Abstract
Steganography is the art and science of secret communication, concealing the very existence of a communication. Modern cover types can take many forms such as text documents, audio tracks, digital images, and video streams. Extensive research has been done on image steganography in the previous decade due to their popularity on the internet. Nowadays, video files are drawing much more attention. They are transmitted more and more frequent on internet websites such as Facebook and YouTube imposing a larger practical significance on video steganography. Information hiding in video has a variety of techniques, each of which has its strengths and weaknesses. This paper intends to provide an up-to-date comprehensive review on the various video steganographic methods found in the literature in the last 5 years. Furthermore, since security and robustness are very important issues in designing a good steganographic algorithm, some relevant attacks and steganalysis techniques are also surveyed. The paper concludes with recommendations and good practices drawn from the reviewed techniques.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
(2008) Objective Perceptual Multimedia Video Quality Measurement in the Presence of a Full-Reference, ITU-T Rec. J. 247
Abbass AS, Soleit EA, Ghoniemy SA (2007) Blind video data hiding using integer wavelet transforms. Ubiquit Comput Commun J 2(1)
Ahsan K, Kundur D (2002) Practical data hiding in TCP/IP. In: Proc. of Workshop on Multimedia Security at ACM Multimedia
Alattar AM, Alattar OM (2004) Watermarking electronic text documents containing justified paragraphs and irregular line spacing. In: Proc. of SPIE 685–695
Al-Frajat AK, Jalab HA, Kasirun ZM, Zaidan AA, Zaidan BB (2010) Hiding data in video file: an overview. J of Appl Sci (Faisalabad) 10(15):1644–1649
Anderson RJ, Petitcolas FAP (1998) On the limits of steganography. IEEE J Sel Areas Commun 16(4):474–481
Bailey K, Curran K (2006) An evaluation of image based steganography methods. Multimed Tools Appl 30(1):55–88
Balaji R, Naveen G (2011) Secure data transmission using video Steganography. In: IEEE International Conference on Electro/Information Technology (EIT) 1–5
Calderbank AR, Daubechies I, Sweldens W, Yeo B-L (1997) Lossless image compression using integer to integer wavelet transforms. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Image Processing 596–599
Carli M, Campisi P, Neri (2006) A Data hiding driven by perceptual features for secure communications. In: International Conference on Networking, International Conference on Systems and International Conference on Mobile Communications and Learning Technologies (ICN/ICONS/MCL) 85–85
Chae JJ, Manjunath BS (1999) Data hiding in video. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP 99) 311–315
Chandramouli R, Memon ND (2003) Steganography capacity: A steganalysis perspective. In: Proceedings of SPIE 173–177
Chang K-C, Chang C-P, Huang PS, Tu T-M (2008) A novel image steganographic method using tri-way pixel-value differencing. J Multimed 3(2):37–44
Chang F-C, Hang H-M, Huang H-C (2007) Layered access control schemes on watermarked scalable media. J VLSI Signal Process Syst Signal Image Video Technol 49(3):443–455
Channalli S, Jadhav A (2009) Steganography an Art of hiding data. Int J Comput Sci Eng (IJCSE) 1(3):137–141
Cheddad A, Condell J, Curran K, Mc Kevitt P (2009) A skin tone detection algorithm for an adaptive approach to steganography. Signal Process 89(12):2465–2478
Cheddad A, Condell J, Curran K, Mc Kevitt P (2010) Digital image steganography: survey and analysis of current methods. Signal Process 90(3):727–752
Das R, Tuithung T (2012) A novel steganography method for image based on Huffman Encoding. In: 3rd National Conference on Emerging Trends and Applications in Computer Science (NCETACS) 14–18
Eltahir ME, Kiah LM, Zaidan BB, Zaidan AA (2009) High rate video streaming steganography. In: International Conference on Future Computer and Communication (ICFCC 2009) 672–675
Fridrich J, Goljan M, Du R (2001) Detecting LSB steganography in color, and gray-scale images. Multimed IEEE 8(4):22–28
Hamid N, Yahya A, Ahmad RB, Al-Qershi OM (2012) Image steganography techniques: an overview. Int J Comput Sci Secur (IJCSS) 6(3):p168–p187
Hanafy AA, Salama GI, Mohasseb YZ (2008) A secure covert communication model based on video steganography. In: Military Communications Conference (MILCOM 2008) 1–6
