Comparative Study of Digital Audio Steganography Techniques

Fatiha Djebbar1 and Beghdad Ayad2 and Karim Abed Meraim3 and Habib Hamam4
1 UAE

university, UAE
ain university, Al Ain, UAE
3 Telecom ParisTech, Paris, France
2 Al

4 Faculty

of Engineering Universit
e de Moncton, Moncton, NB, Canada

Email: Fatiha Djebbar - fdjebbar@uaeu.ac.ae;

Corresponding

author

Abstract
The rapid spread in digital data usage in many real life applications have urged new and eective ways to ensure
their security. Ecient secrecy can be achieved, at least in part, by implementing steganograhy techniques.
Novel and versatile audio steganographic methods have been proposed. The goal of steganographic systems is
to obtain secure and robust way to conceal high rate of secret data. We focus in this paper on digital audio
steganography, which has emerged as a prominent source of data hiding across novel telecommunication
technologies such as covered voice-over-IP, audio conferencing, etc. The multitude of steganographic criteria
has led to a great diversity in these system design techniques. In this paper, we review current digital audio
steganographic techniques and we evaluate their performance based on robustness, security and hiding capacity
indicators. Another contribution of this paper is the provision of a robustness-based classication of
steganographic models depending on their occurrence in the embedding process. A survey of major trends of
audio steganography applications is also discussed in this paper.

Introduction

The growing use of Internet among public masses and the abundant availability of public and private digital
data has driven industry professionals and researchers to pay a particular attention to data protection.
Currently, three main methods are being used: cryptography, watermarking, and steganography.
Cryptography techniques are based on rendering the content of a message garbled to unauthorized people.
In watermarking, data are hidden to convey some information about the cover medium such as ownership
and copyright. Even though cryptography and watermarking techniques are salient for reinforcing data
security, a heightened interest in exploring better or complementary new techniques has been the focus of
much ongoing research. Figure 1 exhibits the dierences and the similarities between steganography,
watermarking and cryptography. The terminology used for steganography blocks was imposed for the rst
time at the rst international conference on information hiding [1].

Figure 1: Digital data security disciplines.

The primary goal of steganography is to reliably send hidden information secretly, not merely to obscure
its presence. Steganography in todays computer era is considered a sub-discipline of data communication
security domain. Lately, new directions based on steganographic approaches started to emerge to ensure
data secrecy. Rather than as a substitute to existing solutions, these approaches could achieve better data
secrecy if combined with conventional security techniques. Modern techniques of steganography exploit the
2

characteristics of digital media by utilizing them as carriers (covers) to hold hidden information. Covers
can be of dierent types including image, audio, video, text, and IP datagram. An example of audio
steganography is depicted in Figure 2, where the cover le in use is a digital audio le. The sender embeds
data of any type in a digital cover le using a key to produce a stego-le, in such a way that an observer
cannot detect the existence of the hidden message [2]. At the other end, the receiver processes the received
stego-le to extract the hidden message. An obvious application of such steganographic system is a covert
communication using innocuous cover audio signal, such as telephone or video conference conversations.
To minimize the dierence between the cover- and the stego-medium, recent steganography techniques
utilize natural limitations in human auditory and visual perceptions. Image and video based steganography
rely on the limited human visual system to notice luminance variation at levels greater than 1 in 240 across
uniform grey levels, or 1 in 30 across random patterns [2]. However, audio-based steganography exploits
the masking eect property of the Human Auditory System (HAS) [3] as explained later in this paper.
Various features inuence the quality of audio steganographic methods. The importance and the impact of
each feature depend on the application and the transmission environment. The most important properties
include robustness to noise, to compression and to signal manipulation, as well as the security and the
hiding-capacity of hidden data. The robustness requirement is tightly coupled with the application, and is
also the most challenging requirement to fulll in a steganographic system when traded with data
hiding-capacity. Generally, the robustness and the capacity hardly coexist in the same steganographic
system due to tradeos imbalance between these two criteria where increased robustness levels result in
decreasing data hiding capacity [2].
In this work, several works in audio steganography are discussed as well as a thorough investigation of the
use of audio les as a cover medium for secret communications. The present review paper builds on our
previous work [4], however, our contributions are as follows:
We survey latest audio steganographic methods and reveal their strengths and weaknesses.
We propose a classication of the reviewed audio steganographic techniques relative to their
occurrence in voice encoders.
We compare steganographic methods based on selected robustness criteria.
We evaluate the performance of the reviewed steganographic techniques.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the motivations related to the use of
3

audio signals as carriers as well selecting some performance criteria used to assess hidden data tolerance to
common signal manipulations. Section 3 presents reviewed steganography methods. However, Section 4
proposes a classication of existing audio steganographic techniques based on their occurrence instances in
voice encoders. Evaluation and possible applications are presented in Section 5 and 6. Finally, conclusions
and future work are presented in Section 7.

