The great increase of the digital communications, where the technological society depends on applications, devices and networks, the security problems motivate different researches for providing algorithms and systems resistant to attacks, and these lasts need of services of confidentiality, authentication, integrity, etc. This paper proposes the hardware implementation of an steganographic/cryptographic algorithm, which is based on the DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transform) and the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) cipher algorithm in CBC mode. The proposed scheme takes advantage of a double-security ciphertext, which makes difficult to identify and decipher it. The hardware architecture reports a high efficiency (182.2 bps/slice and 85.2 bps/LUT) and low hardware resources consumption (867 slices and 1853 LUTs), where several parallel implementations can improve the throughout (0.162 Mbps) for processing large amounts of data.

This paper presents an adaptive least-significant-bit (LSB) steganography for spatial color images on smartphones. For each red, green, and blue color component, the combinations of All-4bit, One-4bit+Two-2bit, and Two-3bit+One-2bit LSB replacements are proposed for content-adaptivity and natural histograms. The high capacity of 8.4bpp with the average peak signal noise ratio (PSNR) 43.7db and fast processing times on smartphones are also demonstrated

Side match vector quantization (SMVQ) has been originally developed for image compression and is also useful for steganography. SMVQ requires to create its own state codebook for each block in both encoding and decoding phases. Since the conventional method for the state codebook generation is extremely time-consuming, this letter proposes a fast generation method. The proposed method is tens times faster than the conventional one without loss of perceptual visual quality.

In order to prevent the synonym substitution breaking the balance among frequencies of synonyms and improve the statistical undetectability, this paper proposed a novel linguistic steganography based on synonym run-length encoding. Firstly, taking the relative word frequency into account, the synonyms appeared in the text are digitized into binary values and expressed in the form of runs. Then, message are embedded into the parities of runs' lengths by self-adaptively making a positive or negative synonym transformation on boundary elements of two adjacent runs, while preserving the number of relative high and low frequency synonyms to reduce the embedding distortion. Experimental results have shown that the proposed synonym run-length encoding based linguistic steganographic algorithm makes fewer changes on the statistical characteristics of cover texts than other algorithms, and enhances the capability of anti-steganalysis.

Reversible data hiding is a technique in which hidden data are embedded in host data such that the consistency of the host is perfectly preserved and its data are restored during extraction of the hidden data. In this paper, a linear prediction technique for reversible data hiding of audio waveforms is improved. The proposed variable expansion method is able to control the payload size through varying the expansion factor. The proposed technique is combined with the prediction error expansion method. Reversible embedding, perfect payload detection, and perfect recovery of the host signal are achieved for a framed audio signal. A smaller expansion factor results in a smaller payload size and less degradation in the stego audio quality. Computer simulations reveal that embedding a random-bit payload of less than 0.4 bits per sample into CD-format music signals provide stego audio with acceptable objective quality. The method is also applied to G.711 µ-law-coded speech signals. Computer simulations reveal that embedding a random-bit payload of less than 0.1 bits per sample into speech signals provide stego speech with good objective quality.

This paper presents an information hiding method for DNA steganography with which a massive amount of data can be hidden in a noncoding strand. Our method maps the encrypted data to the DNA sequence using a numerical mapping table, before concealing it in the noncoding sequence using a secret key comprising sector length and the random number generator's seed. Our encoding algorithm is sector-based and reference dependent. Using modular arithmetic, we created a unique binary-base translation for every sector. By conducting a simulation study, we showed that our method could preserve amino acid information, extract hidden data without reference to the host DNA sequence, and detect the position of mutation error. Experimental results verified that our method produced higher data capacity than conventional methods, with a bpn (bit-per-nucleotide) value that ranged from approximately 1-2, depending on the selected sector length. Additionally, our novel method detected the positions of mutation errors by the presence of a parity base in each sector.

