Secure Robust JPEG Steganography Based on AutoEncoder With Adaptive BCH Encoding

Social networks are everywhere and currently transmitting very large messages. As a result, transmitting secret messages in such an environment is worth researching. However, the images used in transmitting messages are usually compressed with a JPEG compression channel, which is lossy and damages the transmitted data. Therefore, to prevent secret messages from being damaged, a robust JPEG steganography is urgently needed. In this paper, a secure robust JPEG steganographic scheme based on an autoencoder with an adaptive BCH encoding (Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem encoding) is proposed. In particular, the autoencoder is first pretrained to fit the transformation relationship between the JPEG image before and after compression by the compression channel. In addition, the BCH encoding is adaptively utilized according to the content of cover image to decrease the error rate of secret message extraction. The DCT (Discrete Cosine Transformation) coefficient adjustment based on practical JPEG channel characteristics further improves the robustness and statistical security. Comparisons with prior state-of-the-art schemes demonstrate that the proposed robust JPEG steganographic algorithm can provide a more robust performance and statistical security.