Quantization Step Parity-based Steganography for MP3 Audio

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Diqun, Yan | Rangding, Wang | Liguang, Zhang

Affiliations: College of Information Science and Engineering Ningbo University, Zhejiang 315211, China. E-mail: yandiqun@nbu.edu.cn; wangrangding@nbu.edu.cn; zlg4585192@sina.com

Abstract: Petitcolas has proposed a steganographic technique called MP3Stego which can hide secret messages in a MP3 audio. This technique is well-known because of its high capacity. However, in rare cases, the normal audio encoding process will be terminated due to the endless loop problem caused by embedding operation. In addition, the statistical undetectability of MP3Stego can be further improved. Inspired by MP3Stego, a new steganographic method for MP3 audio is proposed in this paper. The parity bit of quantization step rather than the parity bit of block size in MP3Stego is employed to embed secret messages. Compared with MP3Stego, the proposed method can avoid the endless loop problem and achieve better imperceptibility and higher security.

Keywords: Steganography, MP3, quantization, Huffman coding

DOI: 10.3233/FI-2009-190

Journal: Fundamenta Informaticae, vol. 97, no. 1-2, pp. 1-14, 2009