Privacy Preserving Image Transmission Using Random Pattern Mosaic Images Steganography
Abstract : In this digital world, transferring sensitive data electronically has become inevitable. The objective of this work is to hide and retrieve confidential information in image mosaics. The photo mosaic approach has been used for the creation of the mosaic and the least significant bit (LSB) technique has been adopted for the embedding of the hidden information. The construction of the photo mosaic is done by selecting an image, splitting it into smaller images (tiles) of sizes 8x8, 16x16 and 32x32. These tiles are then compared from a very large amount of photos of the same sizes. Next, the user can either hide a secret image or a secret text into them. The final mosaic image contains secret information that is well-concealed and is impossible to find out with the naked eye. This technique is more robust compared to modifying the bits of the original image directly.
In the paper by the ref., the authors Lai and Tsai propose novel method of embedding the secret image in tile form into the target image in tile form, maintaining the visibility of the original target image selected by greedy search algorithm from the predefined database of target images. Images are divided into tiles of equal size in matrix form of an image file with the help of MATLAB code. The h feature histogram values of every tile is extracted and embedded onto the matching tile of target image space, which is a random location in the target image .This is called mosaic information hiding. Based on any random techniques shuffles the tiles again for security. Embedding the tile fitting information.
There is a high transmission risk because holding noise-like shares will cause attackers‘suspicion and the shares may be intercepted. Thus, the risk to both the participants and the shares increases, in turn increasing the probability of transmission failure.
The meaningless shares are not user friendly. As the number of shares increases, it becomes more difficult to manage the shares, which never provide any information for identifying the shares.
The system uses genetic algorithm for gaining additional security and robustness. In addition to this algorithm, we use another algorithm called KBRP. This algorithm helps to generate a random permuted sequence. The permutation is generated from certain key (alphanumeric string) by considering all the elements of this given key in the generation process.
• The first advantage is that the proposed schemes hard-to-notice, a fact that is promoted by using only three LSBs in every color component, in addition to a well-structured English text to convey secret data. It is by using only three LSBs to hide data, ensures that no visual artifacts are to be produced in the carrier image. Likewise, agrammaticallycorrect text lowers suspicions and totally obscures the fact that secret communication is taking place.
• The second advantage is that the proposed scheme is hard-to-detect, a fact that is promoted by selecting the carrier pixels in a random manner. Using random pixels shuffles the secret data and scatters them all over the carrier image. That way, no one apart from the holder of the English text, the lexicon, and the decoding algorithm can know how to extract the secret data out the carrier image.
• The thirdadvantageis that the proposed scheme is hard-to-recover, a fact that is promoted by using two mediums to deliver the secret data, mainly the carrier image and the English text. As a result, the scheme is less susceptible to steno-analysis attacks as third parties often assume that the secret data are hidden inane medium and not between two mediums that complement each other. Using the proposed scheme, the sender can first send one of the mediums, and then later on, send the other one.
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