Deep Learning for Reversible Steganography: Principles and Insights

Deep-learning\textendash{centric} reversible steganography has emerged as a promising research paradigm. A direct way of applying deep learning to reversible steganography is to construct a pair of encoder and decoder, whose parameters are trained jointly, thereby learning the steganographic system as a whole. This end-to-end framework, however, falls short of the reversibility requirement because it is difficult for this kind of monolithic system, as a black box, to create or duplicate intricate reversible mechanisms. In response to this issue, a recent approach is to carve up the steganographic system and work on modules independently. In particular, neural networks are deployed in an analytics module to learn the data distribution, while an established mechanism is called upon to handle the remaining tasks. In this paper, we investigate the modular framework and deploy deep neural networks in a reversible steganographic scheme referred to as prediction-error modulation, in which an analytics module serves the purpose of pixel intensity prediction. The primary focus of this study is on deep-learning\textendash{based} context-aware pixel intensity prediction. We address the unsolved issues reported in related literature, including the impact of pixel initialisation on prediction accuracy and the influence of uncertainty propagation in dual-layer embedding. Furthermore, we establish a connection between context-aware pixel intensity prediction and low-level computer vision and analyse the performance of several advanced neural networks

Reversible difference expansion multi-layer data hiding technique for medical images

Maintaining the privacy and security of confidential information in data communication has always been a major concern. It is because the advancement of information technology is likely to be followed by an increase in cybercrime, such as illegal access to sensitive data. Several techniques were proposed to overcome that issue, for example, by hiding data in digital images. Reversible data hiding is an excellent approach for concealing private data due to its ability to be applied in various fields. However, it yields a limited payload and the quality of the image holding data (Stego image), and consequently, these two factors may not be addressed simultaneously. This paper addresses this problem by introducing a new non-complexity difference expansion (DE) and block-based reversible multi-layer data hiding technique constructed by exploring DE. Sensitive data are embedded into the difference values calculated between the original pixels in each block with relatively low complexity. To improve the payload capacity, confidential data are embedded in multiple layers of grayscale medical images while preserving their quality. The experiment results prove that the proposed technique has increased the payload with an average of 369999 bits and kept the peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) to the average of 36.506 dB using medical images' adequate security the embedded private data. This proposed method has improved the performance, especially the secret size, without reducing much the quality. Therefore, it is suitable to use for relatively big payloads

Robust Lossless Semi Fragile Information Protection in Images

Internet security finds it difficult to keep the information secure and to maintain the integrity of the data. Sending messages over the internet secretly is one of the major tasks as it is widely used for passing the message. In order to achieve security there must be some mechanism to protect the data against unauthorized access. A lossless data hiding scheme is proposed in this paper which has a higher embedding capacity than other schemes. Unlike other schemes that are used for embedding fixed amount of data, the proposed data hiding method is block based approach and it uses a variable data embedding in different blocks which reduces the chances of distortion and increases the hiding capacity of the image. When the data is recovered the original image can be restored without any distortion. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed solution can significantly support the data hiding problem. We achieved good Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) while hiding large amount of data into smoother regions

Reversible data hiding method by extending reduced difference expansion

To keep hiding secret data in multimedia files, such as video, audio, and image considers essential for information security. Image, for instance, as the media aids data insertion securely. The use of insertion technique must ensure a reliable process on retaining data quality and capacity. However, a trade-off between the resulted image quality and the embedded payload capacity after the embedding process often occurs. Therefore, this research aims at extending the existing method of integrating confidential messages using the Reduced Difference Expansion (RDE), transform into a medical image by changing the base point, block size, and recalculating of difference. The results display that the proposed method enhances the quality of the stego image and capacity of the hidden message

Dual-image-based reversible data hiding scheme with integrity verification using exploiting modification direction

Abstract(#br)In this paper, a novel dual-image-based reversible data hiding scheme using exploiting modification direction (EMD) is proposed. This scheme embeds two 5-base secret digits into each pixel pair of the cover image simultaneously according to the EMD matrix to generate two stego-pixel pairs. By shifting these stego-pixel pairs to the appropriate locations in some cases, two meaningful shadows are produced. The secret data can be extracted accurately, and the cover image can be reconstructed completely in the data extraction and the image reconstruction procedure, respectively. Experimental results show that our scheme outperforms the comparative methods in terms of image quality and embedding ratio. Pixel-value differencing (PVD) histogram analysis reveals that our scheme..

