A blind extraction reversible data hiding based on histogram shifting

The era of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has brought forth new security threats, leading to the emergence of Reversible Data Hiding (RDH) as a crucial digital technology for safeguarding information security. To tackle the security challenges posed by the transmission of peak points in histogram reversible information hiding, a blind extraction scheme is proposed. Given the minimal differences between neighboring image pixels, peak and sub-peak points tend to be adjacent values, allowing for the embedding of secret information based on these sub-peak points. The sender embeds secret information according to the distribution of sub-peak points within the histogram. As peak points remain unchanged during image transmission, the receiver can accurately identify sub-peak points by referencing them, thus facilitating the extraction of secret information. Consequently, this approach achieves blind extraction. Furthermore, to ensure the security of the information, encryption methods were employed to encrypt the embedded information before embedding. Even if an eavesdropper intercepts the image, they cannot access the private information without the key. The experimental results demonstrate that this method is capable of accurately extracting the embedded information and restoring the image without any loss, thus achieving effective reversible information hiding.