Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989

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Ad Hoc Networks
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/adhoc

Secure data transmission framework for confidentiality in IoTs

Nasir N. Hurrah a, Shabir A. Parah a,∗, Javaid A. Sheikh a, Fadi Al-Turjman b,
Khan Muhammad c,∗
a
Post Graduate Department of Electronics and Instrumentation Technology, University of Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir 190006, India
b
Department of Computer Engineering, Antalya Bilim University, Turkey
c
Department of Software, Sejong University, Seoul 143-747, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The large-scale data exchange envisioned to occur in distributed IoTs is prone to raise issues regarding
Received 29 April 2019 privacy, confidentiality and authentication at the cyberspace level. This work focuses to preserve privacy
Revised 23 July 2019
and confidentiality of data in an insecure environment of multimedia exchange between two IoT hops. In
Accepted 22 August 2019
order to thwart an adversary, and ensure data confidentiality, we propose a robust multi-level security
Available online 23 August 2019
approach based on information hiding and chaotic theory. Although, some existing block-based robust
Keywords: data hiding schemes based on transform domain offer good results; but the inefficient block and coef-
IoT ficient selection/modification results in poor performance to various commonly occurring cyber-attacks.
Multimedia security The proposed scheme is based on Random Coefficient Selection and Mean Modification Approach (RC-
Encryption SMMA). Unlike conventional approaches, which use single coefficient from a block to embed an infor-
Confidentiality mation bit, RCSMMA uses multiple Discrete Cosine Transform coefficients selected randomly from two
Privacy
non-neighbourhood blocks to ensure information spread over different areas of the cover image. The
Data hiding
Robustness
proposed approach results in very high robustness of the information transferred between two nodes, for
DCT all signal processing and the region-oriented attacks, acting simultaneous or standalone. For attacks like
rotation, cropping, histogram equalization and sharpening, a very high robustness is achieved with Nor-
malized Cross Correlation close to unity. For other singular/combined attacks average Normalized Cross
Correlation is greater than 0.95. The average Peak Signal to Noise Ratio obtained for various images is
greater than 40 dB with the payload of 4Kb. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the
proposed scheme over other state-of-art techniques.
© 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The recent boom in Internet and multimedia technology is
providing plethora of benefits in every sphere of life. The use
of sophisticated processors and sensors deployed in numerous
domains of life are proving to be beneficial due to their numerous
capabilities in performing various tasks. The extensive usage
of digital platforms for exchange of digital information in the
sectors like healthcare, social network, media, defense, satellite
communication, security and law enforcement has created an
immense paradigm shift [1]. The interconnection of smart devices
and cloud platforms has formed fully controllable internet frontier
established as Internet of Things (IoTs); envisioned to revolutionize
the modern society in a technological perspective [2]. The IoT is a
robust network of virtually connected physical devices, forming a
∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: shabireltr@gmail.com (S.A. Parah),
(K. Muhammad).
Smart Cyberspace, with the aim to ensure large scale connectivity,
efficient computation and real time analysis of data. A well-
developed IoT design offers application advantages like less energy
consumption, enhanced security, automatic monitoring and easy
to use services. Considering these advantages, a great amount of
interest has been generated in past few years at industrial/research
community level and as such several prototypes/models have been
proposed at both industrial and government level [3,4]. As an
example, in the e-healthcare sector, the efficiency of delivery of
services is envisioned with giant strides by employing IoT-assisted
cloud-based services. Similarly, the interconnection of Geo Sensors
through an IoT system could result in large scale real-time col-
lection/processing of geographical information pertaining to forest
terrains, soil and calamities like floods, earthquakes etc. [5].
The data exchanged in a distributed IoT system may include
medical data, banking information and secret documents in the
form of images, text files and video acquired through various
sensors/cameras and processed/stored by the system. In order,
khan@sejong.ac.kr
to ensure a better, smarter and robust system that completely

