Perfectly secure steganography: hiding information in the quantum noise of a photograph

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that quantum properties of light enable perfectly secure steganography, embedding secret messages in photographs without detectable differences, achieving information-theoretic security.

Contribution

It introduces a novel quantum-based steganography protocol that guarantees perfect undetectability and information-theoretic security in photographic images.

Findings

Secret messages can be hidden in photographs using quantum noise.

The protocol ensures perfect undetectability of the embedded message.

It achieves information-theoretic security, making detection fundamentally impossible.

Abstract

We show that the quantum nature of light can be used to hide a secret message within a photograph. Using this physical principle we achieve information-theoretic secure steganography, which had remained elusive until now. The protocol is such that the digital picture in which the secret message is embedded is perfectly undistinguishable from an ordinary photograph. This implies that, on a fundamental level, it is impossible to discriminate a private communication from an exchange of photographs.