Data hiding using integer lifting wavelet transform and DNA computing

DNA computing widely used in encryption or hiding the data. Many researchers have proposed many developments of encryption and hiding algorithms based on DNA sequence to provide new algorithms. In this paper data hiding using integer lifting wavelet transform based on DNA computing is presented. The transform is applied on blue channel of the cover image. The DNA encoding used to encode the two most significant bits of LL sub-band. The produced DNA sequence used for two purpose, firstly, it use to construct the key for encryption the secret data and secondly to select the pixels in HL, LH, HH sub-bands for hiding in them. Many measurement parameters used to evaluate the performance of the proposed method such PSNR, MSE, and SSIM. The experimental results show high performance with respect to different embedding rate

A NEW IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY ALGORITHM BASED ON MLSB METHOD WITH RANDOM PIXELS SELECTION

ABSTRAC

Preserving privacy in edge computing

Edge computing or fog computing enables realtime services to smart application users by storing data and services at the edge of the networks. Edge devices in the edge computing handle data storage and service provisioning. Therefore, edge computing has become a  new norm for several delay-sensitive smart applications such as automated vehicles, ambient-assisted living, emergency response services, precision agriculture, and smart electricity grids. Despite having great potential, privacy threats are the main barriers to the success of edge computing. Attackers can leak private or sensitive information of data owners and modify service-related data for hampering service provisioning in edge computing-based smart applications. This research takes privacy issues of heterogeneous smart application data into account that are stored in edge data centers. From there, this study focuses on the development of privacy-preserving models for user-generated smart application data in edge computing and edge service-related data, such as Quality-of-Service (QoS) data, for ensuring unbiased service provisioning. We begin with developing privacy-preserving techniques for user data generated by smart applications using steganography that is one of the data hiding techniques. In steganography, user sensitive information is hidden within nonsensitive information of data before outsourcing smart application data, and stego data are produced for storing in the edge data center. A steganography approach must be reversible or lossless to be useful in privacy-preserving techniques. In this research, we focus on numerical (sensor data) and textual (DNA sequence and text) data steganography. Existing steganography approaches for numerical data are irreversible. Hence, we introduce a lossless or reversible numerical data steganography approach using Error Correcting Codes (ECC). Modern lossless steganography approaches for text data steganography are mainly application-specific and lacks imperceptibility, and DNA steganography requires reference DNA sequence for the reconstruction of the original DNA sequence. Therefore, we present the first blind and lossless DNA sequence steganography approach based on the nucleotide substitution method in this study. In addition, a text steganography method is proposed that using invisible character and compression based encoding for ensuring reversibility and higher imperceptibility.  Different experiments are conducted to demonstrate the justification of our proposed methods in these studies. The searching capability of the stored stego data is challenged in the edge data center without disclosing sensitive information. We present a privacy-preserving search framework for stego data on the edge data center that includes two methods. In the first method, we present a keyword-based privacy-preserving search method that allows a user to send a search query as a hash string. However, this method does not support the range query. Therefore, we develop a range search method on stego data using an order-preserving encryption (OPE) scheme. In both cases, the search service provider retrieves corresponding stego data without revealing any sensitive information. Several experiments are conducted for evaluating the performance of the framework. Finally, we present a privacy-preserving service computation framework using Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) based cryptosystem for ensuring the service provider's privacy during service selection and composition. Our contributions are two folds. First, we introduce a privacy-preserving service selection model based on encrypted Quality-of-Service (QoS) values of edge services for ensuring privacy. QoS values are encrypted using FHE. A distributed computation model for service selection using MapReduce is designed for improving efficiency. Second, we develop a composition model for edge services based on the functional relationship among edge services for optimizing the service selection process. Various experiments are performed in both centralized and distributed computing environments to evaluate the performance of the proposed framework using a synthetic QoS dataset