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2019.101989
1570-8705/© 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
2 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989
covers an application in terms of control and intelligence these
technologies have to be reliable, secure and computationally effi-
cient [6,7]. As the control of these systems is fully computerized
there are several threats encountered due to the information
exchange through insecure mediums. In view of the massive data
exchange in an IoT system, the new challenges in the form of
security, confidentiality, privacy and authentication need to be
countered at cyberspace level [8,9]. The possibilities that digital
data could be easily accessed, copied, manipulated and distributed
are more probable in IoTs and hence chances of attacks on
multimedia are multiplied [10]. The data security measures are
currently at immature level and as such large number of major
international companies have reported continuous data breaches
in recent years. According to the Global Risks Report 2018, the
annual economic loss due to cyber-attacks and data theft is esti-
mated to be around 1 trillion US dollars, more than losses due to
natural disasters [11]. The Motion Picture Association of America
(MPAA) has recently reported that movie industry losses billions
of dollars annually due to digital piracy and copyright violation
[12]. The breaches in other sectors like healthcare and defense
is intolerable because of the high sensitivity of the information
content and as such any minute alteration may result in dreadful
decisions [13]. Unfortunately, healthcare sector hasn’t been spared
even. A ransomware attack in the database of the Pacific Alliance
Medical Center, the medical information of 266,123 patients was
breached [14]. Many other similar cases could be found in [15,16].
This loss of information related to privacy of millions of clients has
proved to be headache for the concerned organizations, as heavy
fines have been imposed on them by many legal enforcements
[17]. It has been estimated that US healthcare sector suffers from
more than 5 billion dollar’s loss every year in the legal suits and
post breach rectifications [18]. This is the reason that most of the
organizations pay millions to many security agencies to devise
mechanisms in order to avoid the losses. Proving copyrights of
intellectual property in the court is necessary to claim losses and
impose fines on the violators. For example, there has been long
running controversial case between Google and Oracle for copy-
right violation in the use of intellectual properties of the latter
[19]. This requires the legal users to devise a proper mechanism
so that copyrights could be claimed in case of breaches. Clearly,
the security issues faced during data transmission through several
networks demand better quality of service (QoS) from the data
handling groups. Further, there is need for techniques to maintain
the integrity and authenticity for copyright protection to ensure
secure and legal usage of digital files [8]. Without assurance of
data privacy, confidentiality and authenticity, the relevant stake-
holders are unlikely to adopt IoT platform on a large scale [20].
Data hiding schemes have proved to be highly efficient to ensure
the authenticity and privacy for secure communication [21]. A data
hiding technique conceals the important digital content of a user
in some cover media like image or audio so that any unauthorised
user could not be able to achieve information theft.
In order to ensure high level of privacy and confidentiality of
information exchange in IoTs, a new robust and secure data hiding
framework is proposed for efficient multimedia analytics with
high computational efficiency. The proposed technique is based on
modified chaotic encryption, random coefficient selection & mean
modification approach to overcome security and Intellectual Prop-
erty Right (IPR) issues of multimedia in IoT setups. The proposed
model offers following features:
(a) A region insensitive blocking approach is adopted wherein
the block and coefficient selection is done randomly. The
private data is embedded and spread across an array of
coefficients. This helps in better information retrieval,
even if some of the coefficients get tampered. The non-
neighbourhood block and coefficient selection eliminates
the weakness of fragility to geometric attacks.
(b) The Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) domain is used for
embedding data as it offers better energy compaction and
de-correlation properties along with better performance in
terms of compression. In order to minimize the effect of ar-
tifacts prominent in the DCT domain, blocking of the im-
age is done before application of the DCT. For embedding
a data bit, two arrays are formed from the middle frequency
coefficients of DCT blocks in each step. Embedding is done
by mean modification of the two coefficient arrays and the
mean of an array is optimally set as per the value of data bit.
(c) The performance of the scheme is analysed and has been
found to be satisfactory not only to commonly occurring sin-
gular attacks but also to dual and triple attacks as well. This
is substantiated by the average value of PSNR greater than
40 dB and average value of Normalized Cross-Correlation
(NCC) greater than 0.95.
The security of the embedded information is ensured by
the proposed security module based on chaos theory. The
use of robust information hiding with chaotic encryption
presents a multi-level security to the data, besides providing
check on data integrity. Multiple secret keys are used in
the proposed encryption algorithm and each one offers
security to the data independent of other keys. So, every
key is unique in the sense that each key offers the full
security to the level that even if only a bit of key changes
the decryption process fails completely.
The broad sections of this paper are categorized as follows:
Section 2 describes some of the related work. In Section 3, the pro-
posed data hiding scheme is discussed in detail. Section 4 demon-
strates the subjective/objective results obtained using proposed
scheme and comparison with various state-of-art techniques to
prove superiority of the scheme. Section 5 presents the conclusion
of the paper in brief.
2. Literature work
The security and confidentiality of the data transmission in an
IoT-based application is of primary concern to ensure better and
safer designs. Although various approaches have been proposed to
prevent the illegal access of multimedia information but security
against the cyber-attacks remains the prominent challenge in the
distributed IoT systems. So, in order to ensure the safety of infor-
mation, exchanged at incredible rates in an IoT design, security
and intellectual property protection against cyber-attacks is an
important problem to be taken care of. A secure image sharing
technique of devices with cloud framework associated with IoTs is
presented in [22]. In the proposed technique shadow images are
generated from the information and embedded in a cover image
using 24-ary notational concept. The limitation of the technique
is that no security mechanism is adopted, hiding is the standalone
protective mechanism and once algorithm is breached, data might
be at risk. A spatial domain-based image data hiding method
for securing transmission of Internet Protocol (IP) camera images
of an IoT device is presented in [23]. The technique employs
concept of inverted least significant bits (ILSB) to encrypt the
images before transmission to the other devices or designated
cloud corresponding to an IoT system. However, these data hid-
ing schemes have not been checked for extraction efficiency in
case of cyber-attacks. A High capacity Electronic Health Record
(EHR) data hiding scheme has been proposed for an IoT driven
e-healthcare application [24]. The hiding of data in a medical
image is achieved using modular arithmetic operations along
with Pixel Repetition Method (PRM). Some other spatial domain
 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989
techniques can be found in [25–27]. Although, these techniques
are computationally efficient, the security provided to the secret
data is considered inadequate for the current and future scenarios.
Similarly, a blind and robust watermarking techniques based on
Convolutional Neural network (CNN) is proposed in [28]. However,
this technique also offers very weak robustness against various
attacks. It has been found that a high level of robustness can be
attained by embedding a watermark in the transform domain.
Some of the popular transform domains in which watermarking
techniques have been implemented include DCT, DWT and IWT
[29–31]. The techniques based on hybrid combination of these
transform domains result in high complexity, lower imperceptivity
and payload in order to increase robustness [32,33].
The DCT domain-based data hiding has proved one of better
choices because of its better performance in terms of robustness,
security and computational efficiency. Also, due to its better
compatibility with commonly employed JPEG standard, embedding
in DCT domain can reduce the cost factor of real time multime-
dia modules where compression uses DCT as first step [34]. In
[35] characteristics of both spatial and transform domains have
been combined for a blind watermarking of RGB images. The
embedding has been done using the luminance component of the
cover image after calculation of DC coefficients from each of the
8 × 8 blocks of the image. Since DCT transform is not employed
the computational cost is efficiently reduced. The watermark bits
are embedded by performing set of modifications on the acquired
DC coefficients of a block. Although, embedding cost is low, the
imperceptivity, security and robustness performance is weak. A
similar blind data hiding scheme using the advantages of both
spatial and frequency domain has been proposed in [36]. The
scheme offers very low embedding capacity. An efficient blind
data hiding method based on DCT domain has been presented in
[37]. The method involves embedding watermark information by
setting a correlation between a set of DC coefficients residing at
same location in the respective set of adjacent blocks. Although,
the proposed method offers resilience to various image processing
attacks, the block utilisation is not efficient and as such reduces
its embedding capacity. The method has been improved in [38],
which utilizes all the blocks for embedding in order to increase
embedding capacity. A different framework is employed to im-
prove both imperceptivity and robustness along with payload. The
technique however is not successful in securing the watermark
embedded in the images. Further, the performance of the scheme
is not good to geometric attacks.
The security of the watermark is an important factor that
should be considered while developing a watermarking technique.
If a proper security mechanism is devised, the unauthorized access
would result in the meaningless information when extraction al-
gorithm is breached. This extra security precaution becomes more
necessary in current world scenario where very high processing
multimedia tools are easily available to unauthorized users [39].
Although encryption algorithms like Data Encryption Standard
(DES), Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and Rivest–Shamir–
Adleman (RSA) are commonly used to enhance security, they are
unsuitable for encryption of digital images with unique properties
like strong correlations within neighbouring data pixels, high
redundancy and bigger sizes [40]. A secure medical data transmis-
sion model using hybrid combination of AES and RSA has been
proposed for IoT-based healthcare systems [21]. After encrypting
the medical information, the scheme hides the data in a second-
level DWT band of a cover image. Although a very high visual
quality of the stego image is achieved, the performance in presence
of various commonly occurring attacks has not been evaluated.
The combination AES and RSA results in the very long encryption
time and hence not suitable for resource constrained real-time
applications in an IoT environment. The chaotic maps are currently
3
popular and employed for security purposes in different systems
due to their properties like high sensitivity to initial parameters,
pseudo-randomness and non-linear behaviour [41]. In [42] Arnold
cat map has been employed to encrypt the watermark before
embedding in a colour image. The scheme is based on quaternion
discrete Fourier transform (QDFT) and improved uniform log-polar
mapping (IULPM). Although the embedding capacity and imper-
ceptivity of the scheme is good, the robustness is poor against
Gaussian noise, filtering and some of geometric attacks. Also, the
security provided by the Arnold encryption technique is weak due
to small key space and universally known algorithm [39]. That
security can be increased by employing two or more chaotic maps
one after other depending on the required amount of security.
A secure watermarking technique has been reported in [43]. The
scheme employs dual encryption in the form of two chaotic maps.
The embedding is done after applying DCT on the 8 × 8 blocks
by correlating a pair of DC coefficients from two neighbouring
blocks. The strength of robustness is determined by an embedding
factor whose value sets the length of guard bands between the
zones defined by watermark bits. Although, the scheme offers high
robustness to most of the filtering, compression and noisy attacks,
the performance against some of region oriented geometric at-
tacks is poor. This drawback creeps in because of the fact that like
various block-based schemes, the watermark bits are embedded
using adjacent 8 × 8 blocks. So, when a region-based attack like
cropping or rotation is performed on the image the information
in that region is completely lost. Also, since only two coefficients
carry watermark information in two blocks comprising of 128
coefficients, the watermark information is completely lost if the
pair of coefficients are tampered. The security mechanism involved
in the form of Arnold/Chaos encryption is not that efficient due to
small key size and increase in complexity with increase in itera-
tions of Arnold encryption. Further, security has been determined
by the manipulation of all keys and not change of a single key.
In order to overcome the limitations associated with recently
proposed schemes, a secure and robust data hiding scheme is
proposed in this paper. This work aims to secure the privacy and
confidentiality of the data in order to ensure the reliable data
transmission in an IoT setup by integrating data hiding and strong
encryption techniques. The detailed discussion on the proposed
scheme is described in Section 3.
3. The proposed framework
In this section, the proposed framework for preserving the
data confidentiality during the transmission in IoTs is described
in detail. Since in an IoT network data travels through multiple
hops, the data confidentiality is an important requirement, which
can be ensured using a secure encryption method. This is required
because of diverse combination of devices, services and networks;
which communicate/operate through plethora of data and hence
provide ample room for privacy violation due to ease of data
accessibility in an IoT network [8]. Due to this requirement, a
secure data transmission model for a reliable IoT network is
proposed. The overall view of the proposed model is shown in
Fig. 1. The proposed model visualizes healthcare scenario in an IoT
system distributed over different towns and cities. The three main
stages of data hiding system include: Transmitter side (Patient
house)—processes data to ensure privacy and confidentiality, Cyber
space (Internet)—network layer or storage space prone to attacks
and data manipulation, and Receiver side (Hospital)—extracts
and decrypts confidential data from the cover image. In order to
achieve strong resilience to IPR attacks, the data is embedded in
a cover image in the DCT domain. For ensuring the high level
of security to the private data modified chaos encryption has
been used along with large space secret keys as described in
4 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989
Fig. 1. Proposed data hiding and extraction model for transmission between IoT devices.
Section 3.1. In Section 3.2, the proposed framework for hiding
sensitive information in a cover image is described in detail. In or-
der to achieve high level of resilience to cyber-attacks, the middle
frequency DCT coefficients of cover image are used to embed the
user information, which ensure high robustness, while maintaining
good imperceptivity [37,43]. The commonly used neighbourhood
block selection is avoided in the proposed framework to minimize
the effect of region specific geometrical and filtering attacks. The
selection of blocks and their middle frequency DCT coefficients is
done smartly by picking coefficients at even locations from one
image block and coefficients at odd locations from a distant image
block. This coefficient selection ensures information is embedded
over different areas of the watermarked image and hence results
in better performance to geometric attacks.
The block diagram of proposed data hiding technique is shown
in Fig. 2. The proposed system consists of four sub-systems; image
preparation unit, watermark security unit, watermark embedding
unit and post-processing unit. The image preparation unit pre-
processes the image in such a way that it is ready for hiding of se-
cret information. The security unit performs the necessary scram-
bling of the watermark bits to ensure that the embedded data is
not retrievable by adversaries without complete knowledge of the
secret keys. The embedding unit performs the necessary opera-
tions on the image coefficients as per the watermark information
such that watermark can be hidden with high imperceptivity and
extracted with minimum possible error. The post-processing unit
simply replaces original coefficients with the modified coefficients
and performs few other operations to get the final watermarked
image. In addition to these four units we have a separate unit for
extraction of the watermark, which is used at the receiver end.
3.1. Data encryption unit
The security and confidentiality of the data exchange in a
distributed IoT system has resulted in a bottleneck on the applica-
bility of IoT in various areas of life. In order to develop a resilient
 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989
Fig. 2. Complete block diagram of proposed data hiding system.
system, hybrid encryption techniques form a new paradigm that
can be employed to secure data transmission between different
IoT modules and systems. Further, as IoT-based applications have
to be smart enough in the sense that they have to respond to real
time scenarios, there is requirement for computationally efficient
algorithms. The hybrid encryption, when devised efficiently, offers
unbreakable level of security and high computational efficiency.
To ensure high level of security the watermark used for copyright
purposes in the form of any data stream or an arrangement
of data bits in the form of a binary logo is encrypted used in
this technique. The security of the watermark is very important
due to possibility of unauthorised access, availability of powerful
tampering tools and need to ensure high level of confidentiality.
Usually the watermark is embedded as such in host media by
using some embedding procedure. This embedding procedure
is entirely responsible for securing watermark. However, if an
unauthorised user acquires some basic knowledge of embedding
there are chances of cracking the algorithm. In such scenario it is
extremely important to devise a mechanism to ensure the water-
mark security even if embedding/extraction algorithm is breached.
Of late various encryption techniques have been popular because
of involvement of strong and highly sensitive encryption keys. We
have developed a security module that encrypts the watermark
data prior to embedding. Our algorithm offers better efficiency
in terms of computational complexity and security. The proposed
encryption algorithm is lightweight as it uses multiple keys with
optimal key space instead of complex computations. Also, keys
are used in such a way that they provide security independently.
The use of multiple keys ensures that even if one or two keys get
exposed others will still ensure security. For maximum possible
security the proposed encryption algorithm is formulated in such
a way that both pixel values and coordinates are encrypted with
5
minimum correlation between original and encrypted watermarks.
The second level of encryption by modified chaotic map ensures
very high level of security. There are scenarios in which cloud
server is considered malicious and devices uploading/downloading
data have resource constraint [44]. In case a very high privacy
is required from these resource constraint devices (outsourcing
data to cloud server), the encrypted data can be sent to the cloud
server for second level encryption (provided by chaotic maps)
[45]. In this way, a two-level encryption can serve both high level
of security and privacy without any extra burden on resource
constraint devices. In Section 4.6 a detailed analysis of proposed
encryption technique has been performed.
3.1.1. Modified chaos encryption
The elementary mathematical equation for chaotic map is
shown as [43].
Wi = β × Wi−1 × (1 − Wi−1 ) (1)
The variable ‘i’ varies from 1 to N − 1, N determines the num-
ber of possible values Ci can take for a particular value of ‘β ’. The
parameter β ∈ [0,4] and is called bifurcation factor. This parameter
is typically assigned value greater than 3.57 to achieve maximum
randomness. However, the chaotic map diverges and randomness
vanishes for the value β > 4. So, the two keys used in original
chaos encryption are initial value of Wi and restricted value of
‘β ’. Keeping in the mind the fact that the basic requirement of
chaotic map is to generate values of Wi between 0 and 1 with
random probability, we have incorporated modulus function in
the elementary chaos Eq. (1). The modulus function used and the
modified chaos map is presented as:
Wi = MOD[β × Wi−1 × (1 − Wi−1 ), 1] (2)
6 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989

