Reversible data hiding scheme based on 3-Least significant bits and mix column transform

Steganography is the science of hiding a message signal in a host signal, without any perceptual distortion of the host signal. Using steganography, information can be hidden in the carrier items such as images, videos, sounds files, text files, while performing data transmission. In image steganography field, it is a major concern of the researchers how to improve the capacity of hidden data into host image without causing any statistically significant modification. In this work, we propose a reversible steganography scheme which can hide large amount of information without affecting the imperceptibility aspect of the stego-image and at the same time, it increases the security level of the system through using different method for embedding based on distinct type of transform, called Mix Column Transform. Our experimental results prove the ability of our proposed scheme in balancing among the three critical properties: capacity, security, and imperceptibility

An Adaptive Steganography Scheme Based on Visual Quality and Embedding Capacity Improvement

In this paper, a steganography technique using LSB substitution and PVD method is presented as an adaptive scheme in the spatial domain. Our method partitions the grayscale image into several non-overlapping blocks with three consecutive pixels. The embedding algorithm can both replace the secret data with the LSBs of the middle pixel and embed it in the difference values between the middle pixel and its two neighboring pixels of the cover-block. The number of secret bits is determined adaptively based on the range divisions for embedding in the difference value. We define a new range division on gray level which takes into account a larger embedding capacity for bits. After the embedding, the proposed method detects the pixels which are sensitive to hyper distortion. Then, the embedding process will be repeated to produce insignificant visual distortion in those pixels. Our experimental results demonstrate that this iterative steganography scheme prevents significant visual distortion into stego-image. The generated PSNR values are higher than the corresponding values of the most commonly used methods, discussed in this study. Furthermore, the experimental results show that the hiding capacity increased enormously when the proposed range division is used. Finally, we illustrate that the method can pass RS and steganalysis detector attacks.DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijece.v4i4.630

A Review on Steganography Techniques

Steganography is the science of hiding a secret message in cover media, without any perceptual distortion of the cover media. Using steganography, information can be hidden in the carrier items such as images, videos, sounds files, text files, while performing data transmission. In image steganography field, it is a major concern of the researchers how to improve the capacity of hidden data into host image without causing any statistically significant modification. Therefore, this paper presents most of the recent works that have been conducted on image steganography field and analyzes them to clarify the strength and weakness points in each work separately in order to be taken in consideration for future works in such field.   

New watermarking methods for digital images.

The phenomenal spread of the Internet places an enormous demand on content-ownership-validation. In this thesis, four new image-watermarking methods are presented. One method is based on discrete-wavelet-transformation (DWT) only while the rest are based on DWT and singular-value-decomposition (SVD) ensemble. The main target for this thesis is to reach a new blind-watermarking-method. Method IV presents such watermark using QR-codes. The use of QR-codes in watermarking is novel. The choice of such application is based on the fact that QR-Codes have errors self-correction-capability of 5% or higher which satisfies the nature of digital-image-processing. Results show that the proposed-methods introduced minimal distortion to the watermarked images as compared to other methods and are robust against JPEG, resizing and other attacks. Moreover, watermarking-method-II provides a solution to the detection of false watermark in the literature. Finally, method IV presents a new QR-code guided watermarking-approach that can be used as a steganography as well. --Leaf ii.The original print copy of this thesis may be available here: http://wizard.unbc.ca/record=b183575