High-capacity reversible data hiding in encrypted image based on specific encryption process

This paper proposes a novel reversible data hiding method in encrypted images based on specific encryption process. In the proposed specific encryption algorithm, the stream cipher and prediction error are combined to vacate room for data embedding. After that, a permutation operation is performed on the encrypted image to improve the security. In the embedding process, we can embed a large amount of secret data in the encrypted image by pixel value expansion because most of the pixel values are less than 128 by the specific encryption process. At the receiver end, the encrypted image can be recovered from the marked encrypted image without knowing the secret data. Therefore, even if the recipient only has the encryption key, the original image will be perfectly recovered. If the recipient only has the data-hiding key, the secret data will be extracted. And if the recipient has both keys, the original image and the secret data are both available. The proposed method achieves a higher embedding capacity than that of methods based on vacating room after encryption. It does not require the image owner to perform reversible data hiding techniques on the original image, which is more convenient than methods based on reserving room before encryption. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms other state-of-the-art methods.     

Reversal of pixel rotation: A reversible data hiding system towards cybersecurity in encrypted images

Due to privacy and security concerns, the researches of reversible data hiding in encrypted images (RDHEI) have become increasingly important. Conventional schemes vacate the spare room after image encryption (VRAE) suffer from the low embedding rate, high error rate of data extraction, and imperfect image recovery. To address these issues, we propose a separable reversible data hiding scheme for encrypted images that utilizes a novel pixel rotation technique to embed data into fully encrypted images. The block complexities of four decrypted rotation states are considered when recovering image. To realize perfect image recovery, we further devise a lossless version (LPR-RDHEI). Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed PR-RDHEI scheme achieves an embedding rate of 0.4994 bpp on average and ensures lossless data extraction. Meanwhile, the proposed LPR-RDHEI scheme still has a 0.4494 bpp embedding rate on average. The embedding rates of our two schemes are significantly improved compared with state-of-the-arts.     

Improved joint reversible data hiding in encrypted images

This paper proposes an improved method of reversible data hiding in encrypted images (RDH-EI). Three parties constitute the proposed system: the image owner, the remote server and the recipient. To preserve privacy, an image owner encrypts the original image using a stream cipher algorithm and uploads the ciphertext to a remote server. On server side, a data-hider is allowed to embed additional message into the encrypted image using a swapping/shifting based algorithm. After downloading the marked encrypted image from the server and implementing the decryption, a recipient can extract the hidden messages and losslessly recover the original image. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves a larger payload than the related works. Meanwhile, a limitation in the related works that few bits can be embedded into the encrypted medical images is also eliminated in the proposed method.     

A ROI-based reversible data hiding scheme in encrypted medical images

A novel ROI-based reversible data hiding scheme in encrypted medical images is proposed. Firstly, a content owner partitions an original medical image into the region of interest (ROI) and the region of noninterest (RONI), and then encrypts the image using an encryption key. A data-hider concatenates the least significant bits (LSB) of the encrypted ROI and Electronic Patient Record (EPR), and then embeds the concatenated data into the encrypted image by LSB substitution algorithm. With the encrypted medical image containing the embedded data, the receiver can extract the embedded data with the data-hiding key; if the receiver has the encryption key, a medical image similar to the original image can be obtained by directly decrypting the encrypted medical image; if the receiver has both the data-hiding key and the encryption key, the embedded data can be extracted without any error and ROI can be losslessly recovered after extracting the embedded data.     

Separable reversible data hiding in encrypted image based on pixel value ordering and additive homomorphism

This work proposes a separable reversible data hiding scheme in encrypted images based on pixel value ordering (PVO). After the original image is encrypted using homomorphism encryption by the content owner, the data hider embeds the secret data in encrypted domain. The PVO strategy realizes hiding data in each block. Additive homomorphism guarantees the performance of PVO in encrypted domain is close to that in plain domain. Besides, the homomorphism encryption does not cause data expansion, and the payload can be further improved. With the watermarked encrypted image, if the receiver has only the data hiding key, he can extract the additional data. If the receiver has only the encryption key, he can obtain a decrypted image similar to the original one. If the receiver has both the data hiding key and the encryption key, he can extract the additional data without any error and recover the original image losslessly.     