The Modulus function ‘MOD (1)’ offers the choice to set the
value of ‘β ’ in the whole range of [0, ∞), which is not possible
basic chaos encryption. This increases the key size of initial pa-
rameters and hence security is increased remarkably as it becomes
impossible for the unauthorised user to iterate the bifurcation
factors in the infinite range. The modified chaos encryption tech-
nique offers improved performance in terms of larger key space,
uniformity of density function, sensitivity to initial parameters,
ergodicity etc., as against to conventionally used chaos encryption.
The value of ‘β ’ in the proposed algorithm is a 20-bit number and
acts as a secret key. The initial value of Wi is decided using a 5-bit
key (K) is the following equation.
 
decimal (K )
W0 = MOD , 1
32
The resulting value of the initial condition W0 obtained from
above equation is always less than unity.
3.1.2. Proposed encryption technique
The proposed encryption technique employs modified chaos
encryption and a set of multiple security keys to enhance the
security of watermark. The proposed encryption algorithm based
on modified chaos encryption technique and a set of mathematical
permutations along with other basic operations (implemented in
MATLAB) is described in detail as Algorithm 1. The key 1 (K1 )
is used to permute the watermark bits in such a way that their
position gets changed. For analysis we have used 4096 watermark
bits in the form of a 64 × 64 watermark for which the key space
of K1 is 212 . After the permutation of watermark coordinates, the
values are encrypted using simple operations like shift (circularly),
flip (Left to Right), addition, XOR () and compliment (NOT).
These operations are performed using six more keys: K2 , K3 , K4 ,
K5 , K6 and K7 . The use of these basic operations results is fast
performance than techniques like Arnold encryption and involves
multiple keys for better security.
3.2. Image processing and embedding unit
In this sub section, the steps starting from reading the image
up to obtaining the watermarked image are described in detail.
This includes the image pre-processing, embedding and post
processing steps. Consider a cover image and a watermark logo
designated by ‘I’ and ‘W’ with size M × N and 64 × 64 respectively.
The cover image can be a gray-scale or colour image and the
watermark used is a binary logo. The colour image is converted to
YCbCr format and luminance component is obtained for embed-
ding watermark. The block diagram of the proposed watermarking
scheme is shown in the Fig. 2.
The embedding process starts with two inputs in the form of
encrypted watermark ‘We ’ and cover image ‘I’. In case the host is
(3) colour image, the embedding is done in luminance component of
image. The steps of watermark embedding process are described
in the following steps:
Step 1: Read input cover image and subtract 128 from each im-
age pixel element so that the pixel intensities take value in
the range −128 to 127.
Step 2: Split the cover image into two equal halves: upper part
and lower part.
Step 3: Arrange each of the upper and lower part into array of
16 × 16 blocks. A total of ‘n’ blocks is hence obtained. Where
n = 1024 for a 512 × 512 cover image.
M×N
n= (4)
16 × 16
Step 4: Choose first 16 × 16 block from upper array designated
as C1 and first 16 × 16 block from lower array designated as
Cb .
Step 5: Divide C1 and Cb into four 8 × 8 blocks respectively. The
four blocks hence obtained from C1 and Cb are designated
by C1i and Cbi respectively. Where i = 1,2, 3 or 4 and we get
a total of 4096 image blocks.
Step 6: Select a pair of 8 × 8 blocks C1i & Cbi and form multi-
ple arrays by selecting coefficients from different locations of

Algorithm 1 Watermark encryption algorithm.

Input: Watermark ‘W’; Keys K1 , K2 , K3 , K4 , K5 , K6 and K7

1. Reshape the watermark (in case of 2D watermark) into a single row array.
2. Permute the array randomly with the permutation index as secret key, K1 .
K1 = randperm(numel(W))
W = W(K1 )
3. Generate two new keys K2 and K3 each of length 32 bits.
4. Flip key K2 (& K3 ) and then circularly shift by K4 positions along dimension K4 . For
K2 and K3 the values of by 13-bit keys K4 and K5 are different.
K2  = fliplr(K2 )
K2  = circshift(K2  , K4 ,K5 )
5. Form a 64-bit key b3 .
b1 = K2   K2 
b2 = NOT (K3  )
b3 = [b1 b2 ]
6. XOR first 64 bits of watermark array with b3
WP (i: i+63) = W (i: i+63)  b3
Where i=1 for first 64 bits of the watermark array.
7. Modify the b3 by 24-bit key K6 by addition operation, shifting (circularly by K7 ) and
compliment operation.
b3 = b3 + K6
b3 = circshift(b3 , K7 ,K5 )
b3 = NOT(b3 )
8. Repeat step 6,7 & 8 for each of next 64-bit pixel groups of watermark array, until all
4096 bits of watermark are encrypted.
9. Reshape the encrypted array back to 64 × 64 matrix, WP.
10. Apply modified chaos encryption (Eq. (2)) to ‘WP ’ to get final version of the
encrypted watermark, WE .