Figure 2: Audio steganography workow.

2
2.1

Motivation and Background

Audio File as a Cover

The particular importance of hiding data in audio les results from the prevailing presence of audio signals
as information vectors in our human society. Prudent steganography practice assumes that the cover
utilized to hide messages should not raise any suspicion to opponents. In fact, the availability and the
popularity of audio les make them eligible to carry hidden information. In addition, most steganalysis
eorts are more directed towards digital images leaving audio steganalysis relatively unexplored. Data
hiding in audio les is especially challenging because of the sensitivity of the HAS. However, HAS still
tolerates common alterations in small dierential ranges. For example, loud sounds tend to mask out quiet
sounds. Additionally, there are some common environmental distortions, to the point that they would be
ignored by listeners in most cases. These properties have led researchers to explore the utilization of audio
signals as carriers to hide data [49]. The alterations of audio signals for data embedding purposes may
aect the quality of these signals. Assessing the tradeos between these alterations and the induced quality
is discussed next.

2.2

Comparison Criteria

Various parameters inuence the quality of audio steganographic systems. Besides, the amount of the
hidden data and its imperceptibility level, robustness against removal or destruction of embedded data
remains the most critical property in a steganographic system. The robustness criteria are assessed

through the survival of concealed data to noise, compression and manipulations of the audio signal (e.g.,
ltering, re-sampling, re-quantization). In this section, we discuss some selected comparison criteria
between the cover- and the stego-signals. We only focus on those methods properties that have been
evaluated and veried in the reviewed techniques. These properties are listed as follows:
Hiding rate: Measured in bps and refers to the amount of concealed data (in bits) within a cover audio signal,
and correctly extracted.
Imperceptibility: This concept is based on the properties of the HAS which is measured through perceptual
evaluation of speech quality (P ESQ) 1 . The hidden information is imperceptible if a listener is unable to
distinguish between the cover- and the stego-audio signal. The PESQ test produces a value ranging from 4.5
to 1. A P ESQ value of 4.5 means that the measured speech has no distortion, it is exactly the same as the
original. A value of 1 indicates the severest degradation. Another measure which is widely used is the level of
distortion in audio signals and it is captured through SegSN R 2 (i.e., Signal to Noise Ratio) [10]. It is
important that the embedding process occurs without a signicant degradation or loss of perceptual quality
of the cover signal.
Amplication: This criterion results in increasing the magnitude of the audio signal which could alter the
hidden data if a malicious attack is intended.
Filtering: Maliciously removes the hidden data by cutting-o selected part of the spectrum.
Re-quantization: This parameter modies the original quantization of the audio signal. For example, a 16
bits audio signal is quantized to 8 bits and back to 16 bits in an attempt to destroy the hidden data.
Re-sampling: Similarly to the above operation, this parameter triggers the sampling frequency of the audio
signal to another one, i.e., wideband audio signal sampled at 16 kHz to 8 kHz and back to 16 kHz.
Noise addition: Adding noise to the audio signal in an attempt to destroy the hidden data, i.e., WGN (White
Gaussian Noise).
Encoding/Decoding: This operation reduces the amount of data by removing redundant or unnecessary
information. Thus, a hidden message can be completely destroyed. This is also true if the audio le is
converted into another format. MP3 compression, for example, changes a wave le to an MP3 le before it
reaches the receiver.
Transcoding: It is the process of decoding the audio signal with a decoder that is dierent than the one used
in the encoding operation.

