Search

Abstract The traditional information hiding is realized by embedding the secret information into the multimedia, but it will inevitably leave the modification mark in the carrier. This paper proposed a new method of coverless information hiding. First, the improved Wasserstein GAN (WGAN-GP) model is constructed, and the model is trained with disguised images and secret images. Then, after the model is stable, a disguised image is passed to the generator. Finally, the generator generates the image that is visually the same as the secret image, thereby achieving the same effect as transmitting the secret image. Experimental results show that this method not only has a good effect on the security of secret information transmission, but also increases the capacity of information hiding.

The Rich Model of the Gabor filter (referred to as the GFR steganalytic feature) can detect JPEG-adaptive steganography objects. However, feature dimensionality that is too high will lead to too much computation and will correspondingly reduce the detection efficiency. To reduce the dimensionality and the operating time of GFR steganalytic features and to improve the stego image detection accuracy, this paper proposes a multi-scale feature selection method for steganalytic feature GFR. First, we use the SNR criterion to measure the uselessness of each feature component and to provide a basis for the removal of useless steganalytic feature components. Second, we improve the Relief algorithm to measure the importance of feature components in detecting stego images, which provides a basis for the selection of important feature components. Then, we set the threshold value for deleting the useless feature components, and we select the important feature components as the final feature. Finally, we conduct experiments on feature selection for GFR with high-dimensional steganalytic features, and we compared the proposed method with the Fisher-based method, the PCA-based method, the SSFC method, and the Steganalysis-α method. The results show that the method proposed in this paper is effective and fast.

Image steganography is a technology that hides sensitive information into an image. The traditional image steganography method tends to securely embed secret information in the host image so that the payload capacity is almost ignored and the steganographic image quality needs to be improved for the Human Visual System(HVS). Therefore, in this work, we propose a new high capacity image steganography method based on deep learning. The Discrete Cosine Transform(DCT) is used to transform the secret image, and then the transformed image is encrypted by Elliptic Curve Cryptography(ECC) to improve the anti-detection property of the obtained image. To improve steganographic capacity, the SegNet Deep Neural Network with a set of Hiding and Extraction networks enables steganography and extraction of full-size images. The experimental results show that the method can effectively allocate each pixel in the image so that the relative capacity of steganography reaches 1. Besides, the image obtained using this steganography method has higher Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio(PSNR) and Structural Similarity Index(SSIM) values, reaching 40dB and 0.96, respectively.

In terms of payload capacity and visual effects, the existing image steganography technology based on deep neural networks still needs improvement, to solve this problem, this article proposes a new deep convolutional steganography network based on the pyramid pooling module to achieve better image steganography. The deep convolutional neural network itself can extract features efficiently. Based on the combination of up-sampling structure, we added a pyramid pool module, under the premise of ensuring safety, fully integrated the previous important global features, achieved good hiding and extraction effects, fully integrated the previous important global features, and effective it reduces the loss of contextual information between different sub-regions in the feature extraction process and achieves better hiding and extraction effects under the premise of ensuring security. Experiments show that the average peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR)/structure similarity (SSIM) and other indicators between the images obtained by this method have achieved good results in the experiment. Also, we have verified through ablation experiments that the pyramid pooling module can enhance the steganography effect of the network model and can further cut down the loss function of the model.

Aiming at the problem that the traditional steganography based on carrier modification has the low steganographic capacity, a steganographic scheme based on Fully Convolutional Dense Connection Network (FC-DenseNet) is proposed. Since FC-DenseNet can effectively overcome the problems of gradient dissipation and gradient explosion, and a large number of features are multiplexed, the cascaded secret image and carrier image can reconstruct good image quality after entering the network. Effectively improve steganographic capacity. First, we reset the number of input channels of the first convolution block of FC-DenseNet and the number of output channels of the last convolution block and deleted the LogSoftmax() function. On the sender side, after the concatenated secret image and carrier image pass through the hidden network FC-DenseNet, the secret image is embedded in the carrier image to obtain a stego-image. At the receiving side, the extraction network reconstructs the secret image from the stego-image. Experimental results show that our proposed steganography scheme not only has a high Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio(PSNR) and Structural Similarity(SSIM) but also can realize large-capacity image steganography, with an average image payload capacity of 23.96 bit per pixel.

This paper proposes an efficient scheme for generating image hashing by combining the local texture and color angle features. During the stage of texture extraction, using Weber's Law, the difference ratios between the center pixels and their surrounding pixels are calculated and the dimensions of these values are further reduced by applying principal component analysis to the statistical histogram. In the stage of color feature extraction, the color angle of each pixel is computed before dimensional reduction and is carried out using a discrete cosine transform and a significant coefficients selection strategy. The main contribution of this paper is a novel construction for image hashing that incorporates texture and color features by using Weber local binary pattern and color angular pattern. The experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed scheme, especially for the perceptual robustness against common content-preserving manipulations, such as the JPEG compression, Gaussian low-pass filtering, and image scaling. Based on the comparisons with the state-of-the-art schemes, receiver operating characteristic curves and integrated histograms of normalized distances show the superiority of our scheme in terms of robustness and discrimination.