This letter improves two adaptive steganographic methods in Refs. [5], [6], which utilize the remainders of two consecutive pixels to record the information of secret data. Through analysis, we point out that they perform mistakenly under some conditions, and the recipient cannot extract the secret data exactly. We correct these by enlarging the adjusting range of the remainders of two consecutive pixels within the block in the embedding procedure. Furthermore, the readjusting phase in Ref. [6] is improved by allowing every two-pixel block to be fully modified, and then the sender can select the best choice that introduces the smallest embedding distortion. Experimental results show that the improved method not only extracts secret data exactly but also reduces the embedding distortion.

Quantum steganography is to send secret quantum information through a quantum channel, such that an unauthorized user will not be aware of the existence of secret data. The depolarizing channel can hide quantum information by disguising it as channel errors of a quantum error-correcting code. We improve the efficiency of quantum steganography with noisy depolarizing channels, by modifying the twirling procedure and adding quantum teleportation. The proposed scheme not only meets the requirements of quantum steganography but also has higher efficiency.

In this letter, a novel steganographic method with four-pixel differencing and exploiting modification direction is proposed. Secret data are embedded into each four-pixel block by adaptively applying exploiting modification direction technique. The difference value of the four-pixel block is used to judge whether the pixels in edge areas can tolerate larger changes than those in smooth areas. The readjustment guarantees to extract the secret data exactly and to minimize the embedding distortion. Since the proposed method processes non-overlapping 22 pixels blocks instead of two consecutive pixels, the features of edge can be considered sufficiently. Compared with the previous method, experimental results show that the proposed method provides better performance, i.e., larger embedding capacity and better image quality.

A secure method for steganography is proposed. Pixel-value differencing (PVD) steganography and bit-plane complexity segmentation (BPCS) steganography have the weakness of generating blocky effects and noise in smooth areas and being detectable with steganalysis. To overcome these weaknesses, a secure bit-plane based steganography method on the spatial domain is presented, which uses a robust measure to select noisy blocks for embedding messages. A matrix embedding technique is also applied to reduce the change of cover images. Given that the statistical property of cover images is well preserved in stego-images, the proposed method is undetectable by steganalysis that uses RS analysis or histogram-based analysis. The proposed method is compared with the PVD and BPCS steganography methods. Experimental results confirm that the proposed method is secure against potential attacks.

This paper proposes a DCT-based steganographic method named StegErmelc in the JPEG domain. Three strategies are proposed, namely (i) edge-like block selection, (ii) recursive matrix encoding, and (iii) largest coefficient serving, to form a novel steganographic method for achieving scalable carrier capacity, low detectability by universal blind steganalyzer, and high image quality, simultaneously. For a given message length, StegErmelc flexibly scales its carrier capacity to accommodate the message while trading off with stego detectability. At full capacity, StegErmelc has comparable carrier capacity relative to the existing methods. When embedding the same amount of information, StegErmelc remarkably reduces the stego detection rate to about 0.3-0.5 lower than that of the existing methods considered, and consequently StegErmelc can withstand blind steganalyzer when embedding up to 0.10 bpc. Under the same condition, StegErmelc produces stego image with quality higher than that of the existing methods considered. Graphical comparison with three additional evaluation metrics is also presented to show the relative performance of StegErmelc with respect to the existing methods considered.

Steganography aims to hide secret data into an innocuous cover-medium for transmission and to make the attacker cannot recognize the presence of secret data easily. Even the stego-medium is captured by the eavesdropper, the slight distortion is hard to be detected. The LSB-based data hiding is one of the steganographic methods, used to embed the secret data into the least significant bits of the pixel values in a cover image. In this paper, we propose an LSB-based scheme using reflected-Gray code, which can be applied to determine the embedded bit from secret information. Following the transforming rule, the LSBs of stego-image are not always equal to the secret bits and the experiment shows that the differences are up to almost 50 %. According to the mathematical deduction and experimental results, the proposed scheme has the same image quality and payload as the simple LSB substitution scheme. In fact, our proposed data hiding scheme in the case of G1 (one bit Gray code) system is equivalent to the simple LSB substitution scheme.

