A novel steganography method for binary and color halftone images

Abstract

Digital steganography is the science of establishing hidden communication on electronics; the aim is to transmit a secret message to a particular recipient using unsuspicious carriers such as digital images, documents, and audio files with the help of specific hiding methods. This article proposes a novel steganography method that can hide plaintext payloads on digital halftone images. The proposed method distributes the secret message over multiple output copies and scatters parts of the message randomly within each output copy for increased security. A payload extraction algorithm, where plain carrier is not required, is implemented and presented as well. Results gained from conducted objective and subjective tests prove that the proposed steganography method is secure and can hide large payloads.