Audio Steganography Methods

Based on the reviewed methods in this paper, three prominent data embedding approaches have been
investigated, namely hiding in temporal domain, in frequency/wavelet domains and in coded domain. A
summary evaluation of these techniques based on the selected comparison criteria is presented in Table 1,
Table 2 and Table 3.
1 Standard

ITU-T P862.2
SNR

2 Segmental

3.1

Hiding in Temporal Domain

The majority of temporal domain methods employ low-bit encoding techniques, which we describe next.
Other candidate techniques that fall under temporal domain category are also presented in the subsequent
sections.

3.1.1 Low-bit Encoding

Also known as LSB (Least Signicant Bit), this method is one of the earliest methods used for information
hiding [2]. Traditionally, It is based on embedding each bit from the message in the least signicant bit of
the cover audio in a deterministic way (see Figure 3). Thus, for a 16 kHz sampled audio, 16 kbps of data
are hidden. The LSB method allows high embedding capacity for data and is relatively easy to implement
or to combine with other hiding techniques. However, this technique is characterized by low robustness to
noise addition which reduces its security performance since it becomes vulnerable even to simple attacks.
Filtration, amplication, noise addition and lossy compression of the stego-audio will very likely destroy
the data. Furthermore, since data are embedded in a very deterministic way, an attacker can easily uncover
the message by just removing the entire LSB plane. In [11], a simple LSB strategy has been applied to
embed a voice message in a wireless communication. While this method achieves the imperceptibility at
high embedding rate, the security and robustness of hidden data are easily compromised. In an attempt to
augment the hiding capacity while minimizing the error on the stego audio, [12] adopted a minimum
error-replacement method while embedding four bits per sample. The embedding error is then diused on
the next four samples.

Figure 3: LSB in 8 bits per sample signal is overwritten by one bit of the hidden data.
To improve the robustness of LSB method against distortion and noise addition, [1315] have increased the
depth of the embedding layer from 4th to 6th and to 8th LSB layers without aecting the perceptual
transparency of the stego audio signal. In [13, 14], only bits at the sixth position of each 16 bits sample of
the original host signal are replaced with bits from the message. To minimize the embedding error, the
other bits can be ipped in order to have a new sample that is closer to the original one. For example, if
the original sample value was 4 which is represented in binary by 0100, and the bit to be hidden into the
6

4th LSB layer is 1, instead of having the value 12=1100 produced by the conventional LSB algorithm, the
proposed algorithm produces a sample that has value 3= 0011, which is much closer to the original
sample value (i.e., 4). On the other hand, [15] has shifted the LSB embedding to the eighth layer and has
avoided hiding in silent periods or near silent points of the host signal. The occurrence of embedding
instances in the eighth bit will slightly increase the robustness of this method compared to the conventional
LSB methods. However, the hiding capacity decreases since some of the samples have to be left unaltered
to preserve the audio perceptual quality of the signal. In addition, the easiness of the hidden message
retrieval is still one of the major drawback of the LSB and its variants, if the hidden bits at the sixth or the
eighth position are maliciously revealed out of the stego audio signal.

3.1.2 Echo Hiding

Echo hiding method embeds data into audio signals by introducing a short echo to the host signal. The
nature of the echo is a resonance added to the host audio. Therefore, the problem of the HAS sensitivity to
the additive noise is avoided. After the echo has been added, the stego signal retains the same statistical
and perceptual characteristics. Data are hidden by manipulating three parameters of the echo signal: the
initial amplitude, the oset (delay) and the decay rate so that the echo is not audible [16] (Figure 4). For a
delay up to 1 ms between the original signal and the echo, the eect is indistinguishable. In addition to
that, the amplitude and the decay rates could be set to values under the audible threshold of the human
ear. Data could thus be hidden without being perceptible. However, the drawback of this method is the
limitation of induced echo signal size which restrict its related application domains. Hence, the limited
amount of works which investigate the application of this method.

Figure 4: Echo data hiding adjustable parameters [16].

Due to the low embedding rate and security, and to the best of our knowledge, no audio steganography
system based on echo hiding has been presented in recent research works. Moreover, only few techniques
have been proposed, even for audio watermarking. To improve the watermark system robustness against

common linear signal processing, an echo hiding-time spread technique has been proposed in [17].
Compared to the conventional echo-hiding system, this proposed method spreads the watermark bits
throughout the whole signal and it recover them based on the correlation amount at the receiver. The
presented system is cepstral content based in which the original signal cepstral portion of error is removed
at the decoder which leads to a better detection rate.

