Steganography Methodology Research Articles

A comparative analysis of chaos theory based medical image steganography to enhance data security

The security of patient data is a critical problem for health networks due to the rising popularity of telehealth services and the requirements for clinical data sharing between surgeons, consultants, and medical groups. In contrast to protecting medical data, which includes the cover (i.e., clinical picture), the requirements for protecting other pertinent data are more general. The paper advocates for data encryption before concealment as a robust strategy to uphold patient privacy during medical information exchange. The primary focus of this analysis revolves around a comprehensive exploration of different steganography methods. Through a meticulous examination of various steganographic techniques, including LSB, PVD, and transform domain approaches, this paper provides a detailed analysis of their strengths and limitations. Objective metrics like PSNR and SSIM are employed to dissect the trade-offs between data security and visual fidelity. The research leads to the conclusion that the diagonal queue-based steganog-raphy methodology, supported by chaotic methods, the Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR), and the durable Rabin encryption system, is the best course of action. This method enables autonomous data transmission among numerous contacts while ensuring the highest level of confidentiality and integrity of patient data inside e-health networks. In summary, this study provides a comprehensive solution that protects patient data and speeds data transmission inside the expanding framework of e-health networks in order to meet urgent data security concerns in telemedicine and healthcare data exchange.

Pencil shell matrix based image steganography with elevated embedding capacity

Image steganography is a mechanism that imperceptibly conceals information in a cover image while also enabling the concealed details to be reliably retrieved from that image. The three important criteria for calculating the effect and impact of any steganographic method are high embedding ability, better visual quality and privacy and security. In this paper, a double layered pencil shaped shell matrix based image steganography methodology with high security is proposed and with this extra layer an extra 2 bits can be hidden within every single pixel pair of the pencil shaped shell matrix. Dependent on the shell matrix made of pencil-shaped shells, every private digit is fitted in each cover pixel pair. Various experimental outcomes imply that the proposed methodology has achieved a higher capacity of 3.0 bpp with average 43.25 dB of PSNR and it outperforms other existing shell matrix based image steganographic schemes. Furthermore, the results of RS analysis, JPEG compression analysis, Q-index analysis, normalized absolute error (NAE) analysis etc. are clearly proves the robustness and security of the proposed methodology. Numerous sectors of various private and government organizations, including intellectual property rights, education, intelligent bureau, defence, etc. can be benefited immensely from this scheme.

DNA steganography: hiding undetectable secret messages within the single nucleotide polymorphisms of a genome and detecting mutation-induced errors

BackgroundAs cell engineering technology advances, more complex synthetically designed cells and metabolically engineered cells are being developed. Engineered cells are important resources in industry. Similar to image watermarking, engineered cells should be watermarked for protection against improper use.ResultsIn this study, a DNA steganography methodology was developed to hide messages in variable regions (single nucleotide polymorphisms) of the genome to create hidden messages and thereby prevent from hacking. Additionally, to detect errors (mutations) within the encrypted messages, a block sum check algorithm was employed, similar to that used in network data transmission to detect noise-induced information changes.ConclusionsThis DNA steganography methodology could be used to hide secret messages in a genome and detect errors within the encrypted messages. This approach is expected to be useful for tracking cells and protecting biological assets (e.g., engineered cells).

RETRACTED: A hybrid security strategy (HS2) for reliable video streaming in fog computing

Abstract Recently, digital communication and storage over the Internet through the cloud have increased in a rapid manner. Accordingly, data security becomes a vital issue as there are many hackers who want to steal or alter others’ private data. Fog computing comes to secure and facilitate the connection to the cloud. It works as an intermediary between the cloud and the peripheral devices. Accordingly, the channel between the fog and those devices must be secured against attacks. Many efforts have been done to secure the fog through the use of steganography to embed important data into a cover digital medium and cryptography to encrypt the data into a meaningless form. As steganography and cryptography have their own advantages, combining them into a hybrid system will certainly promote the security level. Video steganography uses video as a cover media for hiding secret data as video streaming over internet is very popular and common that cannot be doubted by intruders. The advantage of using video files as a cover is that they are more secure against hacker attacks due to their relative complexity compared to other multimedia types and the data redundancy which permits to embed large amount of secret data. In this paper a new hybrid security strategy (HS2) merging the advantages of both cryptography and steganography for securing the fog has been proposed. HS2 embeds a secret image into a video as the host medium. HS2 has two main contributions. The first is a new encryption technique that depends on α-blocks of linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs) merged with an adder/subtractor to generate a strong secret key for each block. All blocks outputs are combined using a nonlinear function to construct the final key. Such generated key will be XORed with the secret image to produce the encrypted secret image. The second contribution is a new steganography methodology based on an enhanced discrete wavelet packet transform (DWPT) to embed the encrypted secret image into a cover video. Experimental results and security analysis have shown that the proposed HS2 outperforms recent security strategies and resist common attacks when applied to the fog environment.

