An Efficient MSB Prediction-Based Method for High-Capacity Reversible Data Hiding in Encrypted Images

International audienceReversible data hiding in encrypted images (RDHEI) is an effective technique to embed data in the encrypted domain. An original image is encrypted with a secret key and during or after its transmission, it is possible to embed additional information in the encrypted image, without knowing the encryp-tion key or the original content of the image. During the decoding process, the secret message can be extracted and the original image can be reconstructed. In the last few years, RDHEI has started to draw research interest. Indeed, with the development of cloud computing, data privacy has become a real issue. However, none of the existing methods allow us to hide a large amount of information in a reversible manner. In this paper, we propose a new reversible method based on MSB (most significant bit) prediction with a very high capacity. We present two approaches, these are: high capacity reversible data hiding approach with correction of prediction errors and high capacity reversible data hiding approach with embedded prediction errors. With this method, regardless of the approach used, our results are better than those obtained with current state of the art methods, both in terms of reconstructed image quality and embedding capacity

Separable Reversible Data Hiding in Encrypted Images Based on Two-Dimensional Histogram Modification

An efficient method of completely separable reversible data hiding in encrypted images is proposed. The cover image is first partitioned into nonoverlapping blocks and specific encryption is applied to obtain the encrypted image. Then, image difference in the encrypted domain can be calculated based on the homomorphic property of the cryptosystem. The data hider, who does not know the original image content, may reversibly embed secret data into image difference based on two-dimensional difference histogram modification. Data extraction is completely separable from image decryption; that is, data extraction can be done either in the encrypted domain or in the decrypted domain, so that it can be applied to different application scenarios. In addition, data extraction and image recovery are free of any error. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed scheme

A digital signature and watermarking based authentication system for JPEG2000 images

In this thesis, digital signature based authentication system was introduced, which is able to protect JPEG2000 images in different flavors, including fragile authentication and semi-fragile authentication. The fragile authentication is to protect the image at code-stream level, and the semi-fragile is to protect the image at the content level. The semi-fragile can be further classified into lossy and lossless authentication. With lossless authentication, the original image can be recovered after verification. The lossless authentication and the new image compression standard, JPEG2000 is mainly discussed in this thesis

Privacy-preserving information hiding and its applications

The phenomenal advances in cloud computing technology have raised concerns about data privacy. Aided by the modern cryptographic techniques such as homomorphic encryption, it has become possible to carry out computations in the encrypted domain and process data without compromising information privacy. In this thesis, we study various classes of privacy-preserving information hiding schemes and their real-world applications for cyber security, cloud computing, Internet of things, etc. Data breach is recognised as one of the most dreadful cyber security threats in which private data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen or used by unauthorised parties. Although encryption can obfuscate private information against unauthorised viewing, it may not stop data from illegitimate exportation. Privacy-preserving Information hiding can serve as a potential solution to this issue in such a manner that a permission code is embedded into the encrypted data and can be detected when transmissions occur. Digital watermarking is a technique that has been used for a wide range of intriguing applications such as data authentication and ownership identification. However, some of the algorithms are proprietary intellectual properties and thus the availability to the general public is rather limited. A possible solution is to outsource the task of watermarking to an authorised cloud service provider, that has legitimate right to execute the algorithms as well as high computational capacity. Privacypreserving Information hiding is well suited to this scenario since it is operated in the encrypted domain and hence prevents private data from being collected by the cloud. Internet of things is a promising technology to healthcare industry. A common framework consists of wearable equipments for monitoring the health status of an individual, a local gateway device for aggregating the data, and a cloud server for storing and analysing the data. However, there are risks that an adversary may attempt to eavesdrop the wireless communication, attack the gateway device or even access to the cloud server. Hence, it is desirable to produce and encrypt the data simultaneously and incorporate secret sharing schemes to realise access control. Privacy-preserving secret sharing is a novel research for fulfilling this function. In summary, this thesis presents novel schemes and algorithms, including: • two privacy-preserving reversible information hiding schemes based upon symmetric cryptography using arithmetic of quadratic residues and lexicographic permutations, respectively. • two privacy-preserving reversible information hiding schemes based upon asymmetric cryptography using multiplicative and additive privacy homomorphisms, respectively. • four predictive models for assisting the removal of distortions inflicted by information hiding based respectively upon projection theorem, image gradient, total variation denoising, and Bayesian inference. • three privacy-preserving secret sharing algorithms with different levels of generality

