Diversified Cover Selection for Image Steganography

Abstract

This paper proposes a new cover selection method for steganography. We focus on the scenario that the available images for selection contain diversified sources, i.e., nature images and metaverse images. For the scenario, we design a targeted strategy to evaluate the suitability for steganography of a candidate image, which selects images according to the undetectability against steganalytic tools symmetrically. Firstly, steganalytic features of the candidate images are extracted. Then, the features are fed on a steganalytic classifier, and the possibility of carrying secret data is calculated for cover selection. As a result, the selected images are the best candidates to resist steganalysis. Experimental results show that our method performs better than existing cover selection schemes when checked by steganalytic tools.

Keywords

• steganography
• cover selection
• diversified sources
• digital image