243 - Towards Provably Secure and Highly Robust Generative Image Steganography Leveraging Latent Diffusion Model

Generative image steganography has attracted significant attention for its exceptional resistance to steganalysis. However, current generative steganography methods still face limitations in terms of the lack of provable security guarantees under statistical analysis and vulnerability to real-world, unforeseen channel attacks. To address these issues, this paper proposes a novel generative image steganography framework that leverages the Latent Diffusion Model (LDM). Notably, we have uncover a consistent trend: regardless of whether an image has undergone attacks such as compression or noise addition, the sign pattern of values in its latent vector encoded by the LDM remains largely invariant. Capitalizing on this trend, we have devised an adaptive distribution-preserving mapping (ADPM) mechanism, capable of converting a secret message into a latent vector that follows standard normal distribution in an adjustable way. Since both the secret latent vector and the latent vector randomly generated during regular image generation follow the same distribution, satisfying the optimal input conditions for the diffusion model, the proposed method can achieve provable security. Experimental results demonstrate the outstanding performance of our approach in terms of robustness, security, and extraction accuracy.