3.1.3 Hiding in Silence Intervals

In [18], a simple and eective embedding method has been used to exploit silence intervals in speech signal.
Initially, the silence intervals of the speech and their respective lengths (the number of samples in a silence
interval) are determined. These values are decreased by a value x where 0 < x < 2nbits , and nbits is the
number of bits needed to represent a value from the message to hide. For the extraction process x is
evaluated as mod(N ewIntervalLength, 2nbits ). For example, if we want to hide the value 6 in a silence
interval with length=109, we remove 7 samples from this interval which makes the new interval length 102
samples. To extract the hidden data from this silent interval in the stego-signal, we compute
mod(102,8)=6. Small silence intervals are left unchanged since they usually occur in continuous sentences
and changing them might aect the quality of the speech. This method has a good perceptual
transparency but obviously it is sensitive to compression. Changes in silence intervals length will lead to
false data extraction. To overcome this shortcoming, [19] suggested to slightly amplify speech interval
samples and reduce the silence interval samples. Thus, silence sample intervals will not be interpreted as
speech samples and vice-versa. The rst and last interval added to the speech during MP3 coding are
simply ignored in data hiding and retrieval.

3.1.4 Strengths and Weaknesses of Temporal Domain Methods

Although robustness and security are not the main characteristics of temporal domain steganographic
methods, conventional LSB technique and its variants provide an easy and simple way to hide data.
Tolerance to noise addition at low levels and some robustness criteria have been achieved with LSB
variants methods [1315], but at a very low hiding capacity. At present, only few time domain hiding
techniques have been developed. An evaluation of steganographic systems based on these techniques is
shown in Table 1. The presence of (X) sign denotes that the property is validated while (-) indicates the
inverse or the information is unavailable.

Table 1: Temporal Domain: Methods Comparison

3.2

Method properties

Conventional LSB

LSBs variants

Silence intervals

imperceptibility
WGN addition
Compression

X [11]
-

X [13, 15]
X [15]
-

X [18, 19]
X [19]
X [19]

Hiding in Transform Domain

The human auditory system has certain peculiarities that must be exploited for hiding data eectively.
The masking eect phenomenon masks weaker frequencies near stronger resonant ones [20, 21]. Several
methods in the transform domain have been proposed in the literature as described next. To achieve the
inaudibility, these methods exploit the frequency masking eect of the HAS directly by explicitly modifying
only masked regions [7, 24, 25, 27] or indirectly [29, 36] by altering slightly the audio signals samples.

3.2.1 Spread Spectrum

Spread spectrum technique spreads hidden data through the frequency spectrum. Spread spectrum (SS) is
a concept developed in data communications to ensure a proper recovery of a signal sent over a noisy
channel by producing redundant copies of the data signal. Basically, data are multiplied by an M-sequence
code known to both sender and receiver [22], then hidden in the cover audio. Thus, if noise corrupts some
values, there will still be copies of each value left to recover the hidden message. In [23], conventional direct
sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) technique was applied to hide condential information in MP3 and WAV
signals. However, to control stego-audio distortion, [24, 25] have proposed an embedding method where
data are hidden under a frequency mask. In [24], spread spectrum is combined to phase shifting in order to
increase the robustness of transmitted data against additive noise and to allow easy detection of the hidden
data. For a better hiding rate, [25] used SS technique in the sub-band domain. Appropriately chosen
sub-band coecients were selected to address robustness and resolve synchronization uncertainty at the
decoder.

3.2.2 Discrete Wavelet Transform

Audio steganography based on Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) is described in [26]. Data are hidden in
the LSBs of the wavelet coecients of the audio signals. To improve the imperceptibility of embedded
data, [27] employed a hearing threshold when embedding data in the integer wavelet coecients, while [28]
avoided data hiding in silent parts of the audio signal. Even though data hiding in wavelet domain
procures high embedding rate, data extraction at the receiver side might not be accurate.

