An Advanced Least-Significant-Bit Embedding Scheme for Steganographic Encoding

Authors: Yeuan-Kuen Lee, Graeme Bell, Shih-Yu Huang, Ran-Zan Wang and Shyong Jian Shyu

The 3rd Pacific-Rim Symposium on Image and Video Technology ( PSIVT 2009 )
Tokyo, Japan, January 13th - 16th, 2009
Official Website: http://psivt2009.nii.ac.jp/

Abstract

The advantages of Least-Significant-Bit (LSB) steganographic data embedding are that it is simple to understand, easy to implement, and it results in stego-images that contain hidden data yet appear to be of high visual fidelity. However, it can be shown that under certain conditions, LSB embedding is not secure at all. The fatal drawback of LSB embedding is the existence of detectable artifacts in the form of pairs of values (PoVs). The goals of this paper are to present a theoretic analysis of PoVs and to propose an advanced LSB embedding scheme that possesses the advantages of LSB embedding suggested above, but which also provides an additional level of communication security. The proposed scheme breaks the regular pattern of PoVs in the histogram domain, increasing the difficulty of steganalysis and thereby raising the level of security. The experimental results show that both the Chi-square index and RS index are less than 0.1, i.e., the hidden message is undetectable by the well-known Chi-square and RS steganalysis attacks.



這篇就是我們即將在 PSIVT 2009 發表的論文, 其實內容就是 95 學年度 國科會計畫 的結案報告改寫成論文發表。

國科會計畫編號: NSC 95-2221-E-130-014
最低位元嵌入法的修正模型與安全分析
A Modified LSB Embedding Scheme of Steganography and its Security Analysis
執行期間: 2006/08/01 ～ 2007/10/31
計劃書中文摘要下載:

Comments of Reviewer 1

SUMMARY AND CONTRIBUTIONS: This paper proposed an improved LSB steganographic method. The contribution is that both the Chi-square and RS steganalysis attacks can be resisted.
OVERALL EVALUATION: 7 (strong accept)

COMMENTS ON OVERALL EVALUATION: LSB-basd embedding methods seem to be impractical because an image is usually compressed before transmission.
ORIGINALITY: 3 (moderately original)
REFERENCE TO PRIOR WORK: 4 (excellent reference to prior work)
RELEVANCE/IMPORTANCE TO PSIVT: 3 (of sufficient interest)
CLARITY OF PRESENTATION: 3 (is clear enough)
TECHNICAL CORRECTNESS: 3 (probably correct)
EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION: 4 (sufficient evaluation or theoretical paper)

Comments of Reviewer 2

SUMMARY AND CONTRIBUTIONS: The author(s) of this paper touch(es) on the simplicity of least significant bit (LSB) embedding and highlight(s) its weakness in the form of pairs of values (PoVs) as steganographic encoding artifacts. A new technique using pseudorandom number generator (PRNG) is employed in an algorithm to modify the method of embedding the secret message bits in the LSB of the target image. This method breaks the correlation between the frequency of these pairs of values commonly caused by LSB embedding. The result of the paper is promising and shows resistance to both the Chi-square and RS steganalysis attacks.

OVERALL EVALUATION: 7 (strong accept)

COMMENTS ON OVERALL EVALUATION: This paper establishes a good model for analysing the effect of PoVs and ventures from there to find a method to avoid the pitfalls of LSB embedding by captilising on the property of pseudorandom number generator. The proposed algorithm effectively prevents successful attacks from both Chi-square and RS steganalysis.

ORIGINALITY: 4 (very original)
REFERENCE TO PRIOR WORK: 3 (references adequate)
RELEVANCE/IMPORTANCE TO PSIVT: 3 (of sufficient interest)
CLARITY OF PRESENTATION: 4 (easy to read)
TECHNICAL CORRECTNESS: 3 (probably correct)
EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION: 4 (sufficient evaluation or theoretical paper)

Comments of Reviewer 3

SUMMARY AND CONTRIBUTIONS: The Least-significant-bit embedding method is well-known technique in data embedding field, however, this paper proposes an advanced LSB embedding method to improve the lack of traditional LSB embedded method. And the experimental results are enough to verify the goals. The paper is esay to read and understand.

OVERALL EVALUATION: 6 (accept)

COMMENTS ON OVERALL EVALUATION: This system is valuable to data embeddubg scheme.

ORIGINALITY: 3 (moderately original)
REFERENCE TO PRIOR WORK: 3 (excellent reference to prior work)
RELEVANCE/IMPORTANCE TO PSIVT: 3 (of sufficient interest)
CLARITY OF PRESENTATION: 4 (references adequate)
TECHNICAL CORRECTNESS: 3 (probably correct)
EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION: 4 (sufficient evaluation or theoretical paper)

Comments of Reviewer 4

SUMMARY AND CONTRIBUTIONS: The paper describes a known weakness of LSB embedding, and proposes two counter measures.

OVERALL EVALUATION: 4 (borderline)

COMMENTS ON OVERALL EVALUATION: The main idea is simple and interesting. However, there are many methods proposed in the past few years and I'm not sure whether the method described here have been studied before. Furthermore, there is a problem with the boundary cases, pixels with value 0 and 255. Using the proposed method will create artifacts that look like salt and pepper noise.

ORIGINALITY: 2 (minor originality)
REFERENCE TO PRIOR WORK: 3 (refer)
RELEVANCE/IMPORTANCE TO PSIVT: 3 (of sufficient interest)
CLARITY OF PRESENTATION: 3 (is clear enough)
TECHNICAL CORRECTNESS: 3 (probably correct)
EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION: 4 (sufficient evaluation or theoretical paper)

PSIVT 2009 received 247 submissions, and accepted 40 papers for oral presentations and 58 for poster presentations. The acceptance rate is slightly less than 40%.