A Jpeg Image-based Adaptive Information Hiding Algorithm

The information hiding technique which serves as a new effectual route for resolving the information safely transferring has currently become hot topic of researching information security area. Information hiding based on digital image is one of the most important research branch. JPEG has been one of the most popular compression standards of digital image. It is a good application to use JPEG image as a cover image in information hiding.Through analyzing and summarizing the basic idea and theories of image information hiding and anatomizing JPEG compression algorithm in detail with human visual characteristic, an information hiding algorithm which adaptively embed the secret message into a JPEG image and its extracting algorithm were presented. In this information hiding algorithm, according to luminance and texture conditions determined by calculating on DCT quantized coefficients, secret bits were unevenly embedded into the low and middle frequency DCT quantized coefficients of the image luminance component, which effectively reduces the visual distinct between the false image and the cover image. This algorithm can implement blind detection of the hidden information as all needed data come from the false image except the key. The algorithm also provides a non-distortion recovering of the hidden information, which is available for all kinds of binary files. The experimental results show that the algorithm can provide high imperceptibility and large hiding capacity.