Improved Container Selection Method for Robust Steganography under Embedded Message Attacks

Steganography is one of the most effective and powerful modern means of information protection. One of the main requirements for a steganographic system is resistance to attacks on the embedded message. Given the current state of information technology, such attacks can be carried out without specialized software or hardware, making the task of countering them extremely relevant. The properties of the container used, which in this study is a digital image, play an important role in organizing a hidden (steganographic) communication channel. By selecting a container, the characteristics of steganographic system can be improved without changing the steganographic method used. The purpose of this study is to increase the robustness of a steganographic system against attacks targeting the embedded message by improving the container selection method previously proposed by the authors. The goal is achieved by improving the determination of the key parameter for container selection, i.e., the volume of protected embedded information, as well as by applying the process of primary filtering of a set of potential containers, which allows us to filter out conditional background digital images that do not provide adequate resistance to disturbing actions for the corresponding steganographic message. This increased the efficiency of container selection by 2.3