3.2.3 Tone Insertion

Tone insertion techniques rely on the inaudibility of lower power tones in the presence of signicantly
higher ones. Embedding data by inserting inaudible tones in cover audio signals is presented in [29, 30]. To
embed one bit in an audio frame, this research suggests a pair of tones which is generated at two chosen
frequencies f0 and f1 . The power level of the two masked frequencies (pf 0 and pf 1 ) is set to a known ratio
of the general power of each audio frame pi where: i = 1, ...n and n is the frame number as shown in Figure
5. By inserting tones at known frequencies and at low power level, concealed embedding and correct data
extraction are achieved. To detect the tones and thus the hidden information from the stego-audio frames,
the power pi for each frame is computed as well as the power pf 0 and pf 1 for the chosen frequencies f0 and
f1 . If the ratio,

pi
pf 0

>

pi
pf 1 ,

then the hidden bit is 0, otherwise it is 1.

Figure 5: Data embedding by inserting tones at two distinct frequencies

Tone insertion method can resist to attacks such as low-pass ltering and bit truncation. In addition to low
embedding capacity, embedded data could be maliciously extracted since inserted tones are easy to detect.
The authors suggest to overcome these drawbacks by varying four or more pairs of frequencies in a keyed
order.

3.2.4 Phase Coding

Phase coding exploits HAS insensitivity to relative phase of dierent spectral components. It is based on
replacing selected phase components from the original audio signal spectrum with hidden data. However,
to ensure inaudibility, phase components modication should be kept small [31]. It is worth mentioning
that among data hiding techniques, phase coding tolerates better signal distortion [2]. Authors in [31] have
inserted data in phase components using an independent multi-band phase modulation. In this approach,
imperceptible phase modications are achieved using controlled phase alteration of the host audio as shown
in Figure 6. Quantization index modulation (QIM) method is applied on phase components, where phase

10

value of a frequency bin is replaced by the nearest o point to hide 0 or x point to hide 1.

Figure 6: Phase quantization [31].

For greater embedding capacity, [32] has applied QIM on the phase of the strongest harmonic with a step
size of /2n (Figure 7). Robustness to MP3 encoder with BER (Bit Error Rate) value near zero was also
achieved. Despite the fact that phase quantization is robust to perceptual audio compression, HAS is not
very sensitive to phase distortion [2]. Consequently, an intruder can also introduce imperceptible frequency
modulation and eventually destroy the used phase quantization scheme.

Figure 7: Phase encoding for strongest harmonics.

3.2.5 Amplitude Coding

The HAS characteristics depend more on the frequency values as it is more sensitive to amplitude
components. Following this principle, authors in [7] propose a steganographic algorithm that embeds
high-capacity data in the magnitude speech spectrum while ensuring the hidden-data security and
controlling the distortion of the cover-medium. The hidden data (payload) could be of any type such as:
encrypted data, compressed data, groups of data (LPC, MP3, AMR, CELP, parameters of speech
recognition, etc). The proposed algorithm is based on nding secure spectral embedding-areas in a
wideband magnitude speech spectrum using a frequency mask dened at 13 dB below the original signal
spectrum. The embedding locations and hiding capacity in magnitude components are dened according to
a tolerated distortion level dened in the magnitude spectrum. Since the frequency components within the
range of 7 kHz to 8 kHz contribute minimally to wideband speech intelligibility, [33] proposed a method to

11

hide data in this range by completely replacing the frequencies 7-8 kHz by the message to be hidden. The
method realizes high hiding capacity without degrading the speech quality.

3.2.6 Cepstral Domain

Known also as log spectral domain, data in this method is embedded in the cepstrum coecients which
tolerate most common signal processing attacks. In addition, cepstrum alteration at frequencies that are in
the perceptually masked regions of the majority of cover audio frames, ensures inaudibility of the resulting
stego audio frames. Employing cepstral domain modication is proposed in [34]. The cover signal is rst
transformed into cepstral domain then data are embedded in selected cepstrum coecient by applying
statistical mean manipulations. In this method, an embedding rate of 20 to 40 bps is achieved while
guarantying robustness to common signal attacks. In [35], the cepstrums of two selected frequencies f1 and
f2 in each energetic frame are modied slightly to embed bit 1 or 0. For more security of the embedded
data, the author of the previous research suggested later in [36] to use the latter algorithm and embed data
with dierent arbitrary frequency components at each frame.

3.2.7 Allpass Digital Filters

Using allpass digital lters (APFs), authors in [37] embed data in selected subbands using distinct patterns
of APF. The proposed scheme is robust against: noise addition, random chopping, re-quantization and
re-sampling. To further increase the robustness of this hiding scheme, a set of nth order APFs were used
in [38]. The value of n is an even positive integer and pole locations may be chosen in a variety of ways.
data are embedded in selected APF parameters and retrieved using the power spectrum to estimate APF
pole locations.