High-capacity reversible data hiding in encrypted images based on adaptive block encoding

This paper proposes a new high-capacity reversible data hiding scheme in encrypted images. The content owner first divides the cover image into blocks. Then, the block permutation and the bitwise stream cipher processes are applied to encrypt the image. Upon receiving the encrypted image, the data hider analyzes the image blocks and adaptively decides an optimal block-type labeling strategy. Based on the adaptive block encoding, the image is compressed to vacate the spare room, and the secret data are encrypted and embedded into the spare space. According to the granted authority, the receiver can restore the cover image, extract the secret data, or do both. Experimental results show that the embedding capacity of the proposed scheme outperforms state-of-the-art schemes. In addition, security level and robustness of the proposed scheme are also investigated.     

An efficient high-capacity reversible data hiding scheme for encrypted images

Reversible data hiding in encrypted images is an effective technique to embed information in encrypted domain, without knowing the original content of the image or the encryption key. In this paper, a high-capacity reversible data hiding scheme for encrypted images based on MSB (most significant bit) prediction is proposed. Since the prediction is not always accurate, it is necessary to identify the prediction error and store this information in the location map. The stream cipher is then used to encrypt the original image directly. During the data hiding phase, up to three MSBs of each available pixel in the encrypted image are substituted by the bits of the secret message. At the receiving end, the embedded data can be extracted without any errors and the original image can be perfectly reconstructed by utilizing MSB prediction. Experimental results show that the scheme can achieve higher embedding capacity than most related methods.     

Efficient reversible data hiding in encrypted images

This paper proposes a novel scheme of reversible data hiding in encrypted images based on lossless compression of encrypted data. In encryption phase, a stream cipher is used to mask the original content. Then, a data hider compresses a part of encrypted data in the cipher-text image using LDPC code, and inserts the compressed data as well as the additional data into the part of encrypted data itself using efficient embedding method. Since the majority of encrypted data are kept unchanged, the quality of directly decrypted image is satisfactory. A receiver with the data-hiding key can successfully extract the additional data and the compressed data. By exploiting the compressed data and the side information provided by the unchanged data, the receiver can further recover the original plaintext image without any error. Experimental result shows that the proposed scheme significantly outperforms the previous approaches.     

Reversible data hiding for encrypted signals by homomorphic encryption and signal energy transfer

Reversible data hiding for encrypted signals with prefect reconstruction of directly decrypted signals is introduced in this paper. Each unit in the original image is separated into three components by energy transfer equation, and each component is encrypted by Paillier homomorphic encryption. Additional bits are concealed into the encrypted image by manipulating the encrypted signals. Finally, the original image can be perfectly recovered when direct decryption is applied. The embedded bits are lossless extracted as well. Optimal visual quality and improved embedding rate are obtained by the proposed approach, since the value of the directly decrypted unit is the same as the original one. Experimental results and comparisons are demonstrated to illustrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed method. Moreover, the proposed method can be extended to deal with encoded multimedia, which further enriches the application scenarios.     

High capacity reversible data hiding in encrypted images using SIBRW and GCC

In this paper, a reversible data hiding in encrypted images (RDHEI) method combining GCC (group classification encoding) and SIBRW containing sixteen image-based rearrangement ways is proposed to achieve high-capacity data embedding in encrypted images. Each way of SIBRW aims at bringing strongly-correlated bits of each higher bit-plane together by rearranging each higher bit-plane. For each higher bit-plane, the optimal way achieving the most concentrated aggregation performance is selected from SIBRW to rearrange this bit-plane, and then, GCC compresses the rearranged bit-plane in group-by-group manner. By making full use of strong-correlation between adjacent groups, GCC can compress not only consecutive several groups whose bits are valued 1 (or 0) but also a single group so that a large embedding space is provided. The encryption method including the bit-level XOR-encryption and scrambling operations enhances the security. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme can achieve large embedding capacity and high security.     

