Robust steganography with boundary-preserving overflow alleviation and adaptive error correction

With the rapid evolution of the Internet, the vast amount of data has created opportunities for fostering the development of steganographic techniques. However, traditional steganography faces challenges in social networks due to lossy operations such as spatial truncation during JPEG recompression,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Expert systems with applications Vol. 281; p. 127598
Main Authors: Cheng, Yu, Luo, Zhenlin, Yin, Zhaoxia
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.07.2025
Subjects:
Adaptive error correction
Dither modulation
Overflow
Robust steganography
Social networks
Adaptive error correction
Robust steganography
Social networks
Dither modulation
Overflow
ISSN:0957-4174
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:With the rapid evolution of the Internet, the vast amount of data has created opportunities for fostering the development of steganographic techniques. However, traditional steganography faces challenges in social networks due to lossy operations such as spatial truncation during JPEG recompression, with limited research on their effects. Existing methods aim to ensure the stability of the quantized coefficients by reducing the effects of spatial truncation. Nevertheless, these approaches may induce notable alterations to image pixels, potentially compromising anti-steganalysis performance. In this study, we analyze the overflow characteristics of spatial blocks and observe that pixel values at the boundaries of spatial blocks are more prone to overflow. Based on this observation, we propose a preprocessing method that performs overflow removal operations according to the actual overflow conditions of spatial blocks, enhancing coefficient stability while minimizing modifications to spatial block boundaries, thereby ensuring image quality. Subsequently, we employ adaptive error correction coding to reduce coding redundancy, thereby augmenting robustness and mitigating its impact on anti-steganalysis performance. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method possesses a strong embedding capacity, maintaining a high level of robustness while enhancing security. [Display omitted] •Spatial block boundaries are more prone to overflow in JPEG recompression.•Preprocessing minimizes block modifications, enhancing stability and performance.•Adaptive error correction promptly saves the optimal scheme to enhance performance.•Method demonstrates significant advantages in anti-steganalysis performance.
ISSN:0957-4174
DOI:10.1016/j.eswa.2025.127598