Novel Self-sufficient Coverless Video Steganography for Secured Internet of Things (IoT) Communication

The Internet of Things (IoT) is being used more, leading to a surge in data exchange. However, maintaining security and privacy during data transmission remains a challenge. Steganography, particularly coverless video steganography, presents a promising solution. Current methods suffer from inefficiencies, especially in terms of time costs due to the need for multiple videos to conceal entire secret messages. As a result, we developed a novel self-sufficient coverless video steganography method by combining mapping and synthesis approaches to maximize carrier capacity while reducing time and costs. A hash table for efficient and faster matching of the secret information was used based on the sub-band features of the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) approximation. Experimental results showed that the method achieved a hiding rate of 100% in any carrier video and demonstrated superior time efficiency and high robustness against external attacks. This method generates missing hash sequences without using generative adversarial networks.