USAD: undetectable steganographic approach in DCT domain

ABSTRACT

In this work, we propose a new adaptive chaotic steganographic method based on the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and a reversible mapping function. The mapping function is used to map the secret bits into their corresponding symbols. This mapping technique has to preserve the same dynamics, properties and distribution of the original DCT coefficients. The novelty of our approach is based on the adaptive selection phase of embedding spots. This selection is established through a blindness condition which is applied over each image of the database. The proposed embedding scheme within the middle DCT coefficients shows lower probability of detection and higher flexibility in extraction. We evaluate the detection of our method using the Ensemble Classifiers and a set of frequency and spatial domain feature extractors such as the Spatial domain Rich Model (SRM) features, Chen et al.'s 486-dimensional both inter- and intra-block Markov-based features and Liu's 216-dimensional adaptive steganography-based features.

KEYWORDS:

• Adaptive steganography
• binary classification
• feature extraction
• Discrete Cosine Transform
• non-linear scrambled embedding
• reversible mapping

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Marwa Saidi is a PhD holder, she worked under the supervision of Dr. Rhouma Rhouma. She received her engineering's degree in ‘Telecommunication & Networks’ at the National Engineering School of Gabes (ENIG) in 2013, and joined the Department of Telecommunications in 2014 at the National Engineering School of Tunis (ENIT). Her main research interests are Multimedia Steganography and Steganalysis.

Dr. Olfa Mannai is a Post-doc researcher at RISC laboratory in the National Engineering School of Tunis, University of Tunis El Manar.

Dr. Houcemeddine Hermassi has received his engineering diploma in ‘Telecommunication & Networks’ in 2005 at the National Engineering School of Gabes (ENIG), Tunisia, his Masters degree in ‘Communication Systems’ in 2010 and his Phd in ‘Telecommunications’ in 2015 at the National Engineering School of Tunis ENIT, Tunisia. He is now a Professor Assistant at the National Engineering School of Carthage ENI-CAR and a senior researcher in the National Engineering School of Tunis (ENIT), Tunisia. His current research primarily involves the cryptanalysis and the conception of the new multimedia cryptographic approaches like the chaos-based cryptography and the DNA cryptography.

Dr. Rhouma Rhouma obtained his engineering degree in ‘Telecommunications’ in 2003 and in 2004 his Masters degree in ‘Communications Systems’. He received his Phd at the National Engineering School of Tunis (ENIT) in 2008. He is now a Professor Assistant at the Higher School of Digital Economy (ESEN), Tunisia and a senior researcher in the National Engineering School of Tunis ENIT, Tunisia. His current research involves the application of chaos in the cryptography and cryptanalysis of chaos-based algorithms, stganographie and watermarking.

Prof. Safya Belghith has received her engineering diploma in ‘Electricity’ (1981) and his D.E.A (1982) and the Phd degree (1985) in ‘Automatic and Signal Processing’ at the Higher School of Electricity, Signals & Systems Laboratory, Paris-Sud University Orsay. In 1997, she had received her Doctoral degree in ‘Physical Sciences’ from the Faculty of Sciences Tunis FST with collaboration of Signals & Systems Laboratory, Higher School of Electricity, Paris-Sud University Orsay. She is now a Professor at the National Engineering School of Tunis (ENIT), Tunisia and a senior researcher at Syscom Laboratory at ENIT, Tunisia. Her research interests include the analysis of nonlinear systems and chaotic communication, the generation of the pseudo-random sequences from chaotic systems and studying their performance in mobile radio communications particularly in a DS/CDMA and on the Synchronization of chaotic systems and its application to secure the transmission by chaotic carrier - Cryptography.

ORCID

Marwa Saidi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2486-9750

Rhouma Rhouma http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5715-4110