Hiding (1-8) Multimedia Files in One Color Image

WITHDRAWN: Contrasting the performance metrics of discrete transformations on digital image steganography using artificial intelligence

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.

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.


 
 
 A hybrid steganographic technique has been proposed to enlarge the size of secret message and to hide several images in one cover image. Initially, the secret images were compressed using JPEG 2000 before embedding them to the cover image. Second least significant bit plane of cover image was entirely replaced by secret message while tri-ways-pixel-value-differencing (TPVD) was used to hide secret message in remaining seven-bit cover image. The quality of stego image was enhanced by residual image coding (RIC). The cover image was divided in four sub-images, three of them provided cover for secret message using proposed technique while fourth sub-image was used to embed RIC of stego image using only TPVD, to ensure better quality in terms of peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR). Proposed technique provided the opportunity to transmit secret data without detection by different steganalysis techniques like dual statistics steganalysis. Experimental results verified that proposed technique achieved high payload with better image quality than TPVD scheme.
 
 

A secure image steganography algorithm based on least significant bit and integer wavelet transform

Background and Objective: The public and group communication carried out in the social, cloud, and mobile networks suffer from unauthorized users. The data security is required for secure authentication, monetary transactions and other sensitive information. The steganography methods empower the user with invulnerable communication in public domain. In this paper, a region secure and pattern based alternate 2B-3C (2Bit-3Channel) Steganography method is proposed to improve the content reliability and data security. Methods: In this method, the cover pixels are retrieved by applying the spiral rectangular pattern over the cover image. This spiral pattern also secures the core content region and the pixels from the core ROI (Region of Interest) is used as a cover only for larger size secret information. In this proposed steganography method, two channels are considered alternatively based on the defined rules. The LSB (Least Significant Bit) of both channels is XOR with input data bits and key to perform data hiding. The method is applied on real time color images taken from COREL and USC-SIPI-ID. The evaluation of proposed steganography approach is done using MSE (Mean Square Error), PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio), BER (Bit Error Rate), NCC (Normalized Cross Correlation) and SSIM (Structural Similarity Index Matrix). Result: The comparative results are generated for 50 real time images against the existing LSB (Least Significant Bit), LSBM (Least Significant Bit Modulation), LSBMR (Least Significant bit Matched Revisited), SCC (Stego Color Cycle), SHSI (Simple Hue-Saturation-Intensity), HIS-MLSB(Simple Hue-Saturation-Intensity-Modified LSB) and IMMEA(Iterative Magic Matrix Encryption Algorithm) methods. Conclusion: The experimentation results verified that the proposed 2B-3C approach improved the data hiding in qualitative and quantitative aspects.

Steganography is a method of hiding sensitive information within an ordinary file to avoid detection. When the file is received, the hidden information is extracted from the original file. Various types of files can be used to conceal the information, including images, audio files, video files, and text files. This research paper focuses on the use of image files as the medium. To create a stego-image, a secret image is embedded into a cover image. Both the cover and secret images are subjected to a Daubechies 3 Discrete Wavelet Transformation (DWT), then encrypted using Arnold's Cat Map algorithm and fused using a simple alpha blending technique with the cover image. DWT enhances the invisibility of hidden information, making it more challenging to detect by visual inspection or statistical analysis. Arnold’s cat map adds an extra layer of security, making it more difficult for an attacker to extract the message. Alpha blending helps to maintain the visual quality and integrity of the cover image, reducing the chances of noticeable artifacts or anomalies that may arise due to the embedding process. The resulting stego-image appears visually like the original cover image, making it less suspicious to potential attackers. Experimental results have been made on multiple area such as the best value of alpha, which DWT family to use, and different combinations of images as cover and payload images. The results demonstrate that our proposed hybrid model achieves a high level of security, robustness, and imperceptibility in image steganography. Moreover, it outperforms existing methods in terms of image quality metrics, such as achieving a Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) value of up to 70.8 and a Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) value of up to 0.98982. These metrics indicate that the stego-image retains a remarkable level of visual fidelity and similarity to the cover image, thereby enhancing the overall effectiveness of the steganography technique.

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.

The secure communication of information is a major concern over the internet. The information must be protected before transmitting over a communication channel to avoid security violations. In this paper, a new hybrid method called compressed encrypted data embedding (CEDE) is proposed. In CEDE, the secret information is first compressed with Lempel Ziv Welch (LZW) compression algorithm. Then, the compressed secret information is encrypted using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) symmetric block cipher. In the last step, the encrypted information is embedded into an image of size 512 × 512 pixels by using image steganography. In the steganographic technique, the compressed and encrypted secret data bits are divided into pairs of two bits and pixels of the cover image are also arranged in four pairs. The four pairs of secret data are compared with the respective four pairs of each cover pixel which leads to sixteen possibilities of matching in between secret data pairs and pairs of cover pixels. The least significant bits (LSBs) of current and imminent pixels are modified according to the matching case number. The proposed technique provides double-folded security and the results show that stego image carries a high capacity of secret data with adequate peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and lower mean square error (MSE) when compared with existing methods in the literature.

