As much as we enjoy the exchange of information that occurs on social media, protecting and maintaining privacy demands a lot of effort. Users’ data that are to be kept private should be treated as confidential information. As a result, securing data exchange on the internet has become a critical and urgent issue. We have suggested a method for protecting user data which is encrypted by using the Rivest Cipher 4 (RC4) algorithm in multimedia images with the help of 3–3 least significant bits (LSB) techniques, with the added safety of Bernoulli map. We call this technique the “user data protection scheme.” 3–3 LSB is a message hiding process in which the first three stand for three LSB and the next three stand for all three channels (R, G, and B). In this method, we are using the Rivest Cipher 4 (RC4) encryption algorithm to encrypt the user’s data, which will then be embedded into the multimedia image in the next step. With the help of the Bernoulli map, we generate a random sequence of length similar to the size of the image. For every random number generated by the Bernoulli map, we determine the location in the plane and place three bits of secret message into the cover image using the LSB technique. Since we have used two different encryption techniques, i.e., RC4 for encryption of user data and Bernoulli map for embedding encrypted data at random locations over the cover image, our method is more secure than others. We performed this analysis to equate peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and mean square error. Our experimental result shows that 9 bpp can be embedded in color images with a PSNR higher than 42 dB, and for the gray scale image embedding capacity is 3 bpp with a PSNR higher than 42 dB, which provides better results. Apart from this, it produces less distorted stego-images than currently used methods (an average of 1.68 bpp).

An adaptive pixel mapping based approach for reversible data hiding in encrypted images

Reversible data hiding (RDH) is a widely studied research domain due to the extensive applications in medical image transmission, military image transmission, and cloud computing. In this paper, we propose a novel RDH scheme in encrypted images which is having a high embedding rate without affecting the bit error rate. To perform data hiding, all the non-overlapping pixel sub-arrays from the encrypted image will be considered in a predefined order, and one-bit from the secret message can be hidden in each of the pixel sub-arrays through a controlled pixel mapping technique. The pixels in a selected sub-array P will be split into two groups: odd pixels and even pixels according to the parity of the index of the pixels. All the even pixels will be replaced by a new pixel value based on a predefined mapping function to hide a secret bit 1. To embed bit-value 0, no need to do any modifications in the pixel sub-array P. A new correlation measure between adjacent pixels is introduced in this manuscript to extract the secret message bit and to restore the original image. All the simulations of the proposed scheme are done on the standard images from USC-SIPI image dataset. The results show that the proposed scheme achieved a very good embedding rate without affecting the bit error rate or image recoverability.

A Modified Least Significant Bit Replacement: Steganography Method for Handling Random Noise Effect

Steganography is one of the security measures employed at file level to cover information in a carrier. The goal of steganography is to send a confidential message over a network in a way that intruders will not notice it. In steganography, the message is wrapped in an innocent carrier such as image, audio or video file. There are always bits tempering in the process and this changes the looks and appearance of the carrier. The more secret message is embedded in any cover file, the more random noise occurs. Secret message bits when embedded drastically modify the Red Green and Blue (RGB) components’ bits of the carrier, hence, the statistical properties and physical appearance of the carrier change and this draws the attention of intruders to suspect that confidential data is hidden there. This research introduced an improved method of least significant bit replacement to cover secret data using 24 bits bitmap image to handle random noise efficiently so that the Human Visual System (HVS) of intruders will not notice the secret communication. The research reviewed some previous related researches that aimed to reduce the effect of random noise and research gap is identified. The research implemented the new Modified Least Significant Bit Replacement (M-LSBR) method to fill the identified research gap. Five (5) experiments were conducted with 5 (five) varying dimension RGB images and the result gathered that the PSNR value, image quality and message capacity of the new method is better than those achieved by the previous methods, hence, the research gap is filled. Finally, conclusion was drawn and recommendation for future research was suggested.