3.2.8 Strengths and Weaknesses

It has been proven that hiding in frequency domain rather than time domain will give better results in
terms of signal to noise ratio [2]. Indeed, audio steganography techniques in the transform domain benet
from the frequency masking eect. Most of data hiding algorithms based on transform domain use a
perceptual model to determine the permissible amount of embedded data to avoid stego signal distortion.
A great number of transform domain have been presented in the last decade and to a certain extent, these
techniques have succeeded in realizing the security and the robustness of hidden data against simple audio
signal manipulations such as amplication, ltration or re-sampling as shown in Table 2.

12

Although hidden data robustness against simple audio signal manipulation is the main characteristic of
transform domain techniques, embedded data will unlikely survive noisy transmission environment or data
compression induced by one of the encoding processes such us: ACELP, G.729, etc.
Table 2: Transform Domain: Criteria comparison

3.3

Method properties

Tone
insertion

Phase coding

Amplitude
coding

Cepstral
Domain

SS

APFs

DWT

imperceptibility
Amplication
Noise addition
Low pass ltering
Requantization
Re-sampling
Compression

X [30]
X [30]
-

X
X
X
X

X [33]
-

X
X
X
X
X

X [24, 25]
X [24]
-

X
X
X
X
X
X

X [27, 28]
-

[31, 32]
[32]

[31, 32]
[31]

[35]
[36]
[35]
[35]

[35, 36]

[37, 38]
[37, 38]
[37, 38]
[37, 38]
[37, 38]
[37, 38]

Coded Domain

When considering data hiding for real time communications, voice encoders such as: AMR, ACELP and
SILK at their respective encoding rate are employed. When passing through one of the encoders, the
transmitted audio signal is coded according to the encoder rate then decompressed at the decoder end.
Thus, the data signal at the receiver side is not exactly the same as it was at the sender side, which aects
the hidden data-retrieval correctness and therefore makes these techniques very challenging. We distinguish
two such techniques, namely in-encoder and post-encoder techniques, which we discuss thoroughly next.

3.3.1 In-Encoder Techniques

A research work where embedded data survives audio codec, compression, reverberations and background
noises is presented in [39]. The technique hides data into speech and music signals of various types using
subband amplitude modulation. Embedding data in the LPC vocoder was further proposed in [40]. The
authors used an auto-correlation based pitch tracking algorithm to perform a voiced/unvoiced
segmentation. They replaced the linear prediction residual in the unvoiced segments by a data sequence.
Once the residuals power is matched, this substitution does not lead to perceptual degradation. The signal
is conceived using the unmodied LPC lter coecients. Linear prediction analysis of the received signal is
used to decode hidden data. The technique oers a reliable hiding rate of 2kbps.
Exploiting the LSB technique to hide data in the audio codecs is described in [20]. This technique embeds
data in the LSB of the Fourier transform in the prediction residual of the host audio signal. An LPC lter
is used to automatically shape the spectrum of LSB noise. Consequently, the noise generated by data
hiding is substantially less audible in this system as depicted in Figure 8.

13

Figure 8: Embedding Data in the LSB of the prediction residual.

3.3.2 Post-Encoder Techniques
An alternative to in-encoder techniques is the post-encoder (or in-stream) techniques. To survive audio
encoders, authors in [41] have embedded data in the bitstream of an ACELP codec. This technique hides
data jointly with the analysis-by-synthesis codebook search. The authors applied the concept on the AMR
encoder at a rate of 12.2 kbit/s and were able to hide 2 kbit/s of data in the bitstream. The quality of the
stego speech is evaluated in terms of signal to noise ratio at 20.3 dB. A lossless steganography technique for
G.711-PCMU telephony encoder has been proposed in [42]. Data in this case is represented by folded
binary code which codes each sample with a value between -127 and 127 including -0 and +0. One bit is
embedded in 8-bits sample which absolute amplitude is zero. Depending on the number of samples with
absolute amplitudes of 0, a potential hiding rate ranging from 24 to 400 bps is obtained. To increase the
hiding capacity, the same authors have introduced a semi-lossless technique for G.711-PCMU [43], where
audio sample amplitudes are amplied with a pre-dened level i. The audio signal samples with absolute
amplitudes vary from 0 to i are utilized in the hiding process. For a greater hiding capacity, [44] suggested
to embed data in the inactive frames of low bit-rate audio streams (i.e., 6.3 kbps) encoded by G.723.1
source codec.

