A Steganographic Technique for Highly Compressed JPEG Images

Hiding secret data in JPEG images has been popularly studied in steganography research. Most of the previous studies propose schemes that hide secret data in the quantized DCT coefficients. However, such schemes either reduce the visual imperceptibility of the compressed images or change its pixel histogram properties, amounting to detection by statistical attacks. This gets worst with highly compressed JPEG images. In this paper, a new scheme for highly compressed images is proposed. Using an area known as NFDV, secret messages can be embedded with minimal effect to changes in its pixel values. The scheme also integrates a novel message randomizer and message integrity checking sequence (MIX) to protect the confidentiality and integrity of the secret messages. Several test cases have been implemented, and it shows that the proposed technique produces highly imperceptible stego-images that are also secure against pixel histogram statistical attacks.