Handel TG, Sandford Ii MT (1996) Hiding data in the OSI network model. In: Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Information Hiding 23–38
Herrera-Moro DR, Rodríguez-Colín R, Feregrino-Uribe C (2007) Adaptive Steganography based on textures. In: 17th International Conference on Electronics, Communications and Computers (CONIELECOMP’07) 34–34
Hmood AK, Kasirun ZM, Jalab HA, Alam GM, Zaidan AA, Zaidan BB (2010) On the accuracy of hiding information metrics: counterfeit protection for education and important certificates. Int J Phys Sci 5(7):1054–1062
Horng S-J, Rosiyadi D, Fan P, Wang X, Khan MK (2013) An Adaptive Watermarking Scheme for e-government Document Images. Multimed Tools Appl. doi:10.1007/s11042-013-1579-5
Horng S-J, Rosiyadi D, Li T, Takao T, Guo M, Khan MK (2013) A blind image copyright protection scheme for e-government. J Vis Commun and Image Represent 24(7):1099–1105
Hu S, KinTak U (2011) A Novel Video Steganography Based on Non-uniform Rectangular Partition. In: IEEE 14th International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) 57–61
Huang H-C, Chu S-C, Pan J-S, Huang C-Y, Liao B-Y (2011) Tabu search based multi-watermarks embedding algorithm with multiple description coding. Inf Sci 181(16):3379–3396
Jalab H, Zaidan AA, Zaidan BB (2009) Frame selected approach for hiding data within MPEG video using bit plane complexity segmentation. J Comput 1(1):108–113
Jia Y, Lin W, Kassim AA (2006) Estimating just-noticeable distortion for video. IEEE Trans Circ Syst Video Technol 16(7):820–829
Johnson NF, Jajodia S (1998) Exploring steganography: seeing the unseen. IEEE Comput 31(2):26–34
Johnson NF, Jajodia S (1998) Steganalysis: The investigation of hidden information. In: Information Technology Conference 113–116
Katzenbeisser S and Petitcolas F (2000) Information Techniques for Steganography and Digital Watermarking. Artec House
Kawaguchi E, Eason RO (1999) Principles and applications of BPCS steganography. In: Photonics East (ISAM, VVDC, IEMB) International Society for Optics and Photonics 464–473
Ke N, Weidong Z (2013) A Video Steganography Scheme Based on H.264 Bitstreams Replaced. In: Software Engineering and Service Science (ICSESS), 2013 4th IEEE International Conference on 447–450
Kim Y-W, Moon K-A, Oh I-S (2003) A text watermarking algorithm based on word classification and inter-word space statistics. In: Proc. of the Seventh International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR’03) 775–779
Langelaar GC, Lagendijk RL (2001) Optimal differential energy watermarking of DCT encoded images and video. IEEE Trans Image Process 10(1):148–158
Latif A (2013) An adaptive digital image watermarking scheme using fuzzy logic and tabu search. J Inform Hiding and Multimed Signal Process 4(4):250–271
Liao Y-C, Chen C-H, Shih TK, Tang NC (2009) Data hiding in video using adaptive LSB. In: Joint Conferences on Pervasive Computing (JCPC) 185–190
Lie W-N, Lin T-I, Lin C-W (2006) Enhancing video error resilience by using data-embedding techniques. IEEE Trans Circ Syst Video Technol 16(2):300–308
Lin W-H, Horng S-J, Kao T-W, Chen R-J, Chen Y-H, Lee C-L, Terano T (2009) Image copyright protection with forward error correction. Expert Syst Appl 36(9):11888–11894
Lin W-H, Horng S-J, Kao T-W, Fan P, Lee C-L, Pan Y (2008) An efficient watermarking method based on significant difference of wavelet coefficient quantization. IEEE Trans Multimed 10(5):746–757
Lin W-H, Wang Y-R, Horng S-J (2009) A wavelet-tree-based watermarking method using distance vector of binary cluster. Expert Syst Appl 36(6):9869–9878
Lin W-H, Wang Y-R, Horng S-J, Pan Y (2009) A blind watermarking method using maximum wavelet coefficient quantization. Expert Syst Appl 36(9):11509–11516
Liu Y, Li Z, Ma X, Liu J (2013) A robust data hiding algorithm for H.264/AVC video streams. J Syst Softw 86:2174–2183
Low SH, Maxemchuk NF, Brassil JT, O’Gorman L (1995) Document marking and identification using both line and word shifting. In: Proc of Fourteenth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies. Bringing Information to People.(INFOCOM’95) 853–860
Maniccam SS, Bourbakis N (2004) Lossless compression and information hiding in images. Patern Recognit 37(3):475–486
Mansouri J, Khademi M (2009) An adaptive scheme for compressed video steganography using temporal and spatial features of the video signal. Int J Imaging Syst Technol 19(4):306–315
