Enhancing The Performance Of Digital Image Data Hiding Using Reduced Difference Expansion Technique And Constant Base Point

The last few decades have been marked by a rapid growth and significant enhancement of the internet infrastructures, i.e., the internet has become a broad network enabling many enterprises around the world to interact while sharing multimedia data. Nevertheless, this technology has brought many challenges related to securing private and sensitive information which has led to the application of cryptography technique as a mean for securing data by encrypting them. However, since the encrypted data can be seen by active and sophisticated intruders during the transmission, this may lead to its suspicion which can result in unauthorized access. Thereby, data hiding (which is also called information hiding) is another technique for securing commutation via the public network. Data hiding is one of the best and most challenging fields dealing with securing organizational sensitive information due to many factors such as identity theft, information phishing, user privacy, network policy violation, contents and copyright protection. It is performed by utilizing some carriers to conceal private information which is further extracted later to verify and validate the genuineness. Digital steganography has been recognized among the recent and most popular data hiding techniques. Steganography is the practice of concealing confidential information in the codes that make up the digital files. Such digital files can be an image, audio, video, and text. Different from cryptography, however, steganography provides security by disguising the presence of communication. It originates from the concept that if the communication is visible, the suspicion or attack is obvious. Hence, the main goal is to always disguise the presence of the hidden confidential data. Recently, various data iv hiding methods based on digital image steganography have been already suggested by several researchers around the globe. The main goal was to improve the security, embedding capacity and the quality of the stego image. However, research have shown that there is still a challenge to achieve a good visual quality of the stego media while preserving a good embedding capacity. In this direction, this study aims at proposing a new data hiding approach that enhances the quality of the stego image and the embedding capacity. That is, the suggested approach enhances the existing data hiding methods by utilizing pixel block, constant base point for each pixel block and the reduced difference expansion scheme (RDE-scheme) for grayscale digital images. Accordingly, the suggested enhancement is detailed as follows. First, the existing reduced difference expansion scheme (RDE-scheme) for reducing the difference values is enhanced in order to get possible small values to be used while concealing the secret data into the cover image. The main objective behind this enhancement is to allow data to be concealed while preserving the quality of the stego image. Notice that the suggested RDE-scheme does not only enhance the quality but also it solves the problem of underflow and overflow. The underflow is encountered when the pixel value in the stego image is below 0 (Pixel value < 0) while the overflow occurs when it is greater than 255 (Pixel value > 255). Second, the new constant base point for each pixel block is chosen differently for the sake of increasing the visual quality of the stego image. Third, we have adjusted the size of the pixel block which achieves a high embedding capacity while distorting the cover media from quad of quad (4 × 4 ) to quad, block of size 2 by 2 (2 × 2). Besides, the effect of varying the size of the secret data with respect to the quality of the stego image is also investigated throughout this study. Overall, based on the experimental results, good visual quality of the stego image which is evaluated by measuring the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and good embedding capacity (measured in bits) are yielded compared to the previous approach, i.e., the proposed method is effective in terms of maintaining both visual quality of the stego image and the embedding capacity. Index terms— Data hiding, information security, reduced difference expansion, digital steganography, cover image, stego image, confidential data =================================================================================================== Beberapa dekade terakhir internet telah menjadi jaringan luas yang memungkinkan banyak perusahaan di seluruh dunia untuk berinteraksi sambil berbagi data multimedia. Ini merupakan tanda bahwa infrastruktur internet telah tumbuh dan berkembang secara signifikan. Namun, teknologi ini memiliki banyak tantangan dalam hal pengamanan informasi yang bersifat sensitif dan pribadi sehingga mendorong penerapan teknik kriptografi untuk mengamankan data dengan cara mengenkripsinya. Teknik kriptografi memiliki kekurangan yaitu hasil enkripsi dapat dilihat oleh penyusup (intruders) selama transmisi sehingga menyebabkan kecurigaan yang berakibat pada tindakan akses yang bersifat ilegal. Untuk mengurangi hal ini, data hiding dapat dimanfaatkan untuk mengamankan informasi tersebut. Data hiding adalah salah satu teknik terbaik untuk mendapatkan data tetapi memiliki banyak tantangan permasalahan seperti pencurian identitas, phising, pelanggaran kebijakan jaringan dan hak cipta. Untuk mendapatkan kemanan data, data hiding memanfaatkan beberapa media untuk menyembunyikan informasi dan dapat diekstrak untuk memverifikasi keasliannya. Salah satu teknik data hiding yang paling terkenal adalah steganografi digital. Teknik ini menyembunyikan informasi rahasia kedalam file digital seperti citra digital, audio, video dan teks. Berbeda dengan kriptografi, steganografi memberikan keamanan informasi dengan menyamarkannya dalam file digital. Penyebab digunakannya tindakan ini adalah jika komunikasi terlihat maka akan mengundang kecurigaan yang mengakibatkan terjadi serangan seperti yang dijelaskan sebelumnya. Oleh karena itu, tujuan utama dari teknik ini adalah menyamarkan informasi rahasia dengan vi menyembunyikannya kedalam file yang digunakan. Akhir-akhir ini, beberapa teknik data hiding dengan menggunakan citra digital telah banyak dikembangkan oleh beberapa peneliti di seluruh dunia. Tujuan utama mereka adalah untuk meningkatkan keamanan, kapasitas penyisipan dan kualitas dari citra stego. Sampai saat ini, banyak penelitian yang menunjukkan bahwa masih menjadi tantangan untuk mendapatkan kualitas media stego yang baik dengan kapasitas penyisipan yang tinggi. Dengan maksud yang sama, penelitian ini mengusulkan konsep pendekatan baru dalam hal data hiding yang dapat meningkatkan kualitas dan kapasitas dari citra stego. Pendekatan tersebut dilakukan dengan cara meningkatkan metode data hiding yang sudah ada dengan memanfaatkan blok piksel, penentuan base point yang konsisten untuk masing-masing blok dan mereduksi difference expansion untuk citra abu-abu. Rincian dari pendekatan tersebut adalah sebagai berikut. Pertama, skema reduksi difference expansion (RDE) ditingkatkan untuk mendapatkan nilai terkecil yang akan digunakan dalam penyembunyian data kedalam citra carrier. Tujuannya adalah memungkinkan data dapat disisipkan dengan tetap menjaga kualitas citra stego tetap baik. Perlu diketahui bahwa usulan skema RDE tidak hanya meningkatkan kualitas tetapi juga menyelesaikan masalah overflow dan underflow. Underfow merupakan kondisi piksel dalam citra stego bernilai kurang dari 0 sedangkan overflow terjadi ketika nilai piksel melebihi 255. Kedua, base-point yang bersifat konstan untuk masing-masing blok piksel akan dipilih secara berbeda untuk dapat meningkatkan kualitas visual dari citra stego. Ketiga, kami mengatur ukuran blok dari quad of quad (4x4) yang memiliki kualitas citra stego kurang baik menjadi 2x2. Hal lain yang kami lakukan adalah mengetahui efek dari besar ukuran data yang digunakan dalam proses penyisipan. Secara keseluruhan, berdasarkan hasil eksperimen, usulan pendekatan ini memiliki kemampuan yang lebih baik dibandingkan dengan penelitian sebelumnya yang ditandai dengan kapasitas penyisipan yang lebih tinggi dan kualitas visual citra stego yang baik yang diukur menggunakan metode signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR)

A COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY ON DETECTING BLACK HOLE ATTACK IN MOBILE AD-HOC NETWORK (MANET)

The infrastructure-less nature and mobility of nodes in mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) make it to be very susceptible to various attacks. Besides, owing to its flexibility and simplicity, there is no predefined time or permission set for nodes to leave or join the network and each node can act as a client or server.  Nevertheless, securing communication between nodes has become a challenging problem than in other types of network. Attacks in MANET range into different categories. Black hole attack is one of the attacks that has been addressed by many researchers in the recent years. It does occur when a harmful mobile node called black hole becomes a part of the network and tries to use its malicious behaviors by sending fake route reply packets (RREP) for any received route request packets (RREQ). When these faked packets arrive to the source node, it does reply to them by sending data packet via the established route. Once the packets are received by the black hole, it drops them before reaching the destination.  Hence, preventing the source node from reaching the intended destination. In this paper, we present an overview of a wide range of techniques suggested in the literature for detecting and preventing black hole attacks in mobile ad hoc network. Additionally, the effect of each approach on the network performance is also presented

MalDetConv: Automated Behaviour-based Malware Detection Framework Based on Natural Language Processing and Deep Learning Techniques

The popularity of Windows attracts the attention of hackers/cyber-attackers, making Windows devices the primary target of malware attacks in recent years. Several sophisticated malware variants and anti-detection methods have been significantly enhanced and as a result, traditional malware detection techniques have become less effective. This work presents MalBehavD-V1, a new behavioural dataset of Windows Application Programming Interface (API) calls extracted from benign and malware executable files using the dynamic analysis approach. In addition, we present MalDetConV, a new automated behaviour-based framework for detecting both existing and zero-day malware attacks. MalDetConv uses a text processing-based encoder to transform features of API calls into a suitable format supported by deep learning models. It then uses a hybrid of convolutional neural network (CNN) and bidirectional gated recurrent unit (CNN-BiGRU) automatic feature extractor to select high-level features of the API Calls which are then fed to a fully connected neural network module for malware classification. MalDetConv also uses an explainable component that reveals features that contributed to the final classification outcome, helping the decision-making process for security analysts. The performance of the proposed framework is evaluated using our MalBehavD-V1 dataset and other benchmark datasets. The detection results demonstrate the effectiveness of MalDetConv over the state-of-the-art techniques with detection accuracy of 96.10%, 95.73%, 98.18%, and 99.93% achieved while detecting unseen malware from MalBehavD-V1, Allan and John, Brazilian, and Ki-D datasets, respectively. The experimental results show that MalDetConv is highly accurate in detecting both known and zero-day malware attacks on Windows devices