Output: Encrypted watermark ‘WE ’

 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989 7

blocks. This is described for two blocks C11 and Cb1 in step
7.
Step 7: Apply DCT on the blocks C11 and Cb1 . Use zigzag scan-
ning to select ‘p’ middle DCT coefficients from the block C11 .
Divide these ‘p’ coefficients into two chunks represented as
upper and lower ‘p/2’ coefficients such that we obtain four
‘p/2’ coefficient arrays. Divide each ‘p/2’ array into two equal
sub-arrays by choosing coefficients at even and odd loca-
tion: an even array and an odd array. Similarly divide Cb1
into four arrays. At the end of this coefficient distribution
we have eight sub-arrays with ‘p/4’ number of coefficients:
Lo1 , Le1 , Uo1 , Ue1 , Lo2 , Le2 , Uo2 and Ue2 . Similar steps are
followed for rest of 8 × 8 blocks.
Step 8: Combine Lo1 & Uo2 to form array ‘A1 ’ and also combine
Le1 & Ue2 to form array ‘A2 ’. Similarly, for embedding next
watermark bit arrays A1 and A2 are formed by combining Uo1
& Lo2 and Ue1 & Le2 respectively.
Step 9: Separate and store sign of A1 and A2 in variables ‘S1 ’ &
‘S2 ’ respectively. Similarly, separate and store magnitudes of
A1 and A2 in variables ‘AM1 ’ & ‘AM2 ’ respectively. Using these
magnitudes calculate mean of AM1 and AM2 , stored as μ1 and
μ2 respectively. The embedding of watermark bits is de-
scribed in steps 10–11.
Step 10: The complete embedding process is described in
Algorithm 2 with required modification parameters also
described. For embedding bit ‘1’, the mean of the selected
odd coefficients is set in such a way that it must be larger
than the mean of the predefined even coefficients. This
modification is achieved by adding a value to the odd
coefficients and subtracting the same from the even coeffi-
cients. A threshold limit () is set which is the robustness
parameter such that the difference of the modified means
must be greater than this threshold value. This threshold
parameter defines the robustness of the watermarking
system such that more the value of this parameter more is
the robustness. The value of ‘’ is set with the upper limit
of 7. Unlike robustness, the imperceptivity of the proposed
system is inversely proportional to ‘’.
Step 11: Like the embedding of bit ‘1’, described in step 10,
the embedding of bit ‘0’ is done by modifying mean of the
predefined odd coefficients to be less than the mean of the
predefined even coefficients. Similar steps are followed for
embedding all of 4096 watermark bits. It is to be noted that
for embedding each watermark bit the difference between
means is set as
| μ1 − μ2 | >  (5)
Hence, the two means are separated by a region with length
equal to threshold limit, .
Step 12: The embedding of watermark bit results in two modi-
fied coefficient arrays; A M1 and A M2 . These arrays are mul-
tiplied with respective signs stored in S1 and S2 to get arrays
A 1 and A 2 .
On the completion of embedding process, the original DCT coef-
ficients are replaced with the modified coefficients by performing
several post processing operations. Inverse zig-zag scan is applied
on the modified coefficient array to form 8 × 8 DCT blocks, C ij .
This is followed by application of inverse DCT (IDCT) on each of the
modified DCT block (C ij ) in order to get the spatial version of the
modified coefficients. The blocks hence obtained are concatenated
and 128 is added to each pixel value to get the watermarked im-
age with pixels ranging from 0 to 255. For colour images the final
step is YCbCr to RGB conversion to get the watermarked image.
3.3. Extraction unit
The extraction of hidden information is done by using
pre-processing unit of Fig. 2 and the extraction algorithm
(Algorithm 3), in the IoT setup at receiver stage. In the pro-
posed scheme, for the extraction, no prior information about the
original image is required and as such the proposed scheme is
blind one. It is worth to mention here that in order to extract
the information correctly; number of factors should be consid-
ered. Firstly, the information carrying coefficients location and
number should be same as in embedding stage. Also, the secret
keys applied for decryption should be 100% accurate. Any change
will result in totally different results. As discussed earlier, the
robustness of the system and hence accuracy of the watermark ex-
traction in presence of attacks is ensured by selecting coefficients
from different areas of the image such that effect is minimized.
The accuracy of extraction also depends on the value of the
threshold limit employed to separate the two means.

Algorithm 2 Embedding algorithm.

Input: μ1 , μ2 , AM1 , AM2, , δ 1 , δ 2 and β .

1. Define the values of parameters α , , k1 , k2 and β .

2. Calculate absolute difference of two means as
Ma = abs (μ1 - μ2 )
3. Modify Ma as per following conditions
Ma = Ma + (β - 0.5) for Ma < β
Ma = Ma + β for Ma < β – 0.5
Ma = Ma + (β + 0.5) for Ma < β – 1
Ma = Ma + (β + 1.5) for Ma < β – 1.5
4. Modify means μ1 and μ2 for the watermark bit ‘1 such that μ1 > μ2
• If μ1 > μ2
• While abs (μ1 - μ2 ) < 
• AM1 = AM1 + Ma /δ 2 & AM2 = abs (AM2 – δ 1 )
• end
• elseif μ1 < μ2
• While μ1 < μ2
• AM1 = AM1 + Ma /δ 2 & AM2 = abs (AM2 – δ 1 )
• While abs (μ1 - μ2 ) < 
• AM1 = AM1 + δ 1 & AM2 = abs (AM2 – δ 1 )
• end
5. Modify μ1 and μ2 to embed rest of watermark bits ‘1 such that μ1 > μ2 using step 4.
6. The modified coefficient arrays are represented as A’M1 and A’M2.

Output: Modified coefficient arrays A M1 and A M2 .

8 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989
Algorithm 3 Extraction algorithm.
Input: Watermarked image (IM ), Secret keys (K1 , K2 , K3 , K4 , K5 , K6 and
K7 ).
1. Perform pre-processing of watermarked image as described in Fig. 1.
2. Obtain the arrays A1  and A2  from the watermarked image.
3. Calculate mean as
μˆ 1 = mean{abs(A1 ’)}
μˆ 2 = mean{abs(A2 ’)}
4. Extract the watermark bits as
μˆ 1 ≥ μˆ 2 ; Wˆ E (a) = 1
μˆ 1 < μˆ 2 ; Wˆ E (a) = 0
5. Reshape and re-arrange the extracted watermark bits.
6. Decrypt the reshaped array, using secret keys by inverse-chaos and
proposed decryption algorithm, to obtain the original watermark.
ˆ E.
Output: Extracted watermark, W
4. Experimental results and discussion
In this section, the performance of the proposed scheme is
evaluated and a comprehensive analysis of the results is pre-
sented and discussed. The results are obtained by performing
both subjective and objective analysis of the scheme. Several
standard gray-scale and colour images like Lena, Peppers, Mandrill,
Aeroplane etc. with size of 512 × 512 are used for the analysis.
These images and 200 more images for analysis against different
attacks are taken from USC-SIPI Image Database [46]. The secret
information used for analysis are 4096 bits arranged in the form
of a 64 × 64 watermark logo. The performance is measured in
terms of the parameters like imperceptibility, robustness, security
and payload under various image processing and geometric at-
tacks. The experimental simulations of the proposed watermarking
scheme are performed on Core (TM) i5-4660T (1.90 GHz) using
MATLAB 2015b working on Windows 10 platform. The result
analysis has been further explained in the following sub sections.
4.1. Capacity analysis
In this section, the proposed technique is evaluated for its ca-
pacity (payload), which is the extent to which an image can hide
secret data, while preserving good perceptual quality. The effect
of payload is directly on the imperceptivity and as the payload
increases the imperceptivity decreases. This is because of the fact
that a greater number of bits replace and modify the original
information content in the cover image. Using the proposed tech-
nique, we can embed two bits of watermark for every two 8 × 8
blocks. In this way a total number of 4096 watermark bits can be
Fig. 3. Comparison of Payload for (a) Grayscale Lena image (b) Colour images.
embedded within a 512 × 512 Gy scale image. In comparison to
some existing state of art schemes, the proposed scheme offers
more embedding capacity as shown in Fig. 3.
The higher capacity of proposed scheme compared to schemes
under comparison is because of following reasons. C. Das
[37] doesn’t use the border block columns on the right side
of the image for embedding watermark and hence results in
lesser payload. The use of only least correlated high and low
frequency bands in watermark embedding result in low payload in
Prathap et al. [36]. Other techniques taken for comparison include:
[26,30,33,34,37,39,43] for gray scale images and [25,27,28,36,43] for
colour images.
4.2. Imperceptibility analysis
The imperceptibility of an image describes the invisibility factor
of the hidden information and gives an idea regarding the amount
of alteration in image quality after embedding has been done.
For calculating the imperceptivity, we have used parameters like
PSNR and structural similarity index (SSIM) [47]. For a good water-
marking scheme, the effect of watermark embedding should be as
low as possible on the visual quality of the host image such that
maximum possible value of PSNR is obtained. The imperceptibility
should be more than the minimum benchmark value of PSNR
equal to 38 dB so that Human Visual System (HVS) is unable to
recognize the hidden watermark information [48]. Similarly, SSIM
value should be very close to unity for good watermarking system.
It is appropriate to mention here that the objective parameters are
obtained for a payload of 4096 bits and images of size 512 × 512.
It is worth to mention here that the results are obtained at thresh-
old limit,  = 5.7. These results clearly prove that for a payload
of 4096 bits high quality watermarked images are obtained. The
watermarked images as a result of embedding by the proposed
scheme are of high perceptual quality with an average PSNR of
41 dB for gray scale images & RGB images and 43 dB for medical
images. Some of the watermarked gray scale images, extracted
watermarks under zero attack and their respective quality metrics
are shown in Fig. 4.
It is clear from the results that subjective and objective percep-
tual quality of the images is high. Also, while extracting watermark
in no attack case, the error rate is zero. Similar results were ob-
tained in case of embedding watermark in luminance component
of RGB images. The results could be seen in Fig. 5 with high
perceptual quality of watermarked images. The watermarks are
also extracted without any error as in case of gray scale images.
In order to prove the efficacy of the proposed scheme we have
 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989 9

Fig. 4. Watermarked images and extracted watermarks.