A hybrid security strategy (HS2) for reliable video streaming in fog computing

Recently, digital communication and storage over the Internet through the cloud have increased in a rapid manner. Accordingly, data security becomes a vital issue as there are many hackers who want to steal or alter others’ private data. Fog computing comes to secure and facilitate the connection to the cloud. It works as an intermediary between the cloud and the peripheral devices. Accordingly, the channel between the fog and those devices must be secured against attacks. Many efforts have been done to secure the fog through the use of steganography to embed important data into a cover digital medium and cryptography to encrypt the data into a meaningless form. As steganography and cryptography have their own advantages, combining them into a hybrid system will certainly promote the security level. Video steganography uses video as a cover media for hiding secret data as video streaming over internet is very popular and common that cannot be doubted by intruders. The advantage of using video files as a cover is that they are more secure against hacker attacks due to their relative complexity compared to other multimedia types and the data redundancy which permits to embed large amount of secret data. In this paper a new hybrid security strategy (HS2) merging the advantages of both cryptography and steganography for securing the fog has been proposed. HS2 embeds a secret image into a video .mp4 as the host medium. HS2 has two main contributions. The first is a new encryption technique that depends on α-blocks of linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs) merged with an adder/subtractor to generate a strong secret key for each block. All blocks outputs are combined using a nonlinear function to construct the final key. Such generated key will be XORed with the secret image to produce the encrypted secret image. The second contribution is a new steganography methodology based on an enhanced discrete wavelet packet transform (DWPT) to embed the encrypted secret image into a cover video. Experimental results and security analysis have shown that the proposed HS2 outperforms recent security strategies and resist common attacks when applied to the fog environment.

A Multi-Layer Arabic Text Steganographic Method Based on Letter Shaping

Text documents are widely used, however, the text steganography is more difficult than other media because of a little redundant information. This paper presents a text steganography methodology appropriate for Arabic Unicode texts that do not use a normal sequential inserting process to overcome the security issues of the current approaches that are sensitive to steg-analysis. The Arabic Unicode text is kept within main unshaped letters, and the proposed method is used text file as cover text to hide a bit in each letter by reshaping the letters according to its position (beginning, middle, end of the word, or standalone), this hiding process is accomplished through multi-embedding layer where each layer contains all words with the same Tag detected using the POS tagger, and the embedding layers are selected randomly using the stego key to improve the security issues. The experimental result shows that the purposed method satisfied the hiding capacity requirements, improve security, and imperceptibility is better than currently developed approaches

A multi level image steganography methodology based on adaptive PMS and block based pixel swapping

The practice of information exchange through global media like internet extensively entails a security concern. This paper consists of a proposed approach that braces the security concern in the realm of image steganography. The adaptive technique of the Power Modulus Scrambling (PMS) has been preliminarily used so as to disturb the normal pixel orientation of the original carrier. A second layer of encryption is enforced with the implementation of the Block Based Pixel Swapping technique. These steps ensure a two tier secured shield. Next, the embedding procedure is facilitated depending on a comparative key based permutation combination methodology. This approach caters the need of security during communication. The proposed approach is evaluated with respect to substantial performance metrics. The commendable results obtained shows that the foothold of imperceptibility is well maintained.