A reversible extended secret image sharing scheme based on Chinese remainder theorem

Presently, multi-day data security is the greatest issue of challenging over the world. There are various systems accessible for image and data security; watermarking is one of them. This paper proposes a new technique for watermarking encryption image by using LSB and based on the frequency and geometric transform. In this work, the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) technique is used to deal with the cover image at the frequency domain without spatial domain where late studies have shown the strength of this type of transform. The rotation geometric transforms applying on the logo image to preserve it and to protect it from eavesdropping and unauthorized entities. The rotate transform considers the type of disguise. Therefore, to increase the security of the watermarking system, it should be considered to also apply Rivest Cipher 4 (RC4) encryption algorithms on logo image before perform watermarking embedding. In finally Least Significant Bit (LSB) is used to embed a logo image in the cover image. The demonstrated experiment is based on Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Mean Squared Error (MSE), the DWT achieves better results as compared to other methods when the rate of PSNR reached from 50 dB to 60 dB.

In day-to-day life, information plays a major role. The value of those information becomes higher. So, we need to protect the information from intruders who try to get the secret information. In protecting those information, data compression deals a lot. Compression techniques are of two types which includes lossy and lossless compression. Steganography is the process which is used to protect the information by encrypting the compressed image with secret data and then extract the secret data from the compressed image by decryption. This paper utilizes an reversible data hiding (RDH) algorithm to boost the efficiency of encryption and decryption of the cover image by implementing the steganographic technique. RDH helps to accomplish the reason for picture content security. The encrypted data has been embedded within the cover image using the least significant bit (LSB). The proposed model has been evaluated based on criteria like savings percentage (SP%), compression time (CT), compression ratio (CR), mean squared error (MSE), and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). In comparison to previous systems that use the RSA algorithm, this technique has improved performance and system methodology.

Capacity is one of the importance factors in the hiding techniques. The challenge facing of the concealment techniques is the inverse relationship between the capacity and quality of stego-image. The Least-Significant-Bit (LSB)-based approach is a popular hiding technique in the spatial domain. Number of methods was proposed to enhance the performance of LSB method. However, the capacity of most hiding approaches especially in spatial domain was little and not enough to hide image in image with same size and type. New disguise algorithm based on decomposition and LSB is proposed in this paper. Distorted image as cover image used in this paper to decrease the effect of increase the capacity. Secret image decomposed by binary bit planes and hide 5 bit most significant bit planes from 8. Bit planes are change in order to avoid the appearance of the scene of secret image in stego-image ordering. Experimental results show that the capacity of proposed method is perfect with high quality of recovered image and strong against statistical analysis.

The technique for hiding any information in other information is known as Steganography. According to the technique of Least Significant Bit encryption, secret message is embedded in the least significant bits of the cover image and identification of secret message in the cover image becomes very difficult. This method can be applied for embedding secret messages in many formats like 8-bit, 24-bit or gray scale. This paper compares the methods of LSB encryption for different bits and analyse the value of RMSE and PSNR for each type of embedding. This paper compares the results of 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 bit encryption and proposes the best encryption both in the sense of quality of stego and retrieved secret image. Here 0-bit, 1-bit, 7-bit and 8-bit embedding techniques are not considered. The 0-bit will not embed any secret image. The 8-bit will not have even single bits for storing cover image. The 1 bit and 7 bit is inadequate for embedding and storing the cover image. The 1-bit and 7-bit will result extreme bad quality of retrieved secret image and stego respectively. The 1-bit and 7-bit will result extreme bad quality of retrieved secret image and stego respectively.

The less obvious that an image has been modified, the less it will be suspected of containing a secret message or image. This paper proposes an image steganographic approach wherein the bit information of the secret message replaces the LSBs (least significant bit) of the RGB (red green blue) bytes of the cover image just like many of the LSB image steganography methods, except that the bits of the secret message undergo a series of evaluated and scored bit rotation and inversion operations prior replacement. Using MSE and PSNR as a measure of image quality, the stego image generated by this proposed approach produced lesser distortion than the existing four bits per byte replacement approach of LSB Replacement and Adaptive LSB Embedding algorithms. The proposed approach however does not offer significant improvement of robustness in terms of security.