Mat Kiah ML, Zaidan BB, Zaidan AA, Mohammed Ahmed A, Al-bakri SH (2011) A review of audio based steganography and digital watermarking. Int J Phys Sci 6(16):3837–3850
Mazurczyk W, Ml S, Szczypiorski K (2011) Retransmission steganography and its detection. Soft Comput J 15(3):505–515
McKeon RT (2007) Strange Fourier steganography in movies. In: IEEE International Conference on Electro/Information Technology 178–182
Mercuri RT (2004) The many colors of multimedia security. Commun of the ACM 47(12):25–29
Mozo AJ, Obien ME, Rigor CJ, Rayel DF, Chua K, Tangonan G (2009) Video steganography using flash video (FLV). In: Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference (I2MTC’09) 822–827
Mulcahy C (1997) Image compression using the Haar wavelet transform. Spelman Sci and Math J 1(1):22–31
Navas KA, Sasikumar M (2011) Image fidelity metrics: future directions. IETE Tech Rev 28(1)
Neufeld A, Ker AD (2013) A study of embedding operations and locations for steganography in H.264 video. In: Proc. SPIE, Media Watermarking, Security, and Forensics 8665
Noda H, Furuta T, Niimi M, Kawaguchi E (2004) Application of BPCS steganography to wavelet compressed video. In: International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP’04) 2147–2150
Petitcolas FAP, Anderson RJ, Kuhn MG (1999) Information hiding-a survey. Proc IEEE 87(7):1062–1078
Pinson MH, Wolf S (2004) A new standardized method for objectively measuring video quality. IEEE Trans Broadcast 50(3):312–322
Provos N, Honeyman P (2003) Hide and seek: an introduction to steganography. Secur & Priv IEEE 1(3):32–44
Rabah K (2004) Steganography-the art of hiding data. Inf Technol J 3(3):245–269
Raja, K.B., Chowdary, C.R., Venugopal, K.R. & Patnaik, L.M. (2005) A secure image steganography using LSB, DCT and compression techniques on raw images. In: Proceedings of IEEE 3rd International Conference on Intelligent Sensing and Information Processing, 170–176.
Rao RS, Karthik MV, Nagla S (2012) Wavelet transform based image compression. Int J Eng Res Appl (IJERA) 2(6):1509–1514
Raphael AJ, Sundaram V (2010) Cryptography and steganography-a survey. Int J Comput Tech Appl 2(3):626–630
Richardson IEG (2003) H.264 and MPEG-4 video compression: video coding for next-generation multimedia. Wiley, Chichester
Risca VI (2001) DNA-based steganography. Cryptologia 25(1):37–49
Ritchey PC, Rego VJ (2012) A context sensitive tiling system for information hiding. J Inf Hiding and Multimed Sig Process 3(3):212–226
Robie DL, Mersereau RM (2002) Video error correction using steganography. EURASIP J Adv Signal Process 2(1900):164–173
Rosiyadi D, Horng S-J, Fan P, Wang X, Khan MK, Pan Y (2012) An efficient copyright protection scheme for e-government document images. IEEE Multimed 19(3):62–73
Rosiyadi D, Horng S-J, Suryana N, Masthurah N (2012) A comparison between the hybrid using genetic algorithm and the pure hybrid watermarking scheme. Int J Comput Theory and Eng (IJCTE) 4(3):329–331
Sakib MN, Alam SB, Sazzad ABMR, Shahnaz C, Fattah SA (2011) A Basic Digital Watermarking Algorithm in Discrete Cosine Transformation Domain. In: Second International Conference on Intelligent Systems, Modelling and Simulation (ISMS) 419–421
Sampat V, Dave K, Madia J, Toprani P (2012) A Novel Video Steganography Technique using Dynamic Cover Generation. In: National Conference on Advancement of Technologies – Information Systems & Computer Networks (ISCON – 2012), Proceedings published in Int J of Comput Appl (IJCA)
Shang Y (2007) A new invertible data hiding in compressed videos or images. In: Third International Conference on Natural Computation (ICNC) 576–580
Sharda S, Budhiraja S (2013) Image steganography: a review. Int J of Emerg Technol Adv Eng 3(1):707–710
Sherly AP, Amritha PP (2010) A Compressed Video Steganography using TPVD. Int J of Database Manag Syst 2 (3). doi:5121/ijdms.2010.2307 67
Shirali-Shahreza M (2006) A new method for real-time steganography. In: 8th International Conference on Signal Processing
Shirali-Shahreza MH, Shirali-Shahreza M (2006) A new approach to Persian/Arabic text steganography. In: 5th IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Computer and Information Science, and 1st IEEE/ACIS International Workshop on Component-Based Software Engineering, Software Architecture and Reuse (ICIS-COMSAR) 310–315
Shou-Dao W, Chuang-Bai X, Yu L A High Bitrate Information Hiding Algorithm for Video in Video.
