Abstract Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is one of the widely used lossy image compression standard and in general JPEG based compressed version images are commonly used during transmission over the public channel like the Internet. In this paper, the authors have proposed a steganography scheme where the secret message is considered for embedding into the JPEG version of a cover image. The steganography scheme initially employs block based Discrete Cosine Transformation (DCT) followed by some suitable quantization process on the cover image to produce the transformed coefficients. The obtained coefficients are considered for embedding the secret message bits. In general, most of the earlier works hide one bit message into each selected coefficient, where hiding is carried out either directly modifying the coefficients, like employing the LSB method or indirectly modifying the magnitude of the coefficients, like flipping the sign bit of the coefficients. In the proposed scheme, instead of embedding the secret message bits directly into the coefficients, a suitable indirect approach is adopted to hide two bits of the secret message into some selected DCT coefficients. As per the conventional approach, the modified coefficients are further compressed by entropy encoding. The scheme has been tested on several standard gray scale images and the obtained experimental results show the comparative performance with some existing related works.

References

[1] Ataby A. and Naima F., “A Modified Higy Capacity Image Steganography Technique Based on Wavelet Transform,” The International Arab Journal of Information Technology, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 358-364, 2010.

[2] Atee H., Ahmad R., and Noor N., “Cryptography and Image Steganography using Dynamic Encryption on LSB and Color Image based Data Hiding,” Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research, vol. 23, no. 7, pp. 1450-1460, 2015.

[3] Chan C. and Cheng L., “Hiding Data in Images by Simple LSB Substitution,” Pattern Recognition, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 469-474, 2004.

[4] Chang C., Chen T., and Chung L., “A Steganographic Method based upon JPEG and Quantization Table Modification,” Information Sciences, vol. 141, no. 1-2, pp. 123-138, 2001.

[5] Chanu Y., Singh K., and Tuithung T., “A Robust Steganographic Method based on Singular Value Decomposition,” International Journal of Information and Computation Technology, vol. 4, no. 7, pp. 717-726, 2014.

[6] Chen P. and Lin H., “A DWT Based Approach for Image Steganography,” International Journal of Applied Science and Engineering, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 275-290, 2006.

[7] Chen W., Chang C., and Le T., “High Payload Steganography Mechanism using Hybrid Edge Detector,” Expert Systems with Applications, vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 3292-3301, 2010.

[8] Fridrich J., Goljan M., and Hogea D., “Steganalysis of JPEG Images: Breaking the F5 Algorithm,” in Proceedings of 5th International Workshop Information Hiding, Springer, Noordwijkerhout, pp. 310-323, 2002.

[9] Upham D., “Jsteg Steganographic Algorithm,” c) Quantized DCT coefficients after d) Quantized DCT coefficients after applying Liu and Liao

[12]. applying the proposed scheme. 1 2 124 The International Arab Journal of Information Technology, Vol. 16, No. 1, January 2019 Available on the internet ftp://ftp. funet. fi/pub/crypt/steganography, Last Visited, 1999.

[10] Kanan H. and Nazeri B., “A Novel Image Steganography Scheme with High Embedding Capacity and Tunable Visual Image Quality based on A Genetic Algorithm,” Expert Systems with Applications, vol. 41, no. 14, pp. 6123-6130, 2014.

[11] Lee C. and Chen H., “A Novel Data Hiding Scheme based on Modulus Function,” Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 83, no. 5, pp. 832- 843, 2010.

[12] Liu C. and Liao S., “High-Performance JPEG Steganography using Complementary Embedding Strategy,” Pattern Recognition, vol. 41, no. 9, pp. 2945-2955, 2009.

[13] Nissar A. and Mir A., “Classification of Steganalysis Techniques: A Study,” Digit Signal Process, vol. 20, no. 6, pp. 1758-1770, 2010.

[14] Provos N., “Defending Against Statistical Steganalysis,” in Proceedings of the 10th USENIX Security Symposium, Washington, pp. 323-336, 2001.

[15] Stalling W., Cryptography and Network Security Principles and Practice, Pearson Education, 2007.

[16] Stinson D., Cryptography Theory and Practice, Chapman and Hall, CRC Publisher, 2006.

[17] Subhedar M. and Mankar V., “Current Status and Key Issues in Image Steganography: A Survey,” Computer Science Review, vol. 13-14, pp. 95- 113, 2014.

[18] Trappe W. and Washington L., Introduction to Cryptography with Coding Theory, Pearson Publisher, 2005.

[19] Wang R., Lin C., and Lin J., “Hiding Data in Images by Optimal Moderately-Significant-Bit Replacement,” Electronics Letters, vol. 36, no. 25, pp. 2069-2070, 2000.

[20] Wanga K., Lub Z., and Hua Y., “A High Capacity Lossless Data Hiding Scheme for JPEG Images,” Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 86, no. 7, pp. 1965-1975, 2013.

[21] Westfeld A. and Pfitzmann A., “Attacks on Steganographic Systems,” in Proceedings of 3rd International Workshop on Information Hiding, Dresden, pp. 61-76, 2000.

[22] Westfeld A., “F5- A Steganographic Algorithm: High Capacity Despite Better Steganalysis,” in Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Information Hiding, Springer, Pittsburgh, pp. 289-302. 2001.

[23] Wu D. and Tsai W., “A Steganographic Method for Images by Pixel-Value Differencing,” Pattern Recognition Letters, vol. 24, no. 9-10, pp. 1613- 1626, 2003.

[24] Yeh H., Gue S., Tsai P., and Shih W., “Wavelet Bit-Plane based Data Hiding for Compressed Images,” International Journal of Electronics and Communications, vol. 67, no. 9, pp. 808-815, 2013.

[25] Yu X., Wang Y., and Tan T., “On estimation of Secret Message length in JSteg-like Steganography,” in Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Cambridge, pp. 673-676, 2004.

[26] Zhang T. and Ping X., “A Fast and Effective Steganalytic Technique Against JSteg-like Algorithms,” in Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, Melbourne, pp. 307-311, 2003. Arup Kumar Pal is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of CSE, ISM Dhanbad, India. He did his Ph.D in CSE from ISM Dhanbad in 2011. His main research interest includes Vector Quantization, Image Compression, Image Cryptosystem, Steganography, Watermarking and CBIR. Kshiramani Naik is currently working as a full time Research Scholar in the Dept. of CSE, ISM, Dhanbad, India. She received her BE in CSE and M.Tech in CSE from BPUT Rourkela and NIT Rourkela respectively. Her research interest includes Image Cryptosystem, Steganography and Watermarking. Rohit Agarwal is currently working as an Assistant Professor at the Dept. of CSE, JSS ATE Noida (U.P.) India. He has completed his M.Tech degree in Computer Application from the ISM Dhanbad in 2013. His research interests include Digital Image Processing and Numerical Linear Algebra.