A Robust Coverless Image Steganography Algorithm Based on Image Retrieval with SURF Features

With the advancement of image steganography, coverless image steganography has gained widespread attention due to its ability to hide information without modifying the carrier of images. However, existing coverless image steganography methods often require both communicating parties to transmit an amount of additional information including image blocks’ locations or a large number of parameters, which will raise a serious suspicion. In light of this issue, we propose a robust coverless image steganography algorithm based on Speeded-Up Robust Features (SURF). Firstly, the proposed method allows both communicating parties to independently create multiple coverless image datasets (CIDs) using random seeds. Then, a mapping rule is designed for creating one-to-one correspondence between hash sequences and images in CIDs. Finally, the secret information will be carried by the images whose hash sequences are equal to the secret segments. At the receiver side, the robust SURF of images is utilized to retrieve the secret information. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms other methods in terms of capacity, robustness, and security. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the proposed method eliminates the need to transmit a large amount of additional information, which is a significant security issue in existing coverless image steganography algorithms.