Fig. 5. Watermarked colour images and corresponding quality metrics.

compared our technique with various state of art techniques and
the results have been shown in Fig. 6.
A comparison of the standard test images has been shown in
Fig. 6(a). For embedding in luminance component of a colour im-
age a comparison has been made with [28,42,43] and the results
are presented in Fig. 6(b). From the results it can be concluded
that the proposed scheme outperforms other schemes under
comparison. The better objective quality metrics are achieved in
our case because the modification needed to be carried out on
the middle frequency DC coefficients is small in order to vary the
respective means of two arrays. The aim of this modification is to
separate the two means by a small value defined by a threshold
limit ( < 7), which reflects minutely in the pixels recovered after
embedding. In comparison, other schemes embed the watermark
bit in either the high information carrying image pixels or modi-
fication carried out is large in order to obtain the high robustness.
The results clearly show that proposed scheme offers very high
imperceptivity as compared to other schemes with similar purpose.
4.3. Robustness analysis
The robustness of a data hiding system refers to the resistance
offered by the design to different intentional/unintentional attacks
10 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989

Fig. 6. Comparison of objective quality metrics: (a) PSNR of gray-scale images, (b) PSNR of colour images.

and as such indicates the degree to which data is correctly ex-
tracted. While a meaningful payload should be embedded without
deteriorating perceptual quality of the image, the robustness to at-
tacks should be as high as possible. The robustness of the proposed
watermarking scheme is evaluated quantitatively by using two ob-
jective indicators: bit error rate (BER) and NCC [36]. These indica-
tors reveal the objective metrics of the extracted watermark when
the host image is subjected to different distortions and image
processing attacks. The parameters NCC and BER are calculated by
relating the embedded watermark (undistorted) with the extracted
watermark. The value of NCC should be ideally equal to unity
so that watermark extracted is same as original one. Similarly,
BER should be as low as possible and ideally equal to zero. For
robustness evaluation of the scheme various commonly occurring
image processing attacks such as filtering, noise addition, scaling,
cropping, rotation, sharpening, compression etc. are considered.
These attacks are applied on the watermarked image either indi-
vidually (Singular attacks) or in combination (Hybrid attacks). It
is to be noted that the robustness results are evaluated/compared
while keeping the imperceptivity equal to that of Loan et al.
[43] for both gray scale embedding and luminance component
embedding.
4.3.1. Geometric attacks
Geometric attacks are the most prevalent and hard to resist
attacks for a watermarked image when accessed by the unautho-
rised users. These attacks are so severe that they can modify all
of the features and information containing entities in an image
resulting in a highly distorted version. Some of the commonly
occurring geometric attacks which are considered in this work
include: rotation, cropping and scaling (or resizing).
4.3.1.1. Rotation attacks. Rotation of an image is usually done by
using some affine transformation, the result of which is a linear
displacement of pixels in either clockwise or anti-clockwise direc-
tion. The image attacked by a rotation operation gets deformed
results with edge pixels set to uniform value and arranged in a
triangular fashion. To simulate the effect of rotation attacks the
watermarked images are subjected to rotation by various degrees
and the results are shown in Fig. 7.
From the results it is evident that the extracted watermarks
are obtained with low errors for a rotation of wide angular range.
As a specific case, BER of the proposed scheme is less than 5%
for a rotation of 40°. In Fig. 8(a), NCC comparison is presented for
the proposed scheme using Lena as test image under the rotation

Fig. 7. BER values with different rotation angles.

 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989 11

Fig. 8. NCC comparison of extracted watermarks (a) For gray scale Lena image, (b) For colour images with 1° rotation.

Fig. 9. Rotated and cropped images with corresponding extracted watermarks.

attack at an angle of 1 and 5°. Similarly, Fig. 8(b), shows the NCC
comparison using various test images under the rotation attack at
an angle of 1°.
The better performance of the proposed scheme in case of
rotation attack is because of the random block and coefficient se-
lection throughout the image. This random selection ensures that
even if due to rotation some of the coefficients in the watermarked
image are modified, the coefficients taken from a distant portion
of the image still preserve the watermark information. This has
not been considered in the previous DCT block-based schemes,
which instead have chosen coefficients from the neighbouring
blocks. In Fig. 9, the results of rotation are presented subjectively
in terms of attacked images and extracted watermarks, while as
NCC and BER metrics present results objectively. Here various gray
scale images are rotated by 10°.
4.3.1.2. Cropping attacks. Cropping attacks usually replace a por-
tion (in square, rectangular or random shape) of an image with
either dark or white pixels. The cropping may vary from minimum
(1%) to a maximum (100%) of an image. To simulate the cropping
attack, the watermarked pepper images are cropped by varying
percentages at different portions and the results are depicted
in Fig. 9. It is clear from the results that a high-quality logo is
extracted from the cropped watermarked images.
As mentioned earlier for the case of rotation, the better per-
formance of the proposed scheme in case of cropping attack(s)
is because of the random coefficient and block selection for em-
bedding. This is not found in previously proposed techniques. The
proposed scheme has been compared for cropping by using Lena
images as test object and the results are presented in terms of
NCC in Fig. 10. Clearly, the proposed scheme outperforms [43] for
cropping attack and runs neck to neck with [37].
4.3.1.3. Resizing attacks. Resizing attacks generally modify the wa-
termarked image either by upscaling or by downscaling the image
dimensions. In case of upscaling the dimensions are increased by
adding the additional rows and/or columns to the image. Upscaling
is usually done by interpolating the pixels into an adjacent area,
12 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989

Fig. 10. NCC Comparison of extracted watermarks for cropping attacks on Lena image.

