Efficient JPEG Batch Steganography Using Intrinsic Energy of Image Contents

• Published in: IEEE transactions on information forensics and security 2021, Vol.16, p.4544-4558
• Main Authors: Hu, Xianglei, Ni, Jiangqun, Zhang, Weizhe, Huang, Jiwu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Batch steganography; Discrete cosine transforms; Distortion; Energy measurement; Image compression; Image storage; Image transmission; JPEG encoders-decoders; JPEG steganography; payload allocation; Payloads; Q factors; Resource management; Security; signal energy; Steganography; Transform coding
• ISSN: 1556-6013; 1556-6021
• DOI: 10.1109/TIFS.2021.3109464

Batch steganography aims at properly allocating a large payload to multiple covers, so as to keep the whole covert communication at a satisfactory level of security. JPEG is currently one of the most widely used formats for image storage and transmission. This paper presents an efficient JPEG batch steganographic scheme, which allocates the payload in a linear manner w.r.t. a new heuristic measure - the intrinsic energy of JPEG image contents, in which more concerns are with the high frequency components, and the proposed measure could also be easily generalized to cover selection in batch steganographic applications. And a calibration strategy is elaborately designed to balance the security level when JPEG covers of various QFs are involved in JPEG batch steganography. In this way, the proposed scheme can effectively resolve the problem that the statistical undetectability fluctuates dramatically w.r.t. the size and quality factor when the batch set is involved with various image parameters, and consequently maintains the overall security of the practical JPEG batch steganographic system. Experimental results show that the proposed method exhibits security performance superior or comparable to the state-of-the-art batch schemes while maintaining a low computational cost.