Open Access

ARTICLE

An Image Steganography Algorithm Based on Quantization Index Modulation Resisting Scaling Attacks and Statistical Detection

Yue Zhang¹, Dengpan Ye², Junjun Gan¹, Zhenyu Li³, Qingfeng Cheng^1,*

1 State Key Laboratory of Mathematical Engineering and Advanced Computing, Zhengzhou 450001, China.
2 Computer School of Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
3 Department of Computer Science, University of York, York YO10 5GH, UK .

* Corresponding Author: Qingfeng Cheng. Email: .

Computers, Materials & Continua 2018, 56(1), 151-167. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmc.2018.02464

Abstract

In view of the fact that the current adaptive steganography algorithms are difficult to resist scaling attacks and that a method resisting scaling attack is only for the nearest neighbor interpolation method, this paper proposes an image steganography algorithm based on quantization index modulation resisting both scaling attacks and statistical detection. For the spatial image, this paper uses the watermarking algorithm based on quantization index modulation to extract the embedded domain. Then construct the embedding distortion function of the new embedded domain based on S-UNIWARD steganography, and use the minimum distortion coding to realize the embedding of the secret messages. Finally, according to the embedding modification amplitude of secret messages in the new embedded domain, the quantization index modulation algorithm is applied to realize the final embedding of secret messages in the original embedded domain. The experimental results show that the algorithm proposed is robust to the three common interpolation attacks including the nearest neighbor interpolation, the bilinear interpolation and the bicubic interpolation. And the average correct extraction rate of embedded messages increases from 50% to over 93% after 0.5 times-fold scaling attack using the bicubic interpolation method, compared with the classical steganography algorithm S-UNIWARD. Also the algorithm proposed has higher detection resistance than the original watermarking algorithm based on quantization index modulation.

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Keywords

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