Reversible data hiding in encrypted images using interpolation and histogram shifting

Abstract

Due to the security and privacy-preserving requirements from cloud data management, it is sometimes desired that the image content is accessible in encrypted form. Reversible data hiding in the encrypted domain is an emerging technology, as it can perform data hiding in encrypted images without decryption which preserves the confidentiality of the content. In this paper, a reversible data hiding scheme in encrypted images based on interpolation technique is proposed. Before encryption, the down-sampled pixels are utilized to obtain the estimations of the rest non-sample pixels. Then, the down-sampled pixels are encrypted using a standard stream cipher. The data-hider, who does not know the original image content, may reversibly embed secret data into interpolationerror using a modified version of histogram shifting technique. With an encrypted image containing hidden data, data extraction can be carried out either in encrypted or decrypted domain. In addition, real reversibility is realized, that is, data extraction and image recovery are free of any error. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed scheme.