Table 1 To validate the robustness of the proposed scheme against various

NCC Comparison for different resizing factors in case of colour images.
filtering attacks, filters with varying window sizes are used on
Resizing factor watermarked image. In Fig. 11 watermarked images and extracted
Image Scheme watermarks are presented along with objective parameters re-
0.8 1.2 1.6
sulting after application of various filtering attacks. It can be
Lena Su [35] 0.9945 0.9964 0.9970
seen from the figure that the watermark logos easily survive the
Ouyang [42] 0.9358 0.9768 –
Loan [43] 0.9979 1 1 filtering attacks and as such prove that proposed scheme provides
Proposed 0.9983 1 1 efficient performance in terms of robustness.
Baboon Su [35] 0.9444 0.9854 0.9840
Loan [43] 0.9593 0.9972 0.9969
Proposed 0.9577 0.9902 0.9925 4.3.3. Noise attacks
Peppers Su [35] 0.9821 0.9865 0.9870 During transmission or storage of watermarked images, various
Ouyang [42] 0.9675 0.9768 – additive, multiplicative or statistical noises get accumulated into
Loan [43] 0.9959 1 1
the images. To test the robustness of the proposed scheme, water-
Proposed 0.9895 1 1
marked images are subjected to attacks like Salt & Pepper noise,
Poisson noise, Gaussian noise and Speckle noise. The proposed
method is tested using noise attacks with different noise densities
while as downscaling is achieved by either removing the rows varied by mean and variance. The NCC and BER values are given in
(columns) or by some filtering operation. In the proposed scheme, Fig. 11 along with extracted watermarks. The watermarked images
the recovery is achieved in case of resizing attack by providing are tested with Gaussian noise having zero mean and variance
the information about the dimensions to the authorized users. In equal to 0.001 and with Salt & Pepper noise of noise density
case the dimensions of received image are less, interpolation oper- 0.01. The results presented in Fig. 11, show that the proposed
ation is performed to obtain the image with dimensions same as scheme is robust to such distortions as recognizable watermarks
original one. Similarly, average filtering operation is performed if are extracted from the distorted Lena images.
the received image is found to be up-scaled. After performing the It is evident from the results presented in Fig. 11, that the pro-
recovery operations, the watermark is extracted from the corrected posed scheme shows great resistance against filtering and noise
image. To simulate the effect of resizing attacks on the water- attacks. Further, it is also shown that a good robustness is offered
marked images and test the robustness offered by the proposed against sharpening and histogram attacks. Only in case of Gaussian
system, various images are up-scaled/down-scaled by different noise the performance is lower than [43] but the difference is
factors. The resizing is done by factors ranging from 0.5 times to very small. Similarly, the results obtained for the proposed scheme
1.6 times the dimensions of the original image size. For testing, the when subjected to various attacks are compared with Das [37],
images like Lena, Baboon, Peppers etc. are taken and the results are Loan [43], Su [35] and Ouyang [42] are presented in Fig. 12.
compared with some latest techniques in Table 1. The NCC results
greater than 0.96 clearly state that proposed scheme offers very
4.3.4. Compression attacks
high robustness against both upscaling and down scaling attacks.
Compression is one of the main signal processing operation
From the comparison results it is evident that the performance of
performed on an image prior to transmission/storage. Compression
the proposed scheme is at par with other state of art techniques.
is usually done intentionally by the authorized users to save
bandwidth, time and resources. However, it can be performed
4.3.2. Filtering attacks by unauthorised users to destroy the copyright ownership infor-
Filtering is generally performed for de-noising or enhancements mation [36]. Although, compression by a small factor has little
in the signal quality. For example, Low Pass Filter (LPF) is used effect on the information content of the image, the compression of
to remove the noise lying in the low frequency region, average high degree removes most of coefficients lying in high frequency
filtering or median filtering is aimed for removal of region wise range, resulting information loss. A robust watermark should be
sharp transitions and wiener filtering uses statistics of pixel neigh- able to resist compression to a maximum possible range. The
bourhood to remove noise. Basically, these filtering operations common compression standard used for image processing is JPEG
modify some value(s) within the matrix by using its neighbouring compression. In order to prove the efficiency of the proposed
values whose range depend on the size of the filtering window. scheme, we have compared it some state of art schemes and the
 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989 13

Fig. 11. Comparison of extracted watermarks in presence of various attacks against [43].

Fig. 12. Performance of Lena image (a) BER comparison for gray scale image (b) NCC comparison for colour image.

Table 2 results like [43]. The better robustness against JPEG compression
NCC comparison for JPEG compression in case of color images.
in [43] and proposed scheme are due to modification of middle
Images frequency DC coefficients by an optimal value.
JPEG Scheme It is evident from the results in the Table that extracted wa-
lena Baboon Pepper
termark provides enough information to the authorized users
QF = 90 Proposed 1 1 1
even after JPEG compression with varying degrees of quality
Loan [43] 1 1 0.9986
Su [35] 0.9985 0.9980 0.9985 factor. Similar results are obtained for gray scale images with NCC
Mun [28] 0.9676 0.9129 0.9614 approximately equal to unity for quality factor greater than 50.
Wang [27] 1 1 1 A similar comparison has been obtained for robustness per-
QF = 60 Proposed 0.9981 0.9943 0.9903 formance against [43] and [28] in case of rotation, compression
Loan [43] 1 1 0.9969
Su [35] 0.971 0.968 0.9642
and filtering attacks and the results are shown in Fig. 13. It is
Wang [27] 0.73 0.73 0.73 clear from the Figure that proposed scheme performs better than
Abrahim [25] 0.8057 0.7241 – [43] in case of rotation attacks and at par in other cases. So
QF = 50 Proposed 0.9821 0.9865 0.9870 proposed scheme attains same performance like [43] and removes
Wang [27] 0.64 0.64 0.64
the weakness in case of geometric attacks.
Ouyang [42] 0.7950 0.8080 –
It is obvious from the comparison results shown in different
figures and tables that the proposed technique outperforms other
techniques. The efficient performance is due to the dependency
results are presented in Table 2. The robustness of our scheme of watermark information on multiple middle coefficients spread
is compared with [25,27,28,35,42,43] for compression attacks within a block as against other techniques where few coefficients
with quality factor of 50, 60 and 90. The results show that our are involved. Also, since the watermark is embedded by modifying
scheme performs better than [25,27,28,35,42], offers almost same the mean of these coefficients and a handsome difference is set
14 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989

Fig. 13. Performance comparison for Lena colour image in terms of NCC metrics against [43] and [28].

Table 3
NCC and BER metrics for other attacks in case of various gray scale and medical images.

Lena Peppers Abdomen Foot

Attacks
BER NCC BER NCC BER NCC BER NCC

Weiner filter [3 3] 2.71 0.980 3.734 0.977 3.22 0.985 3.91 0.974
Average filter [3 3] 4.9371 0.968 4.517 0.972 5.612 0.963 6.985 0.956
Smoothing [8 8] 3.272 0.980 3.345 0.979 5.374 0.973 6.74 0.957
Gamma correction (γ = 0.5) 0 1 0 1 1.243 0.987 1.73 0.981
Gamma correction (γ = 1.5) 0 1 0 1 1.44 0.985 2.633 0.979
Gaussian smoothing (σ = 0.5) 0 1 0 1 1.14 0.988 1.714 0.980
Gaussian LPF [3 3] 0 1 0 1 1.09 0.993 1.92 0.989
LSB reset (1) 0 1 0 1 0 1 0.519 0.998
LSB reset (1–3) 0.67 0.997 0 1 1.75 0.985 2.14 0.977
LSB reset (1–4) 1.34 0.985 0.576 0.996 2.63 0.968 2.77 0.966
Motion blur (L = 5, angle = 90°) 2.056 0.981 1.765 0.987 2.41 0.981 2.44 0.976
Brighten (50) 0.976 0.993 0.993 0.996 1.46 0.983 1.75 0.980
Darken (50) 0.097 0.999 0.439 0.997 2.41 0.978 2.19 0.975
Log transform (α = 0.1) 0 1 0 1 1.14 0.988 1.71 0.979
Speckle noise (0.001) 0.7812 0.995 0.439 0.996 1.63 0.983 1.75 0.982
Contrast adjust (1%) 0 1 0 1 1.17 0.986 1.73 0.977

