A novel JPEG steganography method based on modulus function with histogram analysis

Abstract

In this paper, we present a novel steganographic method for embedding of secret data in still grayscale JPEG image. In order to provide large capacity of the proposed method while maintaining good visual quality of stego-image, the embedding process is performed in quantized transform coefficients of Discrete Cosine transform (DCT) by modifying coefficients according to modulo function, what gives to the steganography system blind extraction predisposition. After-embedding histogram of proposed Modulo Histogram Fitting (MHF) method is analyzed to secure steganography system against steganalysis attacks. In addition, AES ciphering was implemented to increase security and improve histogram after-embedding characteristics of proposed steganography system as experimental results show.