Real-time motion estimation based video steganography with preserved consistency and local optimality

Abstract

AbstractThis paper introduces a novel steganographic technique for H.264 video that achieves an outstanding performance against state-of-the-art steganalysis techniques while maintaining real-time encoding performance constraints. The proposed technique embeds the secret message by altering the motion vectors (MVs) while preserving their local optimality and consistency feature to withstand the recently emerged steganalysis methods. Thanks to its macro-block (MB) basis architecture, the proposed technique satisfies the real-time constraints, eliminating the need to wait for the whole frame or group of pictures (GOP) and avoiding the need to perform any additional re-encoding step(s). Additionally, altering the MVs is performed in the motion estimation (ME) sub-pixel-refinement stage through a rule-based scheme that ensures each MB’s compatibility for embedding without detection by the aforementioned steganalysis methods. The proposed technique is integrated with the OpenH264 real-time video encoder and evaluated on widely used video sequences. The results prove that the proposed technique achieves a significant security performance against the steganalysis methods while maintaining an acceptable embedding rate, outperforming other state-of-the-art MV-based steganographic methods in real-time constrained environments. The proposed technique adds about $$1-2\%$$ 1 - 2 % overhead beyond the encoder running time. The source code is publicly available here: https://github.com/HassanMohamedGit/OpenH264-RealTime-steg.