Training-Free Coverless Multi-Image Steganography with Access Control

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Bae, Minyeol, Lee, Si-Hyeon
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Bae, Minyeol
Lee, Si-Hyeon
author_facet Bae, Minyeol
Lee, Si-Hyeon
contents Coverless Image Steganography (CIS) hides information without explicitly modifying a cover image, providing strong imperceptibility and inherent robustness to steganalysis. However, existing CIS methods largely lack robust access control, making it difficult to selectively reveal different hidden contents to different authorized users. Such access control is critical for scalable and privacy-sensitive information hiding in multi-user settings. We propose MIDAS (Multi-Image Diffusion-based Access-controlled Steganography), a training-free diffusion-based CIS framework that enables multi-image hiding with user-specific access control via latent-level fusion. MIDAS introduces a Random Basis mechanism to suppress residual structural information, together with a theoretical analysis of information leakage, and a Latent Vector Fusion module that reshapes aggregated latents to better align with the diffusion process. Experimental results demonstrate that MIDAS consistently outperforms existing training-free CIS baselines in access control functionality, stego image quality and diversity, robustness to noise, and resistance to steganalysis, establishing a practical and scalable approach to access-controlled coverless steganography.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_09390
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Training-Free Coverless Multi-Image Steganography with Access Control
Bae, Minyeol
Lee, Si-Hyeon
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Coverless Image Steganography (CIS) hides information without explicitly modifying a cover image, providing strong imperceptibility and inherent robustness to steganalysis. However, existing CIS methods largely lack robust access control, making it difficult to selectively reveal different hidden contents to different authorized users. Such access control is critical for scalable and privacy-sensitive information hiding in multi-user settings. We propose MIDAS (Multi-Image Diffusion-based Access-controlled Steganography), a training-free diffusion-based CIS framework that enables multi-image hiding with user-specific access control via latent-level fusion. MIDAS introduces a Random Basis mechanism to suppress residual structural information, together with a theoretical analysis of information leakage, and a Latent Vector Fusion module that reshapes aggregated latents to better align with the diffusion process. Experimental results demonstrate that MIDAS consistently outperforms existing training-free CIS baselines in access control functionality, stego image quality and diversity, robustness to noise, and resistance to steganalysis, establishing a practical and scalable approach to access-controlled coverless steganography.
title Training-Free Coverless Multi-Image Steganography with Access Control
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.09390