Video steganography has become a popular option for protecting secret data from hacking attempts and common attacks on the internet. However, when the whole video frame(s) are used to embed secret data, this may lead to visual distortion.
Materials and Methods:
This work is an attempt to hide sensitive secret image inside the moving objects in a video based on separating the object from the background of the frame, selecting and arranging them according to object's size for embedding secret image. The proposed approach reverses the secret image bits and uses XOR technique between the reversed bits and the detected moving object bits for embedding. The proposed approach provides more security and imperceptibility as the moving objects are used for embedding, so it is difficult to notice the changes in the moving objects instead of using background area for embedding in the video. Further development to the proposed approach in the area of video steganography has been done by applying spatial model in combination with statistical model. Additional LSB styles have been also applied to evaluate the ability of the proposed approach in detecting moving objects. In addition to evaluating the robustness of the proposed approach against different attacks such as salt and pepper noise and median filtering.
Results:
The experimental results showed the better visual quality of the stego video with PSNR values exceeding 70 dB, this indicates that the proposed method works without causing much distortion in the original video and transmitted secret message.
Conclusion:
The experimental proof of the proposed approach can successfully detect and embed secret image. Also, it provides more security and imperceptibility as the data was hidden in the moving objects and the updates in the moving objects are difficult to notice rather than the static region in a video