A combination of least significant bit and deflate compression for image steganography

Steganography is one of the cryptography techniques where secret information can be hidden through multimedia files such as images and videos. Steganography can offer a way of exchanging secret and encrypted information in an untypical mechanism where communicating parties can only interpret the secret message. The literature has shown a great interest in the least significant bit (LSB) technique which aims at embedding the secret message bits into the most insignificant bits of the image pixels. Although LSB showed a stable performance of image steganography yet, many works should be done on the message part. This paper aims to propose a combination of LSB and Deflate compression algorithm for image steganography. The proposed Deflate algorithm utilized both LZ77 and Huffman coding. After compressing the message text, LSB has been applied to embed the text within the cover image. Using benchmark images, the proposed method demonstrated an outperformance over the state of the art. This can proof the efficacy of using Deflate as a data compression prior to the LSB embedding.

Data Hiding Technique for Color Images using Pixel Value Differencing and Chaotic Map

The huge advance in information technology and communication resulted in extreme usage of digital networks that makes information security playing an important role as never before. Steganography is the art of hiding secret message bits into different multimedia data using either spatial domain or frequency domain to provide security for the transferred information against unauthorized access. Most of the techniques that apply Pixel Value Differencing approach (PVD) depend on sequential embedding manner, which lacks security. In the proposed method, a complex chaotic map is used to randomly choose the coefficients pairs for embedding the secret message. First, the cover image is transformed using IWT. Then, the embedding process starts in the highest frequency band of IWT and continues to the next sub-bands. Adaptive embedding is performed according to intensity variation between pixel pairs using PVD and Least Significant Bit substitution (LSB). Non-sequential embedding performed by using chaotic map lets the method more secure. The experimental results show that the proposed technique achieves high PSNR with improved capacity compared to other techniques.

Efficient Cost-Reduced With High-Quality Image of Imperceptible Steganography Using Modulo and Magic Cube

Information hiding techniques are used to hide confidential data in digital carriers. It is difficult for malicious users to detect the existence of confidential data within the digital carriers. Audios, images, or videos can call be digital carriers. Information hiding includes steganography and watermarking. Watermarking is used for copyright protection. Steganography is used to protect confidential data transmission from malicious attackers. Imperceptibility and capacity are always the major concerns in steganography. In this paper, we propose an efficient steganography method for images using modulus operation and magic cube. The partial secret message bits are converted into decimals and then mapped to a predefined cube. The coordinates of the mapped position were embedded into the cover image using modulus operation. We obtain the stego-image quality better than 42 dB, while the payload is 3 bpp. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method has a higher capacity than previous works. Meanwhile, our method also maintain high imperceptibility. Furthermore, modulus operation can reduce the computational overhead of the proposed method.

One-step quantum secure direct communication

Quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) attracts much attention for it can transmit secret messages directly without sharing a key. In this article, we propose a one-step QSDC protocol, which only requires to distribute polarization-spatial-mode hyperentanglement for one round. In this QSDC protocol, the eavesdropper cannot obtain any message, so that this protocol is unconditionally secure in principle. This protocol is a two-way quantum communication and has high capacity for it can transmit two bits of secret messages with one pair of hyperentanglement. With entanglement fidelities of both polarization and spatial-mode degrees of freedom being 0.98, the maximal communication distance of this one-step QSDC can reach about 216 km. QSDC can also be used to generate the key. In this regard, the key generation rate is estimated about 2.5 times of that in the entanglement-based QKD with the communication distance of 150 km. With the help of future quantum repeaters, this QSDC protocol can provide unconditionally secure communication over arbitrarily long distance.

High Capacity Reversible Steganography on CMY and HSI Color Images Using Image Interpolation

Steganography using image interpolation has created a new research area in multimedia communication. A reversible data concealing in HSI and CMY color models using image interpolation is proposed in this paper. The HSI and CMY image models are interpolated using High Capacity Reversible Steganography (CRS) technique. The median plane of both HSI and CMY color models are selected for secret message bit concealing. The secret message bits are concealed in the cover plane by Exclusive OR (XOR) operation. Since the cover image is recovered after secret message bit retrieval, this finds application in military and medical imaging applications. The experimental results of proposed scheme showed very high embedding capacity of about 16 bits in each pixel location of calculated pixel value, good image quality with a surface similarity index measure (SSIM) value 1 and high PSNR. Also, high robustness is achieved on comparing with the existing works.

