Separable reversible data hiding in encrypted images based on Paillier cryptosystem

• Published in: Multimedia tools and applications Vol. 81; no. 13; pp. 18807 - 18827
• Main Authors: Tsai, Chwei-Shyong, Zhang, Yung-Sung, Weng, Chi-Yao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.05.2022; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Computer Communication Networks; Computer Science; Confidentiality; Cryptography; Data encryption; Data Structures and Information Theory; Histograms; Image quality; Multimedia; Multimedia Information Systems; Privacy; Special Purpose and Application-Based Systems; Encrypted image; Reversible data hiding; Histogram shifting; Paillier cryptosystem
• ISSN: 1380-7501; 1573-7721
• DOI: 10.1007/s11042-022-12684-8

Many researchers pay attention on performing reversible data hiding in encrypted images; after extracting the embedded secret information, the objective is not only to perfectly recover the original image but to also protect the privacy of content. This paper proposes a separable and reversible data hiding in encrypted images scheme based on histogram shifting and the Paillier cryptosystem. The proposed scheme is divided into three parts: the image owner, data hider and receiver. First, the image owner takes the receiver’s public key to encrypt the cover image using the Paillier cryptosystem. According to the difference between two adjacent pixels, the data hider collects all the differences to generate the differencing distribution, and then, embeds secret data into differencing using the histogram shifting and hiding key. Finally, the receiver can simultaneously extract the secret information and recover the original image if the receiver has the hiding key and private key. In the experimental results, it is completely shown that compared to other scheme, the proposed scheme has better performance of image quality at the same number of embedded bits.