Traditional steganography methods often hide secret data by establishing a mapping relationship between secret data and a cover image or directly in a noisy area, but has a low embedding capacity. Based on the thought of deep learning, in this paper, we propose a new image steganography scheme based on a U-Net structure. First, in the form of paired training, the trained deep neural network includes a hiding network and an extraction network; then, the sender uses the hiding network to embed the secret image into another full-size image without any modification and sends it to the receiver. Finally, the receiver uses the extraction network to reconstruct the secret image and original cover image correctly. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme compresses and distributes the information of the embedded secret image into all available bits in the cover image, which not only solves the obvious visual cues problem, but also increases the embedding capacity.

Data hiding is the technique of embedding data into video or audio media. With the development of deep neural networks (DNN), the quality of images generated by novel data hiding methods based on DNN is getting better. However, there is still room for the similarity between the original images and the images generated by the DNN models which were trained based on the existing hiding frameworks to improve, and it is hard for the receiver to distinguish whether the container image is from the real sender. We propose a framework by introducing a key_img for using the over-fitting characteristic of DNN and combined with difference image grafting symmetrically, named difference image grafting deep hiding (DIGDH). The key_img can be used to identify whether the container image is from the real sender easily. The experimental results show that without changing the structures of networks, the models trained based on the proposed framework can generate images with higher similarity to original cover and secret images. According to the analysis results of the steganalysis tool named StegExpose, the container images generated by the hiding model trained based on the proposed framework is closer to the random distribution.

Fewer contribution feature components in the image high-dimensional steganalysis feature are able to increase the spatio-temporal complexity of detecting the stego images, and even reduce the detection accuracy. In order to maintain or even improve the detection accuracy while effectively reducing the dimension of the DCTR steganalysis feature, this paper proposes a new selection approach for DCTR feature. First, the asymmetric distortion factor and information gain ratio of each feature component are improved to measure the difference between the symmetric cover and stego features, which provides the theoretical basis for selecting the feature components that contribute to a great degree to detecting the stego images. Additionally, the feature components are arranged in descending order rely on the two measurement criteria, which provides the basis for deleting the components. Based on the above, removing feature components that are ranked larger differently according to two criteria. Ultimately, the preserved feature components are used as the final selected feature for training and detection. Comparison experiments with existing classical approaches indicate that this approach can effectively reduce the feature dimension while maintaining or even improving the detection accuracy. At the same time, it can reduce the detection spatio-temporal complexity of the stego images.

The traditional cover modification steganography method only has low steganography ability. We propose a steganography method based on the convolutional neural network architecture (Xception) of deep separable convolutional layers in order to solve this problem. The Xception architecture is used for image steganography for the first time, which not only increases the width of the network, but also improves the adaptability of network expansion, and adds different receiving fields to carry out multi-scale information in it. By introducing jump connections, we solved the problems of gradient dissipation and gradient descent in the Xception architecture. After cascading the secret image and the mask image, high-quality images can be reconstructed through the network, which greatly improves the speed of steganography. When hiding, only the secret image and the cover image are cascaded, and then the secret image can be embedded in the cover image through the hidden network in order to obtain the secret image. After extraction, the secret image can be reconstructed by bypassing the secret image through the extraction network. The results show that the results that are obtained by our model have high peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity (SSIM), and the average high load capacity is 23.96 bpp (bit per pixel), thus realizing large-capacity image steganography surgery.

Image-to-image steganography is hiding one image in another image. However, hiding two secret images into one carrier image is a challenge today. The application of image steganography based on deep learning in real-life is relatively rare. In this paper, a new Steganography Convolution Neural Network (SteganoCNN) model is proposed, which solves the problem of two images embedded in a carrier image and can effectively reconstruct two secret images. SteganoCNN has two modules, an encoding network, and a decoding network, whereas the decoding network includes two extraction networks. First, the entire network is trained end-to-end, the encoding network automatically embeds the secret image into the carrier image, and the decoding network is used to reconstruct two different secret images. The experimental results show that the proposed steganography scheme has a maximum image payload capacity of 47.92 bits per pixel, and at the same time, it can effectively avoid the detection of steganalysis tools while keeping the stego-image undistorted. Meanwhile, StegaoCNN has good generalization capabilities and can realize the steganography of different data types, such as remote sensing images and aerial images.