3.3.3 Strengthes and Weaknesses

Robustness and security of embedded data are the main advantages of in-encoder approaches. Hidden data
survives noise addition and audio codecs such as ACELP, AMR or LPC. Some of the coded domain
methods have achieved a considerably high hiding capacity comparing to the used codecs rate. Since
hidden data are not aected by the encoding process, data-extraction correctness is fullled in tandem-free
operation.
Despite their robustness, hidden data integrity in in-encoder audio steganography techniques could be

14

compromised if a voice encoder/decoder (transcoding) exists in the network. Furthermore, hidden data
could be also subject to transformation if a voice enhancement algorithm such as echo or noise reduction is
deployed in the network. Since bitstream is more sensitive to modications than the original audio signal,
the hiding capacity should be kept small to avoid embedded data perceptibility. Coded domain techniques
are well suited for real-time applications. Table 3 summarizes coded domain techniques based on selected
robustness criteria.
Table 3: Codecs based techniques: Criterias comparison

Method properties

In-Encoder

Post-Encoder

Imperceptibility
Noise addition
Decoding/Encoding

X [20, 39]
X [39]
X [39, 40]

X [41]
X [41]
X [42]

Classification of Audio Steganography Methods

Robustness, security and hiding capacity are the three major performance criteria that revolve around the
existing steganography methods. To categorize and evaluate the above-discussed methods considering these
criteria, the transmission environment and the application in use are considered. Covert communication for
example requires high level of robustness due to the passage of data by one of the existing coders that can
heavily aect the integrity of the transmitted data. The encoder process reduces the amount of data in the
audio signal by eliminating redundant or unnecessary data. Resisting the encoder/decoder processes is
hard to satisfy and when fullled it is usually done at the cost of the hiding capacity. Thus, we choose to
study the behavior of the reviewed steganography methods with respect to their occurrence in the coders
as shown in Figure 9. The security aspect of each method is evaluated by a third party eort cost to
retrieve the embedded data. Three distinct embedding groups are used when designing data-in-audio
steganograhic system [41], which we explain next.

4.1

Pre-Encoder Embedding

The pre-encoder methods apply to time and frequency domains where data embedding occurs before the
encoding process. A greater part of the methods belonging to pre-encoder embedding class does not
guarantee the integrity of the hidden data over the network. Noise addition in its dierent forms (e.g.,
WGN) and high-data rate compression induced by one of the encoding processes such us ACELP or G.729,
will likely aect the integrity of embedded data. In other methods, embedded data resists only to few
audio manipulations such as resizing, re-sampling, ltering etc, and they only tolerate noise addition or
15

data compression at very low rate. High embedding data rate can be achieved with methods designed for
noise-free environments.

4.2

In-Encoder Embedding

The robustness of embedded data are the main advantage of this approach. This approach is based on
data-embedding operation within the codebook of the codecs. The transmitted information is hidden in
the codebook parameter after a re-quantization operation. Thus, each audio signal parameter has a double
signicance: embedded-data value and audio codebook parameter. One of the drawbacks of this method
arises when the encoded parameters traverse a network such as GSM that have for example a voice
decoder/encoder in the Radio Access Network (BST, BSC, TRAU) and/or in the Core Network (MSC). In
this conguration, hidden data values will be modied. These modications might also happen when a
voice enhancement algorithm is enabled in the Radio Access Network and/or in the Core Network.

4.3

Post-Encoder Embedding

In this approach, data are embedded in the bitstream resulting from the encoding process and extracted
before traversing the decoder side. Since the bitstream is more sensitive to modications than the original
audio signal, the hiding capacity should be kept small to avoid embedded data perceptibility. Furthermore,
transcoding can modify embedded data values and therefore could alter the integrity of the steganographic
system. However, one of the positive sides of these methods is the correctness of data retrieval. Hidden
message-extraction is done with no loss in tandem-free operations since it is not aected by the encoding
process. A general scheme of the three steganography approaches is illustrated in Figure 9.

