Steganographic protocols based on rank metric codes

Among the different applications where data hiding techniques can be used, one that has received huge attention in the recent years is steganography. With Matrix Embedding based on Hamming Codes which was first introduced by Crandall, coding theory has entered the field of steganography. In this paper, we investigate the application of q-ary codes with rank metric to steganography by using matrix embedding technique. We propose rank metric codes for steganographic security, as the nature of rank involves linear dependency or independency of symbols in the coordinates, which is more complex than merely comparing positions of bits. A method of constructing stego-codes using subcodes of linear codes is proposed. Some bounds, including the one for embedding efficiency, are also determined.