Aiming at the problems of small key space, low security of encryption structure, and easy to crack existing image encryption algorithms combining chaotic system and DNA sequence, this paper proposes an image encryption algorithm based on a hidden attractor chaotic system and shuffling algorithm. Firstly, the chaotic sequence generated by the hidden attractor chaotic system is used to encrypt the image. The shuffling algorithm is used to scramble the image, and finally, the DNA sequence operation is used to diffuse the pixel value of the image. Experimental results show that the key space of the scheme reaches 2327 and is very sensitive to keys. The histogram of encrypted images is evenly distributed. The correlation coefficient of adjacent pixels is close to 0. The entropy values of encrypted images are all close to eight and the unified average change intensity (UACI) value and number of pixel changing rate (NPCR) value are close to ideal values. All-white and all-black image experiments meet the requirements. Experimental results show that the encryption scheme in this paper can effectively resist exhaustive attacks, statistical attacks, differential cryptanalysis, known plaintext and selected plaintext attacks, and noise attacks. The above research results show that the system has better encryption performance, and the proposed scheme is useful and practical in communication and can be applied to the field of image encryption.

Differential Evolution (DE) has been applied to many scientific and engineering problems for its simplicity and efficiency. However, the standard DE cannot be used in a binary search space directly. This paper proposes an adaptive binary Differential Evolution algorithm, or ABDE, that has a similar framework as the standard DE but with an improved binary mutation strategy in which the best individual participates. To further enhance the search ability, the parameters of the ABDE are slightly disturbed in an adaptive manner. Experiments have been carried out by comparing ABDE with two binary DE variants, normDE and BDE, and the most used binary search technique, GA, on a set of 13 selected benchmark functions and the classical 0-1 knapsack problem. Results show that the ABDE performs better than, or at least comparable to, the other algorithms in terms of search ability, convergence speed, and solution accuracy.

Image steganography is a technique that hides secret information into the cover image to protect information security. The current image steganography is mainly to embed a smaller secret image in an area such as a texture of a larger-sized cover image, which will cause the size of the secret image to be much smaller than the cover image. Therefore, the problem of small steganographic capacity needs to be solved urgently. This paper proposes a steganography framework that combines image compression. In this framework, the Vector Quantized Variational AutoEncoder (VQ-VAE) is used to achieve the compression of the secret image. The compressed and reconstructed image is visually indistinguishable from the original image and facilitates more embedded data information later. Finally, the compressed image is transmitted to a SegNet deep neural network that contains a set of encoders and decoders to achieve image hiding and extraction. Experimental results show that the steganographic framework guarantees the quality of steganography while its relative steganographic capacity reaches 1. Besides, Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) values can reach 42 dB and 0.94, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the setting of (t, n) threshold secret sharing, at least t parties can reconstruct the secret, and fewer than t parties learn nothing about the secret. However, to achieve fairness, the existing secret sharing schemes either assume a trusted party exists or require running multi-round, which is not practical in a real application. In addition, the cost of verification grows dramatically with the number of participants and the communication complexity is O(t), if there is not a trusted combiner in the reconstruction phase. In this work, we propose a fair server-aided multi-secret sharing scheme for weak computational devices. The malicious behavior of clients or server providers in the scheme can be verified, and the server provider learns nothing about the secret shadows and the secrets. Unlike other secret sharing schemes, our scheme does not require interaction among users and can work in asynchronous mode, which is suitable for mobile networks or cloud computing environments since weak computational mobile devices are not always online. Moreover, in the scheme, the secret shadow is reusable, and expensive computation such as reconstruction computation and homomorphic verification computation can be outsourced to the server provider, and the users only require a small amount of computation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a novel coverless image steganographic scheme based on a generative model. In our scheme, the secret image is first fed to the generative model database, to generate a meaning-normal and independent image different from the secret image. The generated image is then transmitted to the receiver and fed to the generative model database to generate another image visually the same as the secret image. Thus, we only need to transmit the meaning-normal image which is not related to the secret image, and we can achieve the same effect as the transmission of the secret image. This is the first time to propose the coverless image information steganographic scheme based on generative model, compared with the traditional image steganography. The transmitted image is not embedded with any information of the secret image in this method, therefore, can effectively resist steganalysis tools. Experimental results show that our scheme has high capacity, security and reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a serially concatenated nonbinary low-density parity-check (LDPC) coded continuous phase modulation (CPM) system is investigated. The nonbinary LDPC codes are constructed using algebraic methods based on finite fields GF(q) (q>2), which have quasi-cyclic structure and hence easily implemented encoders. Based on the soft-input-soft-output detectors for M-ary CPM, we introduce a q-ary LDPC coded CPM system in which the decoder operates on the symbol likelihoods. Thus, the performance loss incurred in bit-interleaved coded-modulation (BICM) schemes by the conversion between symbol and bit likelihoods is avoided. Simulation results show that the coded modulation system based on q-ary LDPC codes, can achieve better performance than binary LDPC coded systems with the same spectral efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]