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Blind image steganography algorithm development which resistant against JPEG compression attack

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Abstract

Digital image steganography is now one of the effective methods for exchanging confidential information over the public network. One of the major challenges is to protect secret data embedded in to image against JPEG compression. This paper introduces a new method for image steganography which immune to JPEG compression with 100% retrieval rate of secret information up to 8192 bits payload with maintaining good Imperceptibility. The proposed algorithm is developed using DC coefficients of Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) technique that resistant against lossy JPEG compression attack. The proposed algorithm can belong to the image realization steganography in which instead of actually embedding secret information directly to the cover image, key is derived with the combination of secret message and cover image and then the key is embed in the MSBs of the DC values in the selected blocks of DCT. The simulation test environment is used to perform a number of experiments on a standard dataset and to compare results with existing research. Standard parameters such as PSNR, Payload, BPP, SSIM and NCC are considered to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Efficiency of proposed work has been corroborated by conducting different experiments on various types of other attacks as well. Our proposed algorithm is surviving under JPEG compression attack for any quality factor range from 10 to 90.

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Abbreviations

C.I:

Cover image

S.M.:

Secret image

S.I.:

Stego image

DCT:

Discrete cosine transform

Q.F.:

Quality factor

DC:

Direct current

AC:

Alternate current

C.S.I:

Compressed stego image

PSNR:

Peak signal to noise ratio

BER:

Bits error rate

SSIM:

Structure similarity index

NCC:

Normalized cross correlation

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UCCC & SPBCBA & SDHG College of BCA and IT, Affiliated to VNSGU, Surat, India

    Darshan Mehta

  2. Uka Tarsadia University, Bardoli, India

    Dharmendra Bhatti

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  1. Darshan Mehta
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  2. Dharmendra Bhatti
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Correspondence to Darshan Mehta.

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Mehta, D., Bhatti, D. Blind image steganography algorithm development which resistant against JPEG compression attack. Multimed Tools Appl 81, 459–479 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-021-11351-8

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