This paper presents a lossless steganography method based on the multiple-base notation approach for JPEG images. Embedding a large amount of secret data in a JPEG-compressed image is a challenge since modifying the quantized DCT coefficients may cause serious image distortion. We propose two main strategies to deal with this problem: (1) we embed the secret values in the middle-frequency of the quantized DCT coefficients, and (2) we limit the number of nonzero values of the quantized DCT coefficients that participate in the embedding process. We also investigated the effect of modifying the standard quantization table. The experimental results show that the proposed method can embed twice as much secret data as the irreversible embedding method of Iwata et al. under the same number of embedded sets. The results also demonstrate how three important factors: (1) the quantization table, (2) the number of selected nonzero quantized DCT coefficients, and (3) the number of selected sets, influence the image quality and embedding capacity.

This paper proposes a simple, efficient method that, based on increasing the differences between two neighboring pixels, losslessly embeds a message into a host image. The point at which the number of pixel differences in the image is at a maximum is selected to embed the message. The selected difference is increased by 1 or left unchanged if the embedded bit is "1" or "0", respectively. On the other hand, differences larger than the selected difference are increased by 1. Increasing a difference is done by adding 1 to or subtracting 1 from the pixel if its value is larger or smaller than its preceding pixel, respectively. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve a high payload capacity while the image distortion of the stego-image remains minimal.

This study proposes a technique of lossless steganography for G.711, the most common codec for digital speech communications systems such as VoIP. The proposed technique exploits the characteristics of G.711 for embedding steganogram information without degradation. This paper shows the capacity of the proposed technique.

Steganographic methods usually produce distortions in cover images due to the process of embedding secret bits. These distortions are hard to remove, and thus the cover image cannot be recovered. Although the distortions are always small, they cannot be allowed for some sensitive applications. In this paper, we propose a reversible embedding scheme for VQ-compressed images, which allows the original cover image to be completely recovered after the extraction of the secret bits. The embedded payload in the proposed method comprises the secret bits plus the restoration information. In order to reduce the size of payload, we utilized the spatial correlations in the image as the restoration information and then compressed the correlations by a lossless compression method. In addition, an alternative pairing method for codewords was proposed to improve the stegoed image quality and control the embedding capacity. Experimental results showed that the proposed method has the benefit of high efficiency of the steganographic process, high image quality, and adaptive embedding capacity compared with other schemes.

This paper presents two steganographic methods for JPEG2000 still images which approximately preserve histograms of discrete wavelet transform coefficients. Compared with a conventional JPEG2000 steganography, the two methods show better histogram preservation. The proposed methods are promising candidates for secure JPEG2000 steganography against histogram-based attack.

This study investigates a band extension technique for speech data encoded with G.711, the most common codec for digital speech communications system such as VoIP. The proposed technique employs steganography for the transmission of the side information required for the band extension. Due to the steganography, the proposed technique is able to enhance the speech quality without an increase of the amount of data transmission. From the results of a subjective experiment, it is indicated that the proposed technique may potentially be useful for improving the speech quality, compared with the conventional technique.

Although a proposed steganographic encoding scheme can reduce distortion caused by data hiding, it makes the system susceptible to active-warden attacks due to error spreading. Meanwhile, straightforward application of error correction encoding inevitably increases the required amount of bit alterations so that the risk of being detected will increase. To overcome the drawback in both cases, an integrated approach is introduced that combines the stego-encoding and error correction encoding to provide enhanced robustness against active attacks and channel noise while keeping good imperceptibility.

To increase the number of the embedded secrets and to improve the quality of the stego-image in the vector quantization (VQ)-based information hiding scheme, in this paper, we present a novel information-hiding scheme to embed secrets into the side match vector quantization (SMVQ) compressed code. First, a host image is partitioned into non-overlapping blocks. For these seed blocks of the image, VQ is adopted without hiding secrets. Then, for each of the residual blocks, SMVQ or VQ is employed according to the smoothness of the block such that the proper codeword is chosen from the state codebook or the original codebook to compress it. Finally, these compressed codes represent not only the host image but also the secret data. Experimental results show that the performance of the proposed scheme is better than other VQ-based information hiding scheme in terms of the embedding capacity and the image quality. Moreover, in the proposed scheme, the compression rate is better than the compared scheme.