Privacy-aware reversible watermarking in cloud computing environments

As an interdisciplinary research between watermarking and cryptography, privacy-aware reversible watermarking permits a party to entrust the task of embedding watermarks to a cloud service provider without compromising information privacy. The early development of schemes were primarily based upon traditional symmetric-key cryptosystems, which involve an extra implementation cost of key exchange. Although recent research attentions were drawn to schemes compatible with asymmetric-key cryptosystems, there were notable limitations in the practical aspects. In particular, the host signal must either be enciphered in a redundant way or be pre-processed prior to encryption, which would largely limit the storage efficiency and scheme universality. To relax the restrictions, we propose a novel research paradigm and devise different schemes compatible with different homomorphic cryptosystems. In the proposed schemes, the encoding function is recognised as an operation of adding noise, whereas the decoding function is perceived as a corresponding denoising process. Both online and offline contentadaptive predictors are developed to assist watermark decoding for various operational requirements. A three-way trade-off between the capacity, fidelity and reversibility is analysed mathematically and empirically. It is shown that the proposed schemes achieve the state-the-art performance

Secure covert communications over streaming media using dynamic steganography

Streaming technologies such as VoIP are widely embedded into commercial and industrial applications, so it is imperative to address data security issues before the problems get really serious. This thesis describes a theoretical and experimental investigation of secure covert communications over streaming media using dynamic steganography. A covert VoIP communications system was developed in C++ to enable the implementation of the work being carried out. A new information theoretical model of secure covert communications over streaming media was constructed to depict the security scenarios in streaming media-based steganographic systems with passive attacks. The model involves a stochastic process that models an information source for covert VoIP communications and the theory of hypothesis testing that analyses the adversary‘s detection performance. The potential of hardware-based true random key generation and chaotic interval selection for innovative applications in covert VoIP communications was explored. Using the read time stamp counter of CPU as an entropy source was designed to generate true random numbers as secret keys for streaming media steganography. A novel interval selection algorithm was devised to choose randomly data embedding locations in VoIP streams using random sequences generated from achaotic process. A dynamic key updating and transmission based steganographic algorithm that includes a one-way cryptographical accumulator integrated into dynamic key exchange for covert VoIP communications, was devised to provide secure key exchange for covert communications over streaming media. The discrete logarithm problem in mathematics and steganalysis using t-test revealed the algorithm has the advantage of being the most solid method of key distribution over a public channel. The effectiveness of the new steganographic algorithm for covert communications over streaming media was examined by means of security analysis, steganalysis using non parameter Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon statistical testing, and performance and robustness measurements. The algorithm achieved the average data embedding rate of 800 bps, comparable to other related algorithms. The results indicated that the algorithm has no or little impact on real-time VoIP communications in terms of speech quality (< 5% change in PESQ with hidden data), signal distortion (6% change in SNR after steganography) and imperceptibility, and it is more secure and effective in addressing the security problems than other related algorithms

Robust watermarking and its applications to communication problems

Digital watermarking has recently gained an intense interest in research and applications. An invisible and secret signal, called watermark, is added to the host data. With the help of this watermark issuer of the data can be unveiled, unauthorised users can be identified, illicit copying can be avoided, any attempt to temper with the data can be detected and many other security services can be provided. In this thesis, the relations and differences between watermarking and communication systems are elaborated. Based on these results new methods for both watermarking and communication are derived. A new blind, robust and reversible watermarking scheme based on Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) is presented in this thesis. Using this scheme watermark is arithmetically added to spatial domain or frequency domain. Watermark is extracted by using spreading codes only. Proposed watermarking scheme is simple, computationally efficient and can be applied to any image format. A novel idea that watermark can be part of the image is presented. By using watermark, which is a part of an image, digital watermarking can be used beyond simple security tasks. A part of an image is selected and embedded in the whole image as watermark. This watermarked image is attacked (transmitted or compressed). By using the extracted watermark and attacked selected part image quality can be assessed or jpeg quantization ratio can be estimated or even image can be equalized blindly. Furthermore, CDMA based watermarking is used to authenticate radio frequency signal. Spreaded watermark is added in the form of noise to the modulated radio frequency signal. If this noise is increased, watermarked signal automatically becomes a scrambled signal. Later watermark is extracted and by using reversibility of proposed scheme watermark is removed. Once the watermarked is removed original signal is restored, hence descrambled