Quantum Steganography Using Two Hidden Thresholds

Abstract

This paper describes a novel steganography algorithm that combines quantum computing with the least significant bit technique (LSB). Using the quantum properties, along with the Python programming language and the Qiskit framework for the circuit simulation, a sub-image can be hidden inside a usual image. For a gray image, this article presents how the LSB of each of the first 16 pixels on the edges can be used to hide two threshold values, that are then used to filter out the image and reveal the secret message. The speedup, compared to the classical version, is possible due to the quantum representation of an image (NEQR is used in this paper) and the efficiency of the novel multi-bit quantum comparators.

Keywords

• data security
• image communication
• image processing
• image representation
• quantum computing