HSCT-An Efficient Framework for Security in Medical Imaging using Hybrid Stego-Crypt Technique

Image security plays a vital role in securing the medical images at hospitals. It prevents to heal the data from attackers or hackers. This paper proposes a simple and efficient technique for securing the medical images by applying the steganography and cryptography methodology on it. Steganography embeds the secret medical image into cover image and then information entropy is measured. If the information entropy is low, the discrete wavelet transform is applied on the stego image to determine the smooth regions. Then, the cryptography algorithm is applied on the smooth regions in the stego image to increase the security. The security methodology stated in this paper achieves 58.07 dB as PSNR and 0.0993 as MSE.

Secured steganography methodology using combined encryption and quick response codes

Secured steganography methodology using combined encryption and quick response codes

Jokestega: automatic joke generation-based steganography methodology

This paper presents a novel steganography methodology, namely Automatic Joke Generation Based Steganography Methodology Jokestega, that pursues textual jokes in order to hide messages. Basically, Jokestega methodology takes advantage of recent advances in Automatic Jokes Generation AJG techniques to automate the generation of textual steganographic cover. In a corpus of jokes, one may judge a number of documents to be the same joke although letters, locations, and other details are different. Generally, joke and puns could be retold with totally different vocabulary, while still retaining their identities. Therefore, Jokestega pursues the common variations among jokes to conceal data. Furthermore, when someone is joking, anything may be said which legitimises the use of joke-based steganography. This makes employing textual jokes very attractive as steganographic carrier for camouflaging data. It is worth noting that Jokestega follows Nostega paradigm, which implies that joke-cover is noiseless. The validation results demonstrate the effectiveness of Jokestega.

Matlist: Mature linguistic steganography methodology

AbstractThe generated text by Natural Language Generation (NLG) and template systems is meaningful and looks legitimate. Therefore, the Mature Linguistic Steganography Methodology (Matlist) employs NLG and template techniques along with Random Series values (RS), e.g. binary, decimal, hexadecimal, octal, alphabetic, alphanumeric, etc., of Domain‐Specific Subject (DSS) to generate noiseless text‐cover. This type of DSS, e.g. financial, medical, mathematical, scientific, economical, etc., has plenty of room to conceal data and allows communicating parties to establish a covert channel such as a relationship based on the profession of the communication parties to transmit a text‐cover. Matlist embeds data in a form of RS values, function of RS, related semantics of RS, a combination of these, etc. Unlike synonym‐based approach, Matlist does not preserve the meaning of text‐cover every time it is used. Instead, Matlist Cover retains different legitimate meaning for each message while it remains semantically coherent and rhetorically sound. The presented implementation, validation, and experimental results demonstrate that Matlist is capable of accomplishing the steganographical goal with higher bitrate than all other linguistic steganography approaches. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Edustega: an Education-Centric Steganography methodology

This paper presents a novel Education-Centric Steganography Methodology (Edustega) that takes advantages of such text to conceal data. Edustega is based on Nostega paradigm, which implies that it neither hides data in a noise (errors) nor produces noise. Such materials, e.g., questions, answers, exams, examples, puzzles, competitions, etc., have an adequate room for concealing data where the observed bitrate by the experimental results of the current implementation is superior to all contemporary linguistic steganography approaches. Edustega can be applied to all languages. The presented implementation, validation, and experimental results confirmed that Edustega methodology is capable of achieving the steganographical goal.

Sumstega: summarisation-based steganography methodology

The demand for reading while no one has time to read everything has fuelled the necessity for automatic summarisation systems in business, science, World Wide Web, education, news, etc. Thus, the popular use of summaries by a wide variety of people creates a high volume of traffic for accessing and generating summaries. Such huge traffic makes an adversary's job impractical to investigate all of them and allows communicating parties to establish a secure covert channel to transmit steganographic covers. This renders summaries an attractive steganographic carrier. Therefore, summarisation-based steganography methodology (Sumstega), presented in this paper, takes advantage of the automatic summarisation techniques to generate summary-cover. Sumstega neither hides data in a noise nor produces noise. Instead, Sumstega manipulates the parameters and factors of automatic summarisation techniques in order to embed data without noise, which retains adequate rooms for concealing data. The validation demonstrates the capability of achieving the steganographic goal.