Reversible data hiding in encrypted images based on absolute mean difference of multiple neighboring pixels

Recently, with the development of cloud computing, more and more secret data are stored in cloud. Reversible data hiding in encrypted images is a technique that makes contribution to cloud data management in privacy preserving and data security. In previous works, Zhang and Hong presented two reversible dada hiding methods in encrypted images, respectively. However, Zhang’s work neglected the pixels in the borders of image blocks, and Hong et al.’s research only considered two adjacent pixels of each pixel. In addition, their works only considered that all image blocks are embedded into additional data. In this paper, we propose a novel method of evaluating the complexity of image blocks, which considers multiple neighboring pixels according to the locations of different pixels. Furthermore, data embedding ratio is considered. Experiments show that this novel method can reduce average extracted-bit error rate when the block size is appropriate.     

Reversible data hiding in encrypted color images using cross-channel correlations

In recent years, the increasing requirements in cloud storage and cloud computing have made it necessary to encrypt digital images for privacy protection. Meanwhile, many reversible data hiding (RDH) algorithms in the encrypted domain have been proposed. However, most of these algorithms are for gray-level images, and the intrinsic cross-channel correlations of color images cannot be utilized to improve the embedding capacity. In this paper, we propose a novel data hiding method for encrypted color images. In the encryption stage, the homomorphic property of encryption is achieved by basic modular addition. During the data hiding process, the cross-channel correlations between R, G and B channels are generated in encrypted domain, and data hiding is performed by the difference histogram shifting. Analysis and experiments demonstrate that the proposed method is secure and the RDH performance is superior.     

Privacy-preserving reversible data hiding based on quad-tree block encoding and integer wavelet transform

Applications on the cloud server have matured, and protecting the privacy of the content owner has attracted more attention. Privacy-Preserving Reversible data hiding (PP-RDH) is an efficient technique for embedding additional data into an encrypted image. In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving reversible data hiding scheme using the quad-tree partition and Integer Wavelet Transform (IWT) techniques. Our scheme focuses on improving the embedding rate and quality of the recovered image when a 2 × 2-sized, block-based image encryption method is applied to ensure relative higher security. On this basis, the IWT technique transforms the encrypted image, and coefficients in three high frequency subbands are converted into 8-bit binary system. Then, the quad-tree partition technique encodes each 8 × 8-sized coefficient block, since there are many zeroes in the front bit planes. The experimental results indicated that our proposed scheme significantly improved the embedding rate, and guaranteed lossless image recovery and data extraction.     

Reversible data hiding in encrypted images with separability and high embedding capacity

In this paper, a high-capacity reversible data hiding (RDH) scheme for encrypted images with separability is proposed. The image is first divided into non-overlapping blocks, and each block is encrypted with the same random value. The advantage is that the correlation between adjacent pixels can be preserved. Utilizing the preserved correlation, the prediction difference in encrypted domain is exactly the same as that of plaintext domain, so that the separability can be achieved. Without accessing the original image content, the data-hider can embed additional data into encrypted image through histogram shifting and difference expansion. At the receiving end, the embedded additional data and the original image can be recovered without any error in separable manner. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed scheme.     

On the multi-level embedding of crypto-image reversible data hiding

Crypto-space reversible image steganography has attracted increasing attention, given its ability to embed authentication information without revealing the image content. This paper presents an efficient reversible data hiding scheme for crypto-images: a block predictor is applied to compute prediction errors, then an adaptive block mapping algorithm is utilized to compress them whose amplitudes are within a small threshold, finally, this strategy can be applied in a multi-level manner to achieve a higher embedding capacity. Due to the correlations among adjacent pixels in the block, images can be sufficiently compressed to reserve abundant space for additional data embedding. Different from the prior arts, the compression code of the image is fully encrypted. Experimental results verify that the embedded data and original image can be perfectly recovered, the security is higher compared with the state-of-the-arts, and a significant improvement in the average embedding rate is achieved on two large-scale image datasets.     

