STEAD: Robust Provably Secure Linguistic Steganography with Diffusion Language Model

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Qi, Yuang, Zhao, Na, Yao, Qiyi, Wu, Benlong, Zhang, Weiming, Yu, Nenghai, Chen, Kejiang
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Qi, Yuang
Zhao, Na
Yao, Qiyi
Wu, Benlong
Zhang, Weiming
Yu, Nenghai
Chen, Kejiang
author_facet Qi, Yuang
Zhao, Na
Yao, Qiyi
Wu, Benlong
Zhang, Weiming
Yu, Nenghai
Chen, Kejiang
contents Recent provably secure linguistic steganography (PSLS) methods rely on mainstream autoregressive language models (ARMs) to address historically challenging tasks, that is, to disguise covert communication as ``innocuous'' natural language communication. However, due to the characteristic of sequential generation of ARMs, the stegotext generated by ARM-based PSLS methods will produce serious error propagation once it changes, making existing methods unavailable under an active tampering attack. To address this, we propose a robust, provably secure linguistic steganography with diffusion language models (DLMs). Unlike ARMs, DLMs can generate text in a partially parallel manner, allowing us to find robust positions for steganographic embedding that can be combined with error-correcting codes. Furthermore, we introduce error correction strategies, including pseudo-random error correction and neighborhood search correction, during steganographic extraction. Theoretical proof and experimental results demonstrate that our method is secure and robust. It can resist token ambiguity in stegotext segmentation and, to some extent, withstand token-level attacks of insertion, deletion, and substitution.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_14778
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle STEAD: Robust Provably Secure Linguistic Steganography with Diffusion Language Model
Qi, Yuang
Zhao, Na
Yao, Qiyi
Wu, Benlong
Zhang, Weiming
Yu, Nenghai
Chen, Kejiang
Cryptography and Security
Recent provably secure linguistic steganography (PSLS) methods rely on mainstream autoregressive language models (ARMs) to address historically challenging tasks, that is, to disguise covert communication as ``innocuous'' natural language communication. However, due to the characteristic of sequential generation of ARMs, the stegotext generated by ARM-based PSLS methods will produce serious error propagation once it changes, making existing methods unavailable under an active tampering attack. To address this, we propose a robust, provably secure linguistic steganography with diffusion language models (DLMs). Unlike ARMs, DLMs can generate text in a partially parallel manner, allowing us to find robust positions for steganographic embedding that can be combined with error-correcting codes. Furthermore, we introduce error correction strategies, including pseudo-random error correction and neighborhood search correction, during steganographic extraction. Theoretical proof and experimental results demonstrate that our method is secure and robust. It can resist token ambiguity in stegotext segmentation and, to some extent, withstand token-level attacks of insertion, deletion, and substitution.
title STEAD: Robust Provably Secure Linguistic Steganography with Diffusion Language Model
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.14778