Wet paper codes and the dual distance in steganography

Carlos Munuera (1) , Morgan Barbier (2)

1 UVa - Universidad de Valladolid [Valladolid]
2 TANC - Algorithmic number theory for cryptology

In 1998 Crandall introduced a method based on coding theory to secretly embed a message in a digital support such as an image. Later Fridrich et al. improved this method to minimize the distortion introduced by the embedding; a process called wet paper. However, as previously emphasized in the literature, this method can fail during the embedding step. Here we find sufficient and necessary conditions to guarantee a successful embedding by studying the dual distance of a linear code. Since these results are essentially of combinatorial nature, they can be generalized to systematic codes, a large family containing all linear codes. We also compute the exact number of solutions and point out the relationship between wet paper codes and orthogonal arrays.

Mots clés: Steganography; Error-correcting codes; wet paper codes; dual distance

Domaines: Cryptographie et sécurité [cs.CR]; Théorie de l'information et codage [math.IT]; Théorie de l'information [cs.IT]

Carlos Munuera, Morgan Barbier. Wet paper codes and the dual distance in steganography. Advances in Mathematics of Communications, 2011, Lecture Notes on Computer Sciences, 6 (3), pp.273-285. ⟨10.3934/amc.2012.6.273⟩. ⟨inria-00584877⟩