between the means, the separation remains intact even after the
attack. So, during the extraction stage it becomes easy to compare
the means of the selected coefficients to decide the watermark bits
and as such high robustness is achieved. The results for various
other singular attacks are shown in Table 3.
4.3.5. Combined attacks
The test for multiple attacks acting simultaneously on a trans-
mitted image is necessary in order to simulate the real-time
transmission scenario. Considering this case scenario, the pro-
posed scheme is evaluated for multiple attacks acting on an
image simultaneously. This is simulated by employing commonly
occurring attacks that have been discussed already. These attacks
are applied on the watermarked images one after other with
different intensities. Fig. 14 shows the attacked Lena images and
corresponding extracted watermarks. A comparison between BER
rates of proposed scheme and [43] is also presented in the Fig. 14.
From the Fig. 14, it is evident that the proposed scheme
performs efficiently in case of dual and triple attacks acting simul-
taneously. The proposed scheme performs way better than [43], in
case of combined attacks involving geometric attacks like cropping
and rotation. In other cases, involving attacks like noise addition
and filtering, the scheme performs neck to neck with [43] and as
such offers good robustness, which can be seen from the results
with recognizable logos extracted after the attacks.
4.4. Steganography attacks
There are various possible scenarios of steganographic at-
tacks acting on a received image: stego only—unauthorised user
possesses only stego image; known cover—original cover image
is known; known message—the embedded message is known;
chosen stego attacks—different attacks are applied on stego im-
age etc. All of these possibilities have been taken care of while
designing the algorithm to ensure a very high robustness against
such attacks. The robustness performance in case of stego-only
case has been analysed in Section 4.3 for various chosen stego
attacks. Consider case when cover image is known, there are
negligible chances that embedded message can be extracted
because for the extraction one has to know the embedding al-
gorithm, encryption technique and the secret keys used. In case
the message is known, the unauthorised user may try to delete
the embedded information or corrupt the embedded information
with wrong message. However, to accomplish such tampering
the user needs to have the knowledge of the sequence of pix-
els/coefficients in which message bits are embedded. In proposed
scheme since we have performed both positional and intensity
encryption of the message bits, the chances of tampering in
this case are negligible. Also, as the message is randomly spread
throughout the image and hence the effect of an attack is further
reduced.
 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989
Fig. 14. Extracted watermarks after combination of attacks and BER (%) comparison with Loan et al. [43].
4.5. Steganalysis detection
There are various Steganalysis tools commercially available,
with the aim to hide/detect the extra content embedded in a cover
media. The commonly used steganographic tools include S-Tools,
Virtual Steganographic Laboratory (VSL), Openpuff etc. and some
of the Steganalysis tools include CANVASS, StegSecret, StegExpose
etc. However, these tools have been designed for the particular
algorithms and their weak performance in the present high attack
environment has limited their use. The reason for the weak per-
formance of steganographic tools in attack prone environments is
that most of these tools employ simple spatial domain embedding
algorithms due to which information can be extracted by a Ste-
ganalysis tool. However, the limitation with most of the Steganaly-
sis tools is that they are capable to detect only whether the image
is a stego-image or an innocent image and in minor cases the hid-
den information, that too if the embedding algorithm is simple or
known. For example, the CANVASS steganalyzer has been designed
to detect innocent images and stego-embedded images for only
five different algorithms — F5, Outguess, JPHide, Jsteg-jpeg and
Steghide [50]. StegSecret is able to detect the hidden information
though known steganographic methods and is designed to detect
LSB, DCT and EOF like techniques. Stegdetect is able to detect
only the steganographic methods which hide information in JPEG
images through JSteg, JPhide, OutGuess 01.3b, Invisible Secrets, F5,
appendX, Camouflage etc. Similarly, StegExpose is specialized in
detecting LSB type steganographic embedding in lossless images
such as PNG and BMP. Clearly, all the Steganalysis tools are trained
and designed only for detecting the hidden information for few
known data hiding techniques. Another limitation is that most of
these steganalyzers, are designed for the cases where embedding
algorithms use the JPEG domain. The proposed technique unlike
15
any other stenographic tools, which embed the information using
simple algorithms like LSB embedding or simple coefficient manip-
ulation, has been designed by employing a sophisticated resilient
algorithm. Also, since proposed technique provides flexibility
to the designer to select multiple coefficients randomly (from
various regions of image in multiple stages) in order to embed
information, the chances of extraction by an unauthorised user are
minimum. So, there is flexibility to alter the embedding procedure,
which eliminates the chances of unauthorised detection. Also,
even if the embedding algorithm is breached, there are still no
chances that hidden data can be extracted due to employment
of two-level encryption algorithm with multiple keys, which can
be changed each time data is embedded. From the discussion, it
can be concluded that proposed data hiding model facilitates high
security to the data transmission in the IoT-based applications.
A comparison has been made between Openpuff, S-Tools and
proposed technique. A message (text) of certain length (4 kb) is
taken for embedding and the results under different attacks are
presented in Table 4.
The complete failure of extraction for various cases in case
of tools; Openpuff and S-Tools, is either the dependency of the
embedding information on the whole image pixels/coefficients or
use of global DCT if JPEG images are used. So, when an attack
like cropping, rotation etc. modifies a single row/column of the
stego-image, whole message is lost, which doesn’t happen in
proposed block-based technique as proved from robustness results
in Section 4.2. The watermarked images are also attacked by
embedding extra data (4 kb text) using the two tools and the
extraction results are shown in Figure. From the results it can
be seen that the proposed technique shows very high robustness
against these tools, as evident from the results where watermarks
are extracted without any error (Fig. 15).
16 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989

Fig. 15. Watermarks extracted after attacking with Openpuff and S-Tools.

Table 4 The key K1 is the only permutation key in the algorithm with
Extraction results of different techniques using Lena image.
size of 12 bits. K2 and K3 are with equal length of 32 bits, while as
Chosen Openpuff∗∗ S-tools∗∗ Proposed K4 and K5 are with equal length of 5 bits. The key K6 and K7 are
attacks with size of 24 bits and 6 bits respectively. In this way the total
Extraction Accuracy (%)
√ √ √ size of the master key is 140 bits in length. Hence total number
No attack 100
√ √ of possible key permutations is 2140 . So even if the unauthorised
S&P Noise (0.001) × 98
√ √ users are able to generate millions of keys in a second, it will
Histogram equalization × 100
√ √
JPEG (70) × 100 require the system hundreds of years to get the correct key com-
√ √
Sharpening × 100 bination. Thus, it can be concluded that the proposed encryption
√
Crop (10%) × × 99 technique provides optimum degree of security against brute force
√
Rotate (10°) × × 98
√ √ √ attacks.
Upscale (50%) 100
√
Down-scale (50%) × × 97
∗∗ √ 4.6.2. Key sensitivity analysis
‘ ’ is for 100% Extraction accuracy, ‘ × ’ is for No Extraction at all.
The key length alone is not enough to determine the strength
of encryption algorithm. The keys employed should also be highly
4.6. Security analysis of proposed encryption technique sensitive to any modification such that a single bit change should
result in extraction of meaningless information. The sensitivity of
The security analysis of a watermarking technique is important encryption keys is checked by altering the keys by a single bit
to estimate the performance of the security measures in presence from the original value and the results are analysed by using the
of different manipulations. The Kirchhoff’s principle [49] suggests modified keys. Consider some of the keys used in the algorithm
to consider the designers to take worst case scenarios in which with values set as: K2 = 845,678,328; K3 = 834,976,595; K4 = 15,
embedding techniques get cracked and secret keys are tempered K5 = 25 and K7 = 55. A minor modification is done in these
by adversaries. In this scenario it is extremely essential for a keys and the extracted watermarks are shown in Fig. 16. The
technique to employ security keys that are sensitive to any kind modification is kept minimum by manipulating single bit of only
of tampering such that any such attack should result in extraction one key and keeping rest of the keys at the original value. Similar
of meaningless information. The proposed encryption algorithm results are obtained when other keys are modified.
offers very high security to the watermark. For example, the It is evident from the Fig. 16 that the encryption keys are
techniques like Arnold encryption has only one security key extremely sensitive to even a single bit manipulation and any
(number of iterations) and since algorithm is known and cyclic, an such change results in extraction of corrupted watermark. The
unauthorised user can crack the algorithm after some iterations. utilization of wrong key results in extraction of watermark with
In this section two necessary parameters of keys are presented the error rate more than 50% and as such conveys no visual
and analysed to evaluate the performance; Key sensitivity and Key information. Hence, it can be concluded from the results that
size analysis. every key offers a high level of security independent of other keys.

4.6.1. Key size analysis 4.6.3. Computational analysis

The size of the key is extremely important and determines
the robustness of the scheme against Brute-force attacks. In the
proposed encryption technique discussed in Section 3, seven secret
keys (K1 – K7 ) have been used at different stages of encryption
along with keys used in modified chaos encryption. The two keys
used in modified chaos encryption are 5-bit initial value of Wi
and 20-bit value of bifurcation parameter (β ) as discussed in
Section 3. As discussed earlier the keys are of different length and
have been optimised to keep the algorithm as simple as possible
without compromising security efficiency. Although various secure
techniques are available but they use large key sizes and the key
management and complexity issues rise proportionally.
The operation speed of an encryption technique is an important
parameter to determine the level of compatibility for real time
applications. For example, the current boom in IoTs, which is en-
gulfing every application in it, requires all the modules of a system
associated with it to have fast processing time. In order to eval-
uate the performance of the proposed algorithm, the encryption
algorithms in schemes used in [34,42,43] are taken as reference.
The proposed encryption algorithm has been implemented in
MATLAB 2015b using Windows 10 OS on processor from Intel
with Core i5-4660T@1.90 GHz. While as iteration count of Arnold
transform is varied in reference techniques, the shifting parameter
is varied in proposed techniques keeping other keys at constant.
 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989 17

Fig. 16. Watermarks extracted using wrong encryption keys with one-bit manipulation.

Fig. 17. Computational time of encryption techniques.

From the Fig. 17 it is clear that proposed encryption technique
performs faster than other techniques. Also, it is evident that the
time increase rapidly as the Arnold iterations rise towards 128.
The proposed encryption algorithm performs better than other
conventional encryptions like Arnold transform in three ways: fast
operation speed, large key space and high sensitivity, thus less
chances to be cracked. For example, in Arnold transform the only
key is the iteration count, which can be randomly iterated under
human monitoring to result in extraction of original information.
Also, since Arnold transform is cyclic the unauthorised user can
get the information at a small iteration count even if its key space
is large. Other popular encryption techniques like AES and RSA
used in [21] are even slower than Arnold encryption.
4.7. Brief discussion about the results
In this section, a brief discussion about performance efficiency
of the proposed scheme is presented. As discussed throughout, the
prime focus of the proposed system is to develop a watermarking
scheme capable to offer high robustness, security and payload
without sacrificing imperceptivity or design simplicity. This has
been achieved by embedding an encrypted watermark in the DCT
domain. A unique region insensitive embedding technique has
been employed, which ensures that a watermark bit is embedded
in the DCT coefficients spread over different parts of image. Using
this method, for a watermark of size 4096 bits, an average PSNR
obtained is about 42 dB. For validating robustness performance
both subjective and objective assessments are carried out on the
watermarked images after subjecting to various attacks. The results
obtained are compared with some recent schemes for performance
evaluation. From the comparisons it is evident that the proposed
scheme outperforms other schemes in imperceptibility, robustness
and security. As evident from the results described in Section 4.3,
the robustness of different schemes to geometric attacks is poor
due region-based dependency of the embedded watermark bits.
The region-based dependency results in total loss of watermark
information in the region effected by any attack. In contrast, our
scheme ensures that embedding of a watermark bit is done using
18 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989

Table 5
Comparison of different techniques used in the paper.

