SemCovert: Secure and Covert Video Transmission via Deep Semantic-Level Hiding

TL;DR

SemCovert is a novel deep learning framework that enables secure and covert video transmission by hiding secret content at the semantic level, resisting analysis and detection while maintaining video quality.

Contribution

It introduces a co-designed semantic hiding model and a randomized hiding strategy to enhance security and covert capabilities in semantic video communication.

Findings

Effective concealment of secret videos during transmission.

Resilience against eavesdropping and detection methods.

Minor impact on video quality and semantic communication performance.

Abstract

Video semantic communication, praised for its transmission efficiency, still faces critical challenges related to privacy leakage. Traditional security techniques like steganography and encryption are challenging to apply since they are not inherently robust against semantic-level transformations and abstractions. Moreover, the temporal continuity of video enables framewise statistical modeling over extended periods, which increases the risk of exposing distributional anomalies and reconstructing hidden content. To address these challenges, we propose SemCovert, a deep semantic-level hiding framework for secure and covert video transmission. SemCovert introduces a pair of co-designed models, namely the semantic hiding model and the secret semantic extractor, which are seamlessly integrated into the semantic communication pipeline. This design enables authorized receivers to reliably recover hidden information, while keeping it imperceptible to regular users. To further improve resistance to analysis, we introduce a randomized semantic hiding strategy, which breaks the determinism of embedding and introduces unpredictable distribution patterns. The experimental results demonstrate that SemCovert effectively mitigates potential eavesdropping and detection risks while reliably concealing secret videos during transmission. Meanwhile, video quality suffers only minor degradation, preserving transmission fidelity. These results confirm SemCovert's effectiveness in enabling secure and covert transmission without compromising semantic communication performance.