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CSST-Net: an arbitrary image style transfer network of coverless steganography

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Abstract

A traditional image steganography embeds secret information into a cover image to generate a secret-embedded image. The modification traces imposed on the cover image can be easily detected by steganalysis tools. Coverless steganography has been introduced to solve this problem. In this study, coverless steganography is combined with image style transfer, an arbitrary image style transfer network CSST-Net is put forward, and a secret information is encoded into the parameters (an adaptive steganography matrix) of CSST-Net, which is used to restrict the style transfer. Arbitrary image style transfer is performed instructed by the adaptive steganography matrix, and the image style transfer result driven by secret information is directly synthesized. Our experiments show that CSST-Net can not only synthesize any image style transfer result with good visual effect, but also achieve good performance in capacity, anti-steganalysis and security.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 61802101 and in part by the Public Welfare Technology and Industry Project of Zhejiang Provincial Science Technology Department under Grant Nos. LGG18F020013 and LGG19F020016.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, 310018, China

    Shanqing Zhang, Shengqi Su, Li Li, Jianfeng Lu & Qili Zhou

  2. Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan

    Chin-Chen Chang

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  1. Shanqing Zhang
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  2. Shengqi Su
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  3. Li Li
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  4. Jianfeng Lu
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Correspondence to Li Li.

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Zhang, S., Su, S., Li, L. et al. CSST-Net: an arbitrary image style transfer network of coverless steganography. Vis Comput 38, 2125–2137 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-021-02272-6

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