Method for hiding text data in an image

The main problem: The article deals with the issues of hiding text information in a graphic file. A formula for hiding text information in image pixels is proposed. A steganography scheme for embedding secret text in random image pixels has been developed. Random bytes are pre-embedded in each row of pixels in the source image. As a result of the operations performed, a key image is obtained. The text codes are embedded in random bytes of pixels of a given RGB channel. To form a secret message, the characters of the ASCII code table are used. Demo encryption and decryption programs have been developed in the Python 3.5.2 programming language. A graphic file is used as the decryption key. Purpose: To develop an algorithm for embedding text information in random pixels of an image. Methods: Among the methods of hiding information in graphic images, the LSB method of hiding information is widely used, in which the lower bits in the image bytes responsible for color encoding are replaced by the bits of the secret message. Analysis of methods of hiding information in graphic files and modeling of algorithms showed an increase in the level of protection of hidden information from detection. Results and their significance: Using the proposed steganography scheme and the algorithm for embedding bytes of a secret message in a graphic file, protection against detection of hidden information is significantly increased. The advantage of this steganography scheme is that for decryption, a key image is used, in which random bytes are pre-embedded. In addition, the entire pixel bits of the container image are used to display the color shades. It can also be noted that the developed steganography scheme allows not only to transmit secret information, but also to add digital fingerprints or hidden tags to the image.

Increasing The Capacity of Headstega Based on Bitwise Operation

Headstega (Head steganography) is a noiseless steganography that used email headers as a cover for concealing messages. However, it has less embedding capacity and it raises suspicion. For overcoming the problem, bitwise operation is proposed. In the proposed method, the message was embedded into the cover by converting the message and the cover into binary representation based on a mapping table that was already known by the sender and the receiver. Furthermore, XOR bitwise operations were applied to the secret message and cover bits based on random numbers that were generated using a modular function. Moreover, the result was converted into characters that represent the secret message bits. After embedding the message into the cover, an email alias was generated to camouflage the secret message characters. Finally, the sender sends the embedded cover and the email alias to the recipient. Using the proposed method, the embedding capacity is 89% larger than using the original Headstega. For reducing the adversary’s suspicion, the existing email address was used instead of creating a new email address.

Studying Audio Capacity as Carrier of Secret Images in Steganographic System

Steganography art is a technique for hiding information where the unsuspicious cover signal carrying the secret information. Good steganography technique must be includes the important criterions robustness, security, imperceptibility and capacity. The improving each one of these criterions is affects on the others, because of these criterions are overlapped each other. In this work, a good high capacity audio steganography safely method has been proposed based on LSB random replacing of encrypted cover with encrypted message bits at random positions. The research also included a capacity studying for the audio file, speech or music, by safely manner to carrying secret images, so it is difficult for unauthorized persons to suspect presence of hidden image. Measures calculations of SNR, SNR segmental, SNR spectral, MSE and correlation show that, audio music cover file (2channales) is the safest uses as arrier with replace the 9 number of LSB without noticeable noise. Bits of secret message can be hiding capacity reach up to 28 % of the total music cover audio size and the three type's measures of SNR are 32, 28 and 31 dB. For speech cover audio the replacing LSB is safely uses at LSB bits number 6, where the hiding capacity is reach up to 37 % of size speech cover audio at 37, 36 and 39 dB for three type's measures of SNR. Correlation of cover samples was did not effected as a result of hiding secret image, where its value is up to 0.99 for all hiding operations.

An Improved NID Steganography Method for Low Bitrate Speech on VoIP

In the procedure of encoding process on low bitrate speech, fixed codebook division is an efficient and promising embedding method for steganography. An improved neighbor index division (NID) steganography method based on the high bitrate frame of G.723.1 codec (6.3kbit/s) is proposed, which employs the parity and low distortion of neighbor indices for G.723.1 fixed codebooks. Differing from previously NID method which performs quantized index modulation (QIM) beforehand, the proposed method divides codeword indices into separate sub-codebooks according to the secret message bits dynamically in the original G.723.1 codec quantization period. Compared with existing NID method, our proposed method doesn’t need to divide the codebook before the encoding starts. The embedding and codebook dividing happen simultaneously, which utilizes the characteristics of specific secret message bits. The experiment results show that the proposed method has a much lower quality degradation for the decoding speech and still fulfills the low latency requirement for communication.

