Steganography and Steganalysis in Digital Multimedia: Hype or Hallelujah?

In this tutorial, we introduce the basic theory behind Steganography and Steganalysis, and present some recent algorithms and developments of these fields. We show how the existing techniques used nowadays are related to Image Processing and Computer Vision, point out several trendy applications of Steganography and Steganalysis, and list a few great research opportunities just waiting to be addressed.In this tutorial, we introduce the basic theory behind Steganography and Steganalysis, and present some recent algorithms and developments of these fields. We show how the existing techniques used nowadays are related to Image Processing and Computer Vision, point out several trendy applications of Steganography and Steganalysis, and list a few great research opportunities just waiting to be addressed

Blind Image Watermark Detection Algorithm based on Discrete Shearlet Transform Using Statistical Decision Theory

Blind watermarking targets the challenging recovery of the watermark when the host is not available during the detection stage.This paper proposes Discrete Shearlet Transform as a new embedding domain for blind image watermarking. Our novel DST blind watermark detection system uses a nonadditive scheme based on the statistical decision theory. It first computes the probability density function (PDF) of the DST coefficients modelled as a Laplacian distribution. The resulting likelihood ratio is compared with a decision threshold calculated using Neyman-Pearson criterion to minimise the missed detection subject to a fixed false alarm probability. Our method is evaluated in terms of imperceptibility, robustness and payload against different attacks (Gaussian noise, Blurring, Cropping, Compression and Rotation) using 30 standard grayscale images covering different characteristics (smooth, more complex with a lot of edges and high detail textured regions). The proposed method shows greater windowing flexibility with more sensitive to directional and anisotropic features when compared against Discrete Wavelet and Contourlets

Entropy in Image Analysis II

Image analysis is a fundamental task for any application where extracting information from images is required. The analysis requires highly sophisticated numerical and analytical methods, particularly for those applications in medicine, security, and other fields where the results of the processing consist of data of vital importance. This fact is evident from all the articles composing the Special Issue "Entropy in Image Analysis II", in which the authors used widely tested methods to verify their results. In the process of reading the present volume, the reader will appreciate the richness of their methods and applications, in particular for medical imaging and image security, and a remarkable cross-fertilization among the proposed research areas

SLEPX: An Efficient Lightweight Cipher for Visual Protection of Scalable HEVC Extension

This paper proposes a lightweight cipher scheme aimed at the scalable extension of the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) codec, referred to as the Scalable HEVC (SHVC) standard. This stream cipher, Symmetric Cipher for Lightweight Encryption based on Permutation and EXlusive OR (SLEPX), applies Selective Encryption (SE) over suitable coding syntax elements in the SHVC layers. This is achieved minimal computational complexity and delay. The algorithm also conserves most SHVC functionalities, i.e. preservation of bit-length, decoder format-compliance, and error resilience. For comparative analysis, results were taken and compared with other state-of-art ciphers i.e. Exclusive-OR (XOR) and the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). The performance of SLEPX is also compared with existing video SE solutions to confirm the efficiency of the adopted scheme. The experimental results demonstrate that SLEPX is as secure as AES in terms of visual protection, while computationally efficient comparable with a basic XOR cipher. Visual quality assessment, security analysis and extensive cryptanalysis (based on numerical values of selected binstrings) also showed the effectiveness of SLEPX’s visual protection scheme for SHVC compared to previously-employed cryptographic technique

Data Hiding and Its Applications

Data hiding techniques have been widely used to provide copyright protection, data integrity, covert communication, non-repudiation, and authentication, among other applications. In the context of the increased dissemination and distribution of multimedia content over the internet, data hiding methods, such as digital watermarking and steganography, are becoming increasingly relevant in providing multimedia security. The goal of this book is to focus on the improvement of data hiding algorithms and their different applications (both traditional and emerging), bringing together researchers and practitioners from different research fields, including data hiding, signal processing, cryptography, and information theory, among others

Image watermarking, steganography, and morphological processing

With the fast development of computer technology, research in the fields of multimedia security, image processing, and robot vision have recently become popular. Image watermarking, steganogrphic system, morphological processing and shortest path planning are important subjects among them. In this dissertation, the fundamental techniques are reviewed first followed by the presentation of novel algorithms and theorems for these three subjects. The research on multimedia security consists of two parts, image watermarking and steganographic system. In image watermarking, several algorithms are developed to achieve different goals as shown below. In order to embed more watermarks and to minimize distortion of watermarked images, a novel watermarking technique using combinational spatial and frequency domains is presented. In order to correct rounding errors, a novel technique based on the genetic algorithm (GA) is developed. By separating medical images into Region of Interest (ROI) and non-ROI parts, higher compression rates can be achieved where the ROI is compressed by lossless compression and the non-ROI by lossy compression. The GA-based watermarking technique can also be considered as a fundamental platform for other fragile watermarking techniques. In order to simplify the selection and integrate different watermarking techniques, a novel adjusted-purpose digital watermarking is developed. In order to enlarge the capacity of robust watermarking, a novel robust high-capacity watermarking is developed. In steganographic system, a novel steganographic algorithm is developed by using GA to break the inspection of steganalytic system. In morphological processing, the GA-based techniques are developed to decompose arbitrary shapes of big binary structuring elements and arbitrary values of big grayscale structuring elements into small ones. The decomposition is suited for a parallel-pipelined architecture. The techniques can speed up the morphological processing and allow full freedom for users to design any type and any size of binary and grayscale structuring elements. In applications such as shortest path planning, a novel method is first presented to obtaining Euclidean distance transformation (EDT) in just two scans of image. The shortest path can be extracted based on distance maps by tracking minimum values. In order to record the motion path, a new chain-code representation is developed to allow forward and backward movements. By placing the smooth turning-angle constraint, it is possible to mimic realistic motions of cars. By using dynamically rotational morphology, it is not only guarantee collision-free in the shortest path, but also reduce time complexity dramatically. As soon as the distance map of a destination and collision-free codes have been established off-line, shortest paths of cars given any starting location toward the destination can be promptly obtained on-line

Big Data Security (Volume 3)

After a short description of the key concepts of big data the book explores on the secrecy and security threats posed especially by cloud based data storage. It delivers conceptual frameworks and models along with case studies of recent technology

Multimedia

The nowadays ubiquitous and effortless digital data capture and processing capabilities offered by the majority of devices, lead to an unprecedented penetration of multimedia content in our everyday life. To make the most of this phenomenon, the rapidly increasing volume and usage of digitised content requires constant re-evaluation and adaptation of multimedia methodologies, in order to meet the relentless change of requirements from both the user and system perspectives. Advances in Multimedia provides readers with an overview of the ever-growing field of multimedia by bringing together various research studies and surveys from different subfields that point out such important aspects. Some of the main topics that this book deals with include: multimedia management in peer-to-peer structures & wireless networks, security characteristics in multimedia, semantic gap bridging for multimedia content and novel multimedia applications