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

Regional Trade and Competitiveness of Rwandan Agriculture: Empirical Analysis of Selected Priority Foodstuffs

This study aims at investigating the impact of regional integration on the agricultural trade development by focusing on wheat flour, maize grain, maize flour, potato, rice and soybean, fresh bean and dried beans sectors selected among priority foodstuffs in Rwanda. This is motivated by the lack of the studies comparing the competitive performance of all priority staple foods sub-sectors in Rwanda in the context of regional trade. The analysis used secondary data obtained through documentary reviews and those collected from the National Bank of Rwanda and FAOSTAT on imports and exports of Rwanda from 2007 to 2017. Apart from the literature review, the analysis was conducted using the Net Export Index (NEI) and the Grubel-Lloyd (GL) measure. The literature review and empirical results reveal that Rwanda benefited from its accession to regional and global trade blocks, especially in terms of the ease of access to external markets through the establishment of the Common Market, the Customs Union and the alleviation of some of trade barriers for basic foodstuffs and consumer goods. The analysis of the Net Export Index and the Grubel-Lloyd measures revealed that Rwanda can have a comparative advantage for wheat flour, fresh beans and dried beans at regional and global markets if measures aiming at developing a dynamic commercial network and improving agricultural value chains productivity are put forward

A COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY ON DETECTING BLACK HOLE ATTACK IN MOBILE AD-HOC NETWORK (MANET)

The infrastructure-less nature and mobility of nodes in mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) make it to be very susceptible to various attacks. Besides, owing to its flexibility and simplicity, there is no predefined time or permission set for nodes to leave or join the network and each node can act as a client or server.  Nevertheless, securing communication between nodes has become a challenging problem than in other types of network. Attacks in MANET range into different categories. Black hole attack is one of the attacks that has been addressed by many researchers in the recent years. It does occur when a harmful mobile node called black hole becomes a part of the network and tries to use its malicious behaviors by sending fake route reply packets (RREP) for any received route request packets (RREQ). When these faked packets arrive to the source node, it does reply to them by sending data packet via the established route. Once the packets are received by the black hole, it drops them before reaching the destination.  Hence, preventing the source node from reaching the intended destination. In this paper, we present an overview of a wide range of techniques suggested in the literature for detecting and preventing black hole attacks in mobile ad hoc network. Additionally, the effect of each approach on the network performance is also presented.</em

A Comprehensive Survey on Detecting Black Hole Attack in Mobile Ad-hoc Network (Manet)

The infrastructure-less nature and mobility of nodes in mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) make it to be very susceptible to various attacks. Besides, owing to its flexibility and simplicity, there is no predefined time or permission set for nodes to leave or join the network and each node can act as a client or server. Nevertheless, securing communication between nodes has become a challenging problem than in other types of network. Attacks in MANET range into different categories. Black hole attack is one of the attacks that has been addressed by many researchers in the recent years. It does occur when a harmful mobile node called black hole becomes a part of the network and tries to use its Malicious behaviors by sending fake route reply packets (RREP) for any received route request packets (RREQ). When these faked packets arrive to the source node, it does reply to them by sending data packet via the established route. Once the packets are received by the black hole, it drops them before reaching the destination. Hence, preventing the source node from reaching the intended destination. In this paper, we present an overview of a wide range of techniques suggested in the literature for detecting and preventing black hole attacks in mobile ad hoc network. Additionally, the effect of each approach on the network performance is also presented

Data Hiding Scheme Based on Quad General Difference Expansion Cluster

For some periods, information technology has developed, but there are some issues with its data security. For this reason, exploring the data hiding method is relevant, which is an appropriate study in the information concealment paradigm. Several factors must be considered in its implementation, such as the capacity of the confidential data and the quality of the generated stego file. Nevertheless, it is difficult to solve those two problems simultaneously in actual application. We often need to choose either one of them, which is more suitable for a specific environment. In this research, those problems are approached by extending the Quad General Difference Expansion Cluster (QGDEC) method combined with fuzzy logic in the image environment. We use the cluster in the QGDEC, which aims to ensure that the pixel difference is not significant so that the quality of the stego can be maintained. The confidential data can be embedded in multiple layers based on several image characteristics, which can be processed using fuzzy logic. The result of the experiment denotes that the proposed method obtains about 20 dB higher than that of the previous ones regarding the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) for the same capacity of the secret. It depicts that the proposed method is more applicable than the previous ones by considering the specific message size and its respective characteristics