Citation: Chen, P.; Zhang, Z.; Lei, Y.;
Niu, K.; Yang, X. A Multi-Domain
Embedding Framework for Robust
Reversible Data Hiding Scheme in
Encrypted Videos. Electronics 2022,
11, 2552. https://doi.org/10.3390/
electronics11162552
Academic Editor: Jungong Han
Received: 1 July 2022
Accepted: 12 August 2022
Published: 15 August 2022
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
with regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional affil-
iations.
Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
Article
A Multi-Domain Embedding Framework for Robust Reversible
Data Hiding Scheme in Encrypted Videos
Pei Chen
1,2
, Zhuo Zhang
1,2
, Yang Lei
1,2
, Ke Niu
1,2,
* and Xiaoyuan Yang
1,2
1
Key Laboratory of Network and Information Security, The Chinese People Armed Police Force (PAP),
Xi’an 710086, China
2
College of Cryptography Engineering, Engineering University of PAP, Xi’an 710086, China
* Correspondence: niuke@163.com; Tel.: +86-029-13808593399
Abstract:
For easier cloud management, reversible data hiding is performed in an encrypted domain
to embed label information. However, the existing schemes are not robust and may cause the loss
of label information during transmission. Enhancing robustness while maintaining reversibility
in data hiding is a challenge. In this paper, a multi-domain embedding framework in encrypted
videos is proposed to achieve both robustness and reversibility. In the framework, the multi-domain
characteristic of encrypted video is fully used. The element for robust embedding is encrypted
through Logistic chaotic scrambling, which is marked as element-I. To further improve robustness,
the label information will be encoded with the Bose–Chaudhuri–Hocquenghem code. Then, the label
information will be robustly embedded into element-I by modulating the amplitude of element-I, in
which the auxiliary information is generated for lossless recovery of the element-I. The element for
reversible embedding is marked as element-II, the sign of which will be encrypted by stream cipher.
The auxiliary information will be reversibly embedded into element-II through traditional histogram
shifting. To verity the feasibility of the framework, an anti-recompression RDH-EV based on the
framework is proposed. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the
current representative ones in terms of robustness, while achieving reversibility. In the proposed
scheme, video encryption and data hiding are commutative and the original video bitstream can
be recovered fully. These demonstrate the feasibility of the multi-domain embedding framework in
encrypted videos.
Keywords: multi-domain; reversible data hiding; robust; encrypted videos
1. Introduction
Reversible data hiding [
1
] in encrypted domain (RDH-ED) is a technique that uses
encrypted data as the carrier to reversibly embed information, and can still carry out
correct data extraction and carrier decryption and recovery [
2
]. This technique is being
increasingly used in the field of information security to ensure privacy and copyright
protection [
3
]. Military data are often stored and transmitted in ciphertext. To authenticate
access authentication, label information needs to be embedded into the encrypted data.
In the medical field, multimodal medical images [
4
] are usually encrypted to prevent
information on the patient’s condition from leaking. For convenience of management, the
information about individuals and conditions are embedded into encrypted images [
5
].
With the rapid development of the network, video information is widely disseminated in
the Internet. At the same time, because there are many elements for data hiding in the
video codec process, the reversible data hiding in encrypted videos (RDH-EV) has attracted
the attention of many researchers [6–8].
Recently, the technology of reversible data hiding in encrypted images (RDH-EI) has
seen great development, and can be roughly divided into three categories: vacating room
after encryption [
9
–
11
], vacating room before encryption [
12
–
14
] and vacating room in
Electronics 2022, 11, 2552. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11162552 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/electronics