Singh S, Agarwal G (2010) Hiding image to video: a new approach of LSB replacement. Int J Eng Sci and Technol 2(12):6999–7003
Stanescu D, Stratulat M, Ciubotaru B, Chiciudean D, Cioarga R, Micea M (2007) Embedding data in video stream using steganography. In: 4th International Symposium on Applied Computational Intelligence and Informatics (SACI’07) 241–244
Su Y, Zhang C, Wang L, Zhang C (2008) A new video steganalysis based on mode detection. In: International Conference on Audio, Language and Image Processing (ICALIP 2008) 1507–1510
Su Y, Zhang C, Zhang C (2011) A video steganalytic algorithm against motion-vector-based steganography. Signal Process 91(8):1901–1909
Sur A, Mukherjee J (2006) Adaptive data hiding in compressed video domain. In: Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing 738–748
Tak UK, Tang Z, Qi D (2009) A non-uniform rectangular partition coding of digital image and its application. In: International Conference on Information and Automation (ICIA’09) 995–999
Van den Branden Lambrecht CJ (1996) Color moving pictures quality metric. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Image Processing 885–888
Van den Branden Lambrecht CJ, Verscheure O, Technology (1996) Perceptual quality measure using a spatiotemporal model of the human visual system. In: Electronic Imaging: Science & Technology 450–461
Vranjes M, Rimac-Drlje S, Zagar D (2007) Objective video quality metrics. In: 49th Int. Symp. ELMAR 45–49
Wang Y (2006) Survey of objective video quality measurements. EMC Corp Hopkinton, MA, 1748
Wang Z, Lu L, Bovik AC (2004) Video quality assessment based on structural distortion measurement. Signal Process Image Commun 19(2):121–132
Wang H, Wang S (2004) Cyber warfare: steganography vs. steganalysis. Commun the ACM 47(10):76–82
Webster AA, Jones CT, Pinson MH, Voran SD, Wolf S (1993) Objective video quality assessment system based on human perception. In: IS&T/SPIE’s Symposium on Electronic Imaging: Science and Technology, International Society for Optics and Photonics 15–26
Xu C, Ping X (2007) A steganographic algorithm in uncompressed video sequence based on difference between adjacent frames. In: Fourth International Conference on Image and Graphics (ICIG) 297–302
Xu C, Ping X, Zhang T (2006) Steganography in compressed video stream. In: First International Conference on Innovative Computing, Information and Control (ICICIC’06) 269–272
Yang M, Bourbakis N (2005) A high bitrate information hiding algorithm for digital video content under H. 264/AVC compression. In: 48th Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems 935–938
Yilmaz A, Alatan AA (2003) Error concealment of video sequences by data hiding. In: Proc. of International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP) 3:II 679–682
Yuhong Wang CZ, Sukesh Kaithaapuzha visual masking model implementation for images & video
Zaker N, Hamzeh A (2012) A novel steganalysis for TPVD steganographic method based on differences of pixel difference histogram. Multimed Tools Appl 58(1):147–166
Zhang W, Cheung SC, Chen M (2005) Hiding privacy information in video surveillance system. In: Proc. of the 12th IEEE International Conference on Image Processing 868–871
Zhang J, Li J, Zhang L (2001) Video watermark technique in motion vector. In: Proceedings of XIV Brazilian Symposium on Computer Graphics and Image Processing 179–182
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sadek, M.M., Khalifa, A.S. & Mostafa, M.G.M. Video steganography: a comprehensive review. Multimed Tools Appl 74, 7063–7094 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-014-1952-z
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-014-1952-z