Improving the efficiency of the steganographic method of data hiding with the application of iterative functions and noise addition

Abstract

The development of computer and digital technology contributes to the growth of information flows transmitted through open and closed communication channels. In many cases, this information is confidential, financial, or commercial in nature and is of value to its owners. This requires the development of mechanisms to protect information from unauthorized access. There are two fundamental areas of secure data transmission over the open communication channels – cryptography and steganography. The fundamental difference between them is that cryptography hides from others the content of the message, and steganography hides the very fact of the message transmission. This paper is devoted to steganographic methods of data concealment, which are less researched than cryptographic, but have significant potential for use in a variety of applications. One of the important characteristics of most methods is their effectiveness. In general, efficiency is assessed in the context of solving specific problems. However, the most common criteria for the effectiveness of steganographic methods are the amount of hidden data and the method of transmitting the secret key to the receiving party, which will not allow the attacker to intercept it. Because media files make up a significant portion of network traffic, a digital image is chosen as the stegocontainer. It is proposed to determine the coordinates of the embedding location on the basis of iterative functions. The advantage of their use is the compactness of the description of the coordinates of the pixels in which the data will be hidden. In addition, it is proposed to use the Diffie-Gellman algorithm to transfer the parameters of iterative functions to the receiving side. This method of key distribution makes the steganographic method less vulnerable to being stolen by an attacker. The second performance criterion is the amount of hidden data. The paper found that the moderate addition of multiplicative noise makes it possible to increase the amount of hidden data without significantly reducing the visual quality of the stegocontainer. To analyze the distortions in the image-stegocontainer, which are due to the influence of noise and modification of the lower bits of pixels, the method of a quantitative assessment of visual quality is used, which is based on the laws of visual perception. Keywords: steganographic data hiding; hiding efficiency; iterative functions; Diffie-Gelman algorithm.