Image Steganography For Securing Intellicise Wireless Networks: "Invisible Encryption" Against Eavesdroppers

TL;DR

This paper explores the integration of image steganography into semantic communication (SemCom) to provide invisible encryption, enhancing security against eavesdroppers in wireless networks by embedding secret information within cover images.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analysis of image steganography techniques tailored for SemCom, including paradigms, training strategies, and a case study on coverless steganography, advancing secure wireless communication.

Findings

Image steganography can effectively embed semantic features for secure SemCom.

Joint source-channel coding models enhance steganographic security.

Coverless steganography demonstrates promising security and efficiency.

Abstract

As one of the most promising technologies for intellicise (intelligent and consice) wireless networks, Semantic Communication (SemCom) significantly improves communication efficiency by extracting, transmitting, and recovering semantic information, while reducing transmission delay. However, an integration of communication and artificial intelligence (AI) also exposes SemCom to security and privacy threats posed by intelligent eavesdroppers. To address this challenge, image steganography in SemCom embeds secret semantic features within cover semantic features, allowing intelligent eavesdroppers to decode only the cover image. This technique offers a form of "invisible encryption" for SemCom. Motivated by these advancements, this paper conducts a comprehensive exploration of integrating image steganography into SemCom. Firstly, we review existing encryption techniques in SemCom and assess the potential of image steganography in enhancing its security. Secondly, we delve into various image steganographic paradigms designed to secure SemCom, encompassing three categories of joint source-channel coding (JSCC) models tailored for image steganography SemCom, along with multiple training strategies. Thirdly, we present a case study to illustrate the effectiveness of coverless steganography SemCom. Finally, we propose future research directions for image steganography SemCom.