A high-capacity Coverless Image Steganography Based on OMR and Mapping Rules

Abstract

Securing private information during its transmission over the internet is of paramount importance, as it safeguards against unauthorized access and guarantees the integrity of data. Steganography serves as a technique for enhancing security by concealing sensitive information within digital content such as images, videos, audio, and textual carriers, thus thwarting unauthorized interception. Current methodologies involve manipulating pixels to create stego-images, effectively embedding confidential messages within the image structure. However, this approach has led to steganalysis experts uncovering these hidden messages. To address this issue, an innovative strategy for covert data concealment is proposed. This paper proposes a robust, secure, and embedding capacity coverless image steganography method using OMR and Mapping Rules. The secret information is represented by a binary string, and the bubble sheet is used to represent binary fragments. This approach ensures the confidentiality of sensitive data communicated over the internet. Notably, this approach surpasses previous alternatives in terms of embedding capacity, as substantiated by result analysis. Furthermore, it is adaptable for refinement as needed. Significantly, it exhibits remarkable resilience, safeguarding against a spectrum of attacks including scaling, color space conversion, JPEG compression, thresholding, "salt and pepper" noise, file format conversion, and steganalysis tools, among others.