Abstract:Compared with traditional hiding methods, dual-image reversible data hiding methods have a higher embedding rate and a better quality stego image. Also, this is a special case of secret sharing, because secret data cannot be extracted from any stego image. In the literature, the frequencies of occurrence of secret data were used as reference information for data encoding, in which most digits were transformed into smaller ones. The encoding strategy can effectively decrease the modification level of the pixel. However, only limited literature has analyzed the relationship between the adjacent secret data. In this paper, we proposed an exclusive-or (XOR)-based encoding method to convert the neighboring values, thereby reducing the distortion. Since there are significant similarities between the two stego images and the original image, the first stego image is stored on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to avoid a hacker's interception attack. The second stego image on the UAV is sent to the command station. After completion of the UAV mission, the proposed method extracts the secret data from the two stego images to identify whether the second stego image has been tampered with.