Data Hiding in the Multi-Cloud Environment by Product Cipher-Based Distributed Steganography

Abstract

The paper presents a highly effective steganography scheme designed to protect hidden data in the cloud. The proposed scheme addresses the challenges of concealing data in a decentralized manner while minimizing traces left behind by changing cover media. Two significant technical contributions are introduced: 1) The use of unchanged cover media as a reference for fragmented data, and 2) Leveraging multi-cloud storage to securely store the hidden message. Recent research highlights the vulnerability of retrieving secret data from multi-cloud storage, underscoring the need for a robust solution. To overcome this, a product cipher-based distributed steganography scheme is proposed, ensuring dynamic data hiding across multiple cloud platforms in a distributed manner. Unlike related steganographic work, the scheme does not rely on file modifications or the use of special characters for concealment, making it an undetectable secret distribution system. By avoiding suspicious file content, the scheme does not draw attention from potential adversaries during an inspection. The security analysis of the proposed mechanism confirms its resilience against attacks, as even with full access to all cloud accounts, an attacker cannot compute the hidden message. The scheme's security is guaranteed by the unknown key, the base encoding value, and the computational complexity required for the opponent to determine the appropriate sequence of secret distribution and file numbering. In contrast to the current approach, which is susceptible to brute-force attacks with computations substantially smaller than B!*K!*n!, the PCDS scheme provides significantly stronger security guarantees.