Scrambling-Embedding in Partially-Encrypted Images

Abstract

In this paper, an improved scrambling-embedding technique, namely row-rotational-based data hiding method is proposed to hide data in partially-encrypted images. The partially-encrypted images are generated by performing bit-wise XOR-cipher to investigate the feasibility of applying the proposed method in various encryption levels. The proposed method is performed by divided each row into multiple non-overlapping continuous partitions. These partitions will be arranged in a rotational manner to create different states, while each state will be used to represent specific data in binary representation. During the decoding process, α notation is introduced to reduce the number of failure rows, which will cause further image degradation and incorrect data extraction. The BSDS300 dataset is utilized for experiments, and encrypted with different encryption strengths. From the experiment results, it is observed that when least significant bits are encrypted, the proposed data hiding method using scrambling-embedding technique can still performed well as in the plain image domain.