A Large-Capacity Data Hiding Scheme in Encrypted VVC Video

Video encryption and hiding technology play a crucial role in preserving both information security and privacy. Data hiding in encrypted video allows for marking and tampering detection of the encrypted stream while ensuring the security of the video content. In this case, the extraction process of embedded bits can be performed without decryption, which is more efficient. Owing to the limited research conducted on versatile video coding (VVC), this paper presents a large-capacity data hiding scheme in encrypted video based on H.266/VVC codec. In the proposed scheme, AES-CTR is employed to generate a pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS). Then the PRBS is used to encrypt the syntax elements before context-based adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC), including luma intra prediction mode (IPM), quantized transform coefficient (QTC) sign, and motion vector difference (MVD) sign. Simultaneously, QTC amplitude is utilized for data embedding. Here, a piecewise embedding method (PEM) is designed to improve the embedding capacity. Since the syntax elements used for encryption and data hiding are independent, the decryption and extraction processes are fully commutable. Experimental results demonstrated outstanding performance of the proposed scheme in embedding capacity while preserving the integrity and authenticity of the original video content.