Adaptive reversible data hiding for JPEG images with multiple two-dimensional histograms

Joint photographic experts group (JPEG) can provide good quality with small file size but also eliminate extensively the redundancies of images. Therefore, hiding data into JPEG images in terms of maintaining high visual quality at small file sizes has been a great challenge for researchers. In this paper, an adaptive reversible data hiding method for JPEG images containing multiple two-dimensional (2D) histograms is proposed. Adaptability is mainly reflected in three aspects. The first one is to preferentially select sharper histograms for data embedding after $K$ histograms are established by constructing the $k$th ($k\in \{1,2,\dots ,K\}$) histogram using the $k$th non-zero alternating current (AC) coefficient of all the quantized discrete cosine transform blocks. On the other hand, to fully exploit the strong correlation between coefficients of one histogram, the smoothness of each coefficient is estimated by a block smoothness estimator so that a sharply-distributed 2D-histogram is constructed by combining two coefficients with similar smoothness into a pair. The pair corresponding to low complexity is selected priorly for data embedding, leading to high embedding performance while maintaining low file size. Besides, we design multiple embedding strategies to adaptively select the embedding strategy for each 2D histogram. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve higher rate–distortion performance which maintaining lower file storage space, compared with previous studies.     

Encrypted signal-based reversible data hiding with public key cryptosystem

Encrypted image-based reversible data hiding (EIRDH) is a well-known method allowing that (1) the image provider gives the data hider an encrypted image, (2) the data hider embeds the secret message into it to generate the encrypted image with the embedded secret message to the receiver, and (3) finally the receiver can extract the message and recover the original image without encryption. In the literature, the data hider and image provider must be specific parties who know the shared key with the receiver in traditional encrypted image-based reversible data hiding. In this paper, we propose an encrypted signal-based reversible data hiding (ESRDH) with public key cryptosystem, not only for images. The proposed scheme is secure based on Paillier homomorphic encryption. Finally, the experimental results show that the proposed scheme has much payload and high signal quality.     

基于编码压缩和加密的图像可逆信息隐藏算法

提出一种编码压缩和加密的图像可逆信息隐藏算 法。计算载体像素预测值与其像素值的差值, 对差值进行哈夫曼编码压缩,通过压缩数据和随机数据加密重构图像,得到载体数据。将哈 夫曼编码的码 表和秘密信息隐藏在载体数据中,实现信息隐藏。在载密数据中提取码表数据和秘密信息, 对加密压缩数 据进行解密,结合码表和预测方法恢复原始图像。实验结果表明,本文算法具有较大的隐藏 容量,不仅能 正确提取秘密信息,还能无损恢复原始图像。     

A comparative study between PVO-based framework and multi-predictor mechanism in reversible data hiding

Sorting-based reversible data hiding (RDH) methods like pixel-value-ordering (PVO) can predict pixel values accurately and achieve an extremely low distortion on the embedded image. However, the excellent performance of these methods was not well explained in previous works, and there are unexploited common points among them. In this paper, we propose a general multi-predictor (GMP) framework to summarize PVO-based RDH methods and explain their high prediction accuracy. Moreover, by utilizing the proposed GMP framework, a more efficient sorting-based RDH method is given as an example to show the generality and applicability of our framework. Comparing with other PVO-based methods, the proposed example method can achieve significant improvement in embedding performance. It is hopeful that more efficient sorting-based RDH algorithms can be designed according to our proposed framework by designing better predictors and their combination methods.     

SARDH: A novel sharpening-aware reversible data hiding algorithm

Reversible data hiding (RDH) algorithms allow data protection and exact recovery of the original cover image upon data extraction. Most of RDH algorithms attempt to embed data while maintaining high peak signal-to-noise ratio. However, it has been deemed recently that some applications may demand improving the image contrast while embedding data. Additionally, stego images with better contrast could be less attractive to attacker, given the fact they have no idea about the original cover image. In this paper, we propose a sharpening-aware RDH (SARDH) algorithm that is capable of embedding significant amount of data in addition to sharpening the image. Experimental results proved the ability of SARDH algorithm in embedding large payloads and providing sharper stego images.