Blockchain based security framework for sharing digital images using reversible data hiding and encryption

Abstract

Security is an important issue in current and next-generation networks. Blockchain will be an appropriate technology for securely sharing information in next-generation networks. Digital images are the prime medium attacked by cyber attackers. In this paper, a blockchain based security framework is proposed for sharing digital images in a multi user environment. The proposed framework uses reversible data hiding and encryption as component techniques. A novel high capacity reversible data hiding scheme is also proposed to protect digital images. Reversible data hiding in combination with encryption protects the confidentiality, integrity and authentication of digital images. In the proposed technique, the digital image is compressed first to create room for data hiding, then the user signature is embedded; afterwards the whole image is encrypted. For compression, JPEG lossy compression is used to create high capacity. For encryption, any symmetric block cipher or stream cipher can be used. Experimental results show that the proposed blockchain based framework provides high security and the proposed reversible data hiding scheme provides high capacity and image quality.