Scheme Image type Embedding technique/Domain Imperceptivity Payload Robustness Watermark security

Golabi et al. [26] Gray Spatial Medium Very low Weak No

Das et al. [37] Gray DCT High Medium Weak No
Verma et al. [31] Gray LWT Low Very low Weak No
Hu et al. [34] Gray DCT Medium High Strong Arnold
Banoraira et al. [33] Gray DWT + DCT Medium Very low Strong No
Guo et al. [39] Gray DCT + DWT Medium High Moderate Yes
Zhang et al. [30] Gray DWT + DCT+SVD High High weak No
Su et al. [35] Color Spatial Medium High Weak No
Wang et al. [27] Color Spatial High Very low Moderate Yes
Prathap et al. [36] Color Spatial & CT High Very low Moderate No
Ouyang et al. [42] Color QFT Medium High Weak Arnold
Abrahim et al. [25] Color Spatial High High Weak No
Mun et al. [28] Color Neural network Low High Weak No
Loan et al. [43] Gray/Color DCT High High Moderate Arnold + Chaos
Proposed Gray/Color DCT High High Strong New encryption module developed

different coefficients randomly selected from two block from two
distant regions of image. This feature ensures that our scheme
offers very high robustness to all of the geometric attacks. Also,
since very small modification is done on the randomly selected
coefficients during the embedding process, the quality of the
watermarked images remains above an efficient level ensuring
that changes are not perceptible to HVS. The error rates achieved
during the extraction of the watermark in presence of attacks are
less than 5% for common attacks and around 5% for geometrical
attacks. Similarly, the NCC values obtained after correlating the
extracted and original watermarks are greater than 0.95, and as
such the watermarks are recovered perfectly for all the attacks
under consideration. This validates the claim of achieving high
robustness achieved by the proposed watermarking scheme for all
kinds of images and hence suitable for most of the applications.
Other major weakness of the schemes under comparison is
the absence of any procedure to secure watermark in the cases of
unauthorised breach in extraction procedure. In proposed scheme
the security of the watermark has been ensured by using encryp-
tion procedures before embedding watermark within the host
images. At the receiving end, the watermark extraction conveys
no information until decryption algorithm is applied with proper
keys. In case the keys applied during decryption process vary even
by one bit a totally meaningless watermark will be obtained. From
security analysis reported in the Section 4.6 it can be concluded
that even a minute alteration of the secret keys will result in a
watermark which is totally destroyed. So, in addition to very high
robustness the proposed watermarking system offers a high level
of security and thus the scheme is highly suitable for copyright
applications.
In Table 5, a detailed comparison is presented between the
proposed scheme and the existing schemes referred in the paper.
The comparison is described in terms of calculated metrics like
payload, imperceptivity, computational cost, robustness and other
related facts corresponding to that scheme. From the table it
can be concluded that compared to other schemes the proposed
scheme performs better.
5. Conclusion and future work
A secure and robust data hiding framework for preserving pri-
vacy and confidentiality of data during its transit in an IoT setup
has been presented in this paper. The random block and coefficient
selection approach has been used for information embedding. It
has been shown that the random block and coefficient selection
improves the robustness of the embedded data and as such elim-
inates the weakness of fragility to various cyber-attacks especially
geometric attacks. The strength of the robustness is determined by
a threshold factor, chosen optimally such that perceptual quality
of the watermarked image is maintained. The proposed RCSMMA
scheme ensures information spread over different areas of wa-
termarked image by embedding watermark bits using randomly
selected multiple DCT coefficients. The average value of PSNR
obtained using proposed scheme is greater than 40 dB, while as
average value of NCC is greater than 0.95 and the extracted wa-
termarks are recognizable even under simultaneous attacks. From
the experimental results it is concluded that proposed RCSMMA
scheme offers better robustness to attacks like rotation, cropping,
histogram equalization and sharpening in either simultaneous or
standalone mode. The security of the embedded information has
been ensured by utilizing a new security module, proposed in this
paper. The results show that the proposed framework has highest
degree of key sensitivity. This has been proved by the fact that
even a single bit change in the key, doesn’t provide any clue about
the plain text. The main focus of presented work is to secure
data from multimedia devices acting as visual sensors in an IoT
environment. In future, various other forms of data collected from
diverse IoT devices will be targeted and improved data exchanging
strategies will be proposed for a distributed IoT application.
Declaration of Competing Interest
None.
Acknowledgement
This publication is an outcome of the R&D work undertaken
project under the Visvesvaraya PhD Scheme of Ministry of Elec-
tronics & Information Technology, Government of India, being im-
plemented by Digital India Corporation.
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Nasir N. Hurrah is a doctoral student in the Department
of Electronics and IT, University of Kashmir. He is pursu-
ing Ph. D under VISVESVARAYA PHD Scheme for Electron-
ics and I.T., sponsored by Ministry of Electronics & Infor-
mation Technology Government of India and is currently
working on the Development of Robust image watermark-
ing techniques for copyright protection and authentica-
tion.
Shabir A. Parah has completed his M. Sc and M. Phil and
Ph.D in Electronics from University of Kashmir, Srinagar
in the year 2004, 2010 and 2013 respectively in the field
of Signal processing and Data hiding. He is working as As-
sistant Professor in the department of Electronics and I. T,
University of Kashmir, Srinagar. His fields of interest are
Signal Processing, Secure Communication, Digital Water-
marking and Steganography. He has published about one
hundred papers in the journals and conferences of inter-
national repute.
Javaid A. Sheikh has completed his M.Sc., M. Phil and
Ph.D in Electronics from University of Kashmir, Srinagar in
the year 20 04, 20 08 and 2012 respectively in the field of
communications and Signal Processing. He is working as
Assistant Professor in the department of Electronics and I.
T University of Kashmir, Srinagar. His fields of interest are
Wireless Communications, design and development of ef-
ficient MIMO-OFDM based wireless communication tech-
niques, Spread Spectrum modulation, Digital Signal Pro-
cessing, Electromagnetics. He has published about sixty
research papers in International and National journals and
conference proceedings.
20 N.N. Hurrah, S.A. Parah and J.A. Sheikh et al. / Ad Hoc Networks 95 (2019) 101989
Fadi Al-Turjman received his Ph.D. in computer science
from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, in
2011. He is a professor at Antalya Bilim University, An-
talya, Turkey. Professor Al-Turjman is a leading author-
ity in the areas of smart/cognitive, wireless, and mobile
networks’ architectures, protocols, deployments, and per-
formance evaluation. His publication history spans over
200 publications in journals, conferences, patents, books,
and book chapters, in addition to numerous keynotes and
plenary talks at flagship venues. He has authored/edited
more than 20 books about cognition, security, and wire-
less sensor networks’ deployments in smart environ-
ments, published by Taylor & Francis and Springer. He
has received several recognitions and best papers’ awards at top international con-
ferences. He also received the prestigious Best Research Paper Award from Elsevier
Computer Communications Journal for the period 2015-2018, in addition to the Top
Researcher Award for 2018 at Antalya Bilim University, Turkey. Professor Al-Turjman
has led a number of international symposia and workshops in flagship communi-
cation society conferences. Currently, he serves as the lead guest editor for several
well reputed journals, including the Elsevier Computer Communications (COMCOM),
Sustainable Cities & Sociaities (SCS), IET Wireless Sensor Systems, and the Springer
EURASIP and MONET journals.
Khan Muhammad (S’16, M’18) received the Ph. D degree
in Digital Contents from Sejong University, South Korea.
He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department
of Software, Sejong University, South Korea. His research
interests include medical image analysis (brain MRI, di-
agnostic hysteroscopy and wireless capsule endoscopy),
information security (steganography, encryption, water-
marking and image hashing), video summarization, com-
puter vision, fire/smoke scene analysis, and video surveil-
lance. He has published over 60 papers in peer reviewed
international journals and conferences in these research
areas with target venues as IEEE COMMAG, Networks, TII,
TIE, TSMC-Systems, IoTJ, Access, TSC, Elsevier INS, Neuro-
computing, PRL, FGCS, COMCOM, COMIND, JPDC, PMC, BSPC, CAEE, Springer NCAA,
MTAP, JOMS, and RTIP, etc. He is also serving as a professional reviewer for over 40
well-reputed journals and conferences.