Open Access

ARTICLE

Reversible Video Steganography Using Quick Response Codes and Modified ElGamal Cryptosystem

Ramadhan J. Mstafa^1,2,*

1 Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, University of Zakho, Duhok, 42002, Kurdistan Region, Iraq
2 Department of Computer Science, College of Science, Nawroz University, Duhok, 42001, Kurdistan Region, Iraq

* Corresponding Author: Ramadhan J. Mstafa. Email:

Computers, Materials & Continua 2022, 72(2), 3349-3368. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2022.025791

Received 05 December 2021; Accepted 16 February 2022; Issue published 29 March 2022

Abstract

The rapid transmission of multimedia information has been achieved mainly by recent advancements in the Internet's speed and information technology. In spite of this, advancements in technology have resulted in breaches of privacy and data security. When it comes to protecting private information in today's Internet era, digital steganography is vital. Many academics are interested in digital video because it has a great capability for concealing important data. There have been a vast number of video steganography solutions developed lately to guard against the theft of confidential data. The visual imperceptibility, robustness, and embedding capacity of these approaches are all challenges that must be addressed. In this paper, a novel solution to reversible video steganography based on Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Quick Response (QR) codes is proposed to address these concerns. In order to increase the security level of the suggested method, an enhanced ElGamal cryptosystem has also been proposed. Prior to the embedding stage, the suggested method uses the modified ElGamal algorithm to encrypt secret QR codes. Concurrently, it applies two-dimensional DWT on the Y-component of each video frame resulting in Approximation (LL), Horizontal (LH), Vertical (HL), and Diagonal (HH) sub-bands. Then, the encrypted Low (L), Medium (M), Quantile (Q), and High (H) QR codes are embedded into the HL sub-band, HH sub-band, U-component, and V-component of video frames, respectively, using the Least Significant Bit (LSB) technique. As a consequence of extensive testing of the approach, it was shown to be very secure and highly invisible, as well as highly resistant to attacks from Salt & Pepper, Gaussian, Poisson, and Speckle noises, which has an average Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) of more than 0.91. Aside from visual imperceptibility, the suggested method exceeds current methods in terms of Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) average of 52.143 dB, and embedding capacity 1 bpp.

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Keywords

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