Headstega: e-mail-headers-based steganography methodology

The frequent exchange of e-mails is widely popular and generates a high volume of traffic that allows communicating parties to establish a covert channel without a suspicious pattern rendering e-mails an attractive steganographic carrier to transmit hidden messages. This was the motive of developing e-mail-headers-based steganography methodology (Headstega). Headstega encodes a message then assigns it to steganographic carriers (e-mail-headers), e.g. recipient's e-mail addresses, names, subject fields, etc., in order to camouflage data by following Nostega paradigm. Thus, Headstega neither hides data in a noise (errors) nor produces noise while a message is concealed in the textual e-mail headers and the e-mail contents (the body of e-mails) are completely legitimate and do not conceal data. The presented implementation, validation and steganalysis of Headstega demonstrate: the robust capabilities of achieving the steganographic goal, the adequate room for concealing data and the superior bitrate to all contemporary text steganography approaches, which is roughly 3.38 7.67%.

Notestega: Notes-based Steganography Methodology

ABSTRACT The wide use of Notes in business, science, education, news, etc., renders Notes attractive steganographic carriers and allows the communicating parties to establish a covert channel that is capable of transmitting messages in an unsuspicious way. The presented Notes-based Steganography Methodology (Notestega) takes advantage of the recent advances in automatic notetaking techniques to generate a text cover. Notestega neither exploits noise (errors) to embed a message nor produces a detectable noise. Instead, it pursues the variations among both human notes and the outputs of automatic notetaking techniques to conceal data. Virtually, it is accomplished in three steps. First, Notestega generates a number of legitimate various notes of the same input. Second, based on a predetermined protocol it picks a particular note, for example, note number 1, 2, or 5. Third, Notestega substitutes some of the text in the selected note with another text taken from the unpicked notes. Such text substitution is carefully done to avoid the introduction of a suspicious pattern while embedding a message. Unlike machine translation and automatic summarizer, automatic notetaking can embed nondirectly related elements to its output including linguistic elements, for example, sentences, words, or abbreviations, and nonlinguistic elements, for example, lines, stars, arrows, or symbols, and thus the generated note-cover (text-cover) has ample room of concealing data. The presented implementation and steganalysis validation of Notestega demonstrate distinct capabilities of achieving the steganographic goal, adequate room for concealing data, and a superior bitrate to contemporary text steganography approaches, which is roughly 7.777%.

Listega: list-based steganography methodology

The use of textual list of items, e.g., products, subjects, books, etc., is widely popular and linguistically legible. This motivates the development of List-Based Steganography Methodology (Listega). Listega takes advantage of such use of textual list to camouflage data by exploiting itemized data to conceal messages. Simply, it encodes a message then assigns it to legitimate items in order to generate a text-cover in a form of list. The generated list of items, the text-cover, can be embedded among other legitimate noncoded items for more protection based on a predetermined protocol among communicating parties such as read every other item, every fifth item, or any other way than the use of particular sequence. Listega neither hides data in a noise (errors) nor produces noise. Instead, it camouflages data by manipulating noiseless list of legitimate items. Listega establishes a covert channel among communicating parties by employing justifiably reasons based on the common practice of using textual list of items in order to achieve unsuspicious transmission of generated covers. The presented implementation, validation, and steganalysis of Listega demonstrate: the robustness capabilities of achieving the steganographic goal, the adequate room for concealing data, and the superior bitrate of roughly 1.32 up to 3.87% than contemporary linguistic steganography approaches.

Graphstega: Graph Steganography Methodology

The Graph Steganography Methodology (Graphstega) is the art and science of avoiding the arousal of suspicion in covert communications by concealing a message in a graph-cover. Unlike other approaches, Graphstega does not embed a message as a noise in a cover. Instead the message is camouflaged as plotted data. Graphstega is keyless and the hidden message is anti-distortion. The popular usage of graphs in business, education, news, etc. and the availability of tremendous amount of graphs in electronic and non-electronic format make the investigation and detection of a hidden message extremely difficult. In addition, Graphstega is resilient to contemporary attacks, such as traffic analysis, contrast, and comparison attack, even when launched by an adversary who is familiar with Graphstega.