A high payload reversible data hiding algorithm for homomorphic encrypted absolute moment block truncation coding compressed images

With the aim to ensure privacy and security of secret message, an enhanced reversible data hiding algorithm in encrypted as well as compressed domain is proposed here. After compression of grey-scale image using absolute moment block truncation coding (AMBTC) method, pixels of AMBTC compressed image is segmented into two types - seed pixels (2k…255) and remaining pixels are called non-seed pixels. Now, embedded k, (k ≥ 1) binary bits of secret message by changed over it into base10 numeral framework at seed pixels of AMBTC compressed image whereas seed pixel is divided into two individual units which are encrypted through Paillier cryptosytem separately. Highlight of proposed method is to embed variable size secret message at seed pixels of AMBTC compressed image without any occurrence of overflow problem. Experimental study revealed that for all type of test images, proposed method altogether beated all the compared methods in its ability to embed secret message and precisely recover it with a PSNR value of $\infty $ dB between cover image and reconstructed image too.

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

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.

A Dynamic Steganography Method for Web Images with Average RunLength-Coding

Web page has many redundancies, especially the dynamic html multimedia object. This paper proposes a novel method to employ the commonly used image elements on web pages. Due to the various types of image format and complexity of image contents and their position information, secret message bits could be coded to embed in these complex redundancies. Together with a specific covering code called average run-length-coding, the embedding efficiency could be reduced to a low level and the resulting capacity outperforms traditional content-based image steganography, which modifies the image data itself and causes a real image quality degradation. Our experiment result demonstrates that the proposed method has limited processing latency and high embedding capacity. What’s more, this method has a low algorithm complexity and less image quality distortion compared with existing steganography methods.

Volume increasing of secret message in a fixed graphical stego container based on intelligent image analysis

The paper considers methods of edge pixel selection based on Roberts, Previtt, and Sobel operators, as well as technologies of cellular automata to increase the volume of the implemented secret message. Based on the methods used, templates with selected pixels were formed, into the codes of which secret message bits were embedded. The templates were formed using threshold additional processing, which allowed to select the optimal threshold for the selection of the corresponding pixels of the image of the container. Thresholds ranging from 100 to 300 were selected for the Roberts operator, and thresholds ranging from 1,000,000 to 15,000,000 were selected for the Previtt and Sobel operator. To select pixels based on cell technology, four cell neighborhood shapes were used for binary and color imaging. Experimental studies were performed for all methods of pixel selection, which made it possible to determine the optimal numerical threshold, as well as the number of lower bits of each selected pixel to implement the bits of the secret message. It has been experimentally established that for all methods, except for the two lower bits of the code of each pixel, the bits of the secret message are also embedded in the four lower bits of each byte of code of the selected pixel, which significantly increases the volume of the embedded message. When using two lower bits of all pixels and four lower bits of selected pixels for many templates, no change in the visual images of the containers was observed. Using the fifth lower bit in each byte of the selected pixel code to enter the secret bit results in significant distortion of the visual picture. The experiments were performed for different brightness thresholds during binarization. In total, six additional secret bits were added to the code of each selected pixel. For the efficiency of the experiments, bit sequences containing only one zero, one unit, and randomly generated bit sequences were introduced into the containers.

A Modulo Function-Based Robust Asymmetric Variable Data Hiding Using DCT

This work presents a new asymmetric data hiding technique that hides a variable number of secret message bits in the discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients of a cover image using a modular distance technique. Prior to data hiding, the proposed framework transforms a cover image from a spatial domain to various frequency coefficients using DCT. The DCT coefficients are arranged in two groups: one with low-frequency coefficient, and the other with the medium and high-frequency coefficients. The medium and higher frequency coefficients are processed for variable data hiding asymmetrically. The proposed technique hides variable sets of secret information bits in different coefficients. The variation in hidden secret information is maintained using a key developed based on the modulo of distance of a coefficient from the reference point. The same key is also used to retrieve the confidential information at the receiver ends. The results reveal that the presented framework does not create any visually significant distortion, and thus the hidden information does not attract the human visual system (HVS). The technique also results in high data hiding efficiency.