CSST-Net: an arbitrary image style transfer network of coverless steganography

• DOI: 10.1007/s00371-021-02272-6
• Publication Date: 2021-11-03T19:02:39Z
• Authors: Shanqing Zhang; Shengqi Su; Li Li; Jianfeng Lu; Qili Zhou; Chin-Chen Chang
• Keywords: 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; 02 engineering and technology

A traditional image steganography embeds secret information into a cover image to generate a secret-embedded image. The modification traces imposed on the cover image can be easily detected by steganalysis tools. Coverless steganography has been introduced to solve this problem. In this study, coverless steganography is combined with image style transfer, an arbitrary image style transfer network CSST-Net is put forward, and a secret information is encoded into the parameters (an adaptive steganography matrix) of CSST-Net, which is used to restrict the style transfer. Arbitrary image style transfer is performed instructed by the adaptive steganography matrix, and the image style transfer result driven by secret information is directly synthesized. Our experiments show that CSST-Net can not only synthesize any image style transfer result with good visual effect, but also achieve good performance in capacity, anti-steganalysis and security.