New Framework of Reversible Data Hiding in Encrypted JPEG Bitstreams

This paper proposes a novel framework of reversible data hiding in encrypted JPEG bitstream. We first provide a JPEG encryption algorithm to encipher a JPEG image to a smaller size and keep the format compliant to JPEG decoders. After an image owner uploads the encrypted JPEG bitstreams to cloud storage, the server embeds additional messages into the ciphertext to construct a marked encrypted JPEG bitstream. During data hiding, we propose a combined embedding algorithm including two stages, the Huffman code mapping and the ordered histogram shifting. The embedding procedure is reversible. When an authorized user requires a downloading operation, the server extracts additional messages from the marked encrypted JPEG bitstream and recovers the original encrypted bitstream losslessly. After downloading, the user obtains the original JPEG bitstream by a direct decryption. The proposed framework outperforms previous works on reversible data hiding in encrypted images. First, since the tasks of data embedding/extraction and bitstream recovery are all accomplished by the server, the image owner and the authorized user are required to implement no extra operations except JPEG encryption or decryption. Second, the embedding payload is larger than state-of-the-art works.