Information Hiding
and its Applications
Steganography and Watermarking
A detailed look at Steganography
   ◦ Text Steganography
   ◦ Hypertext Steganography
   ◦ Audio Steganography
   ◦ Image Steganography
   ◦ Steganography in Open System
Image Steganography Techniques
   ◦ Spatial Domain LSB Insertion
   ◦ Masking and Filtering
   ◦ DCT-based Steganography
   ◦ Wavelet-based Steganography
How to Detect Steganography
   ◦ Blind Detection
   ◦ Analytical Detection

• Overview Papers and Articles about Steganography and Steganalysis.
• Articles and Papers about Image-based Steganography Methods.
• Theses about Steganography and Steganalysis.
• Articles and Papers about Steganalysis.

• Image Steganography for Hidden Communication, by Lisa M. Marvel, 1999.
• Robust Techniques for Hiding Data in Images and Video, by Jong Jin Chae, 2000.
• Information Hiding in Digital Images: Watermarking and Steganography, by Po-Chyi Su, 2003.
• Image Data Hiding, by Zhicheng Ni, 2005.

Image Steganography for Hidden Communication

By Lisa &I. Marvel

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering Spring 1999.

ABSTRACT:

Modem steganographic met hods. which conceal the existence of communication, are needed to exploit contemporary modes of information exchange. Measures of performance for these methods are essential to compare specific algorithms and determine appropriate uses. This dissertation develops a methodology for stegane graphic data hiding. The methodology encompasses derivation of a general theory of steganographic communication, including theoretical capacity bounds. and design of an actual data-hiding technique that uses digital imagery as a cover. The technique promotes maximization of payload, allows error-free recovery of embedded data. and provides some resilience to removal while concealing the existence of the embedded information from the observer and the observer's resources. We begin the presentation of our work by reviewing ancient steganography and surveying relevant literature in the areas. From this review. the need for a general methodology and for performance met rics to compare steganographic techniques becomes evident. We address these needs by developing a general steganographic communication theory based on informat ion theory. and deriving theoretical bounds of capacity for one particulax class of steganographic systems. The capacity measure is then applied to image steganography resulting in a much needed performance metric. We then introduce a complete system for image steganography. entitled Spread Spectrum Image Steganography, that adheres to our primary goals of high payload, reliable recovery, robustness to removal, and imperceptibility. One component of this system, a covert modulation technique designed for improved detection

Robust Techniques for Hiding Data in Images and Video

By Jong Jin Chae

A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

ABSTRACT:

In this thesis we present a study and development of robust techniques for hiding data in images and video. In recent years, the internet and the world wide web have revolutionalized the way in which digital data is distributed. The widespread and easy access to multimedia content has motivated development of technologies for digital steganography or data hiding. Much of the recent work in data hiding is about copyright protection and authentication of multimedia data. Such digital watermarking typically require very few bits, and the objectives include robustness to attacks on the data. On the other hand, the primary goal of the research presented here is to deveIop techniques for hiding large amounts of multimedia data such as text, images, audio, and video, in images and video. In developing these techniques, emphasis is on robustness to signal compression as it is one of the mostly frequently performed signal processing operation on the data. The thesis presents new techniques for such data embedding using well known transforms such as the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). We utilize spread spectrum embedding and lattice encoding to hide signature data that is as much as 25% of the host data size. The signature data can be gray scale or color images or video sequences or audio data. The host signals explored include images and video. We demonstrate robustness to PEG and MPEG compression that include both lossless and iossy hidden data recovery. We present methods that do not need the original host data for signature signal recovery. The work presented here significantly advances the state of the art in multimedia data hiding, and has the potential of creating a whole new domain of applications including embedded control of multimedia data, smart multimedia objects, and video/audio quality control.

Information Hiding in Digital Images : Watermarking and Steganography

By Po-Chyi Su

A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School University of Southern  California in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of  Philosophy (Electrical Engineering).

ABSTRACT:

Information hiding in multimedia data has drawn a lot of attention in recent years. A message is hidden in digital images, video and audio in an imperceptible manner so as not to interfere with the normal usage of these host media files while its existence can be helpful for some interesting applications. The hidden information related to content protection is usually termed Digztal Watermark. The recent proliferation of the information-hiding research mostly comes from the development of digital watermarking techniques to meet the pressing need of content protection. The other interesting application is to transmit a large volume of data covertly in a multimedia file via information hiding. The objective in this application is to conceal the very existence of the hidden information using the innocuous multimedia data as a camouflage. Data hiding under this scenario is often termed Steganography, which literally means "covered writing." In this research, we focus on information hiding in digital images. The dissertation consists of two major parts. In the first part, we investigate information hiding in the state-of-the-art still image codec, JPEG-2000. A joint compression/watermarking scheme is proposed for the copyright protection purpose. Next, we consider steganography in JPEG-2000. Algorithms are developed to ensure that a high volume of data can be hidden reliably in JPEG-2000 compressed images. In the second part, we aim at solving a very challenging problem in digital image watermarking, i.e., synchronized detection under geometrical modifications. In order to derive a robust watermarking scheme resilient to affine transformations, we propose to embed a structural grid signal into digital images for synchronized watermark detection. A spatial-frequency composite watermarking scheme is designed so that the watermark can survive attacks such as rotation, scaling and cropping, etc. A perceptual watermarking scheme using block-based DCT methodology is also developed. It turns out that grid embeddingldetection is of great help in developing generalized block-based watermarking as well. Finally, the dissertation ends with some concluding remarks and some future research topics as an extension of our current research.

Image Data Hiding

By Zhicheng Ni

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of New Jersey Institute of Technology in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering January 2005.

ABSTRACT:

Image data hiding represents a class of processes used to embed data into cover images. Robustness is one of the basic requirements for image data hiding. In the first part of this dissertation, 2D and 3D interleaving techniques associated with error-correctioncode (ECC) are proposed to significantly improve the robustness of hidden data against burst errors. In most cases, the cover image cannot be inverted back to the original image after the hidden data are retrieved. In this dissertation, one novel reversible (lossless) data hiding technique is then introduced. This technique is based on the histogram modification, which can embed a large amount of data while keeping a very high visual quality for all images. The performance is hence better than most existing reversible data hiding algorithms. However, most of the existing lossless data hiding algorithms are fragile in the sense that the hidden data cannot be extracted correctly after compression or small alteration. In the last part of this dissertation, we then propose a novel robust lossless data hiding technique based on patchwork idea and spatial domain pixel modification. This technique does not generate annoying salt-pepper noise at all, which is unavoidable in the other existing robust lossless data hiding algorithm. This technique has been successfully applied to many commonly used images, thus demonstrating its generality.