(a) Pre-encoder embedding

(b) In-encoder embedding

(c) Post-encoder embedding

Figure 9: General audio steganography approaches

To sum up strengths and weaknesses of the reviewed techniques, Table 4 focuses on factors such as security
against hostile channel attacks, robustness or larger hiding capacity depending on the application and the

16

channel transmission conditions.

Table 4: General recapitulation
Hiding
domain

Methods

Temporal
domain

Low bit encoding

Echo hiding

Silence
vals

Transform Domain

inter-

Magnitude
spectrum

Tone insertion

Phase
trum

spec-

Spread
trum

spec-

Cepstral
main

do-

Wavelet

Codecs domain

Codebook
modication
Bitstream hiding

Embedding
techniques

Advantages

Drawbacks

Hiding
rate

LSB of each sample in

the audio is replaced by
one bit of hidden information
Embeds data by introducing echo in the
cover signal

Simple and easy way

of hiding Information
with high bit rate

Easy to extract and

to destroy

16kbps

Resilient
to
lossy
data
compression
algorithms

Low security and

capacity

50bps

Uses the number of

samples in silence interval to represent hidden data

Resilient
to
lossy
data
compression
algorithms

Low capacity

64bps

Use frequency bands to

hide data

Longer message to hide

and less likely to be affected by errors during
transmission
Imperceptibility
and
concealment of embedded data

Low robustness to
simple audio manipulations

20Kbps

Lack
of
parency
security

250bps

Modulate the phase of

the cover signal

Robust against signal

processing manipulation and data retrieval
needs
the
original
signal

Low capacity

333bps

Spread the data over

all signal frequencies

Provide better robustness

Vulnerable to time
scale modication

20 bps

Altering the cepstral

coecients for embedding data
Altering wavelet coefcients for embedding
data

Robust against signal

processing operations

Perceptible signal
distortions and low
robustness
lossy data retrieval

54bps

Altering codebook parameters

Robust

Low
rate

embedding

2kbps

LSB is applied on the

bitstream
resulting
from
the
encoder
process

Robust

Low
rate

embedding

1.6kps

insertion of inaudible
tones at selected frequencies

Provide high embedding capacity

transand

70kbps

Audio Steganography Evaluation

To evaluate the performance of the reviewed techniques, the imperceptibility and the detectability rate of
hidden data are assessed. Next, imperceptibility evaluation of selected temporal, transform and coded
domain steganography tools and methods is discussed.

5.1

Imperceptibility Evaluation

The criteria segmental signal-to-noise ratio SegSN R which represents the average of the SNRs of all
modied audio signal frames and the P ESQ measure are used. The value of SegSNR indicates the
distortion amount induced by the embedded data in the cover audio signal sc (m, n). In audio signals for
example, an SN R below 20 dB, generally denotes a noisy audio signal, while an SN R of 30 dB and above

17

indicates that the audio signal quality is preserved. SN R value is given by the following equation:
(
SN RdB = 10 log10

N
n=1

N
n=1

|sc (m, n)|2

(1)

|sc (m, n) ss (m, n)|2

ss (m, n) is the stego-audio signal where: m = 1, ...M and n = 1, ...N . M is the number of frames in
milliseconds (ms) and N is the number of samples in each frame. The SN R (dB) values and payload
(kbps) are used to evaluate the methods. For that purpose, we use online available audio steganography
software in [4550]. We used a total of forty male and female 16 bits WAV format audio (speech and
music) signals. The speech les are sampled at 16 kHz while music at 44.1 kHz. The duration of audio les
varies between 4 to 10 s length, spoken in English by dierent male and female talkers. Our results (i.e.,
SNR and hiding rate) are recorded in Table 5. The noise level induced by the embedding operation in each
software is depicted in Figure.10.
Hiding in speech, speech pauses or music audio signals as shown in Figures (10a), (10b), (10c) and in Table
5 indicates that Steganos software induces more noise, where H4PGP shows better performance in terms of
SNR and hiding capacity. However, the other softwares behave almost alike. In addition, our results show
that music signals are better hosts to hide data in terms of imperceptibility and capacity.
Software

Payload

SNR

PESQ

Software

SNR

Invisible Secrets
Hide4PGP
s-tools
Steganos

7.8
7.8
7.8
7.8

58.1
53.5
68.5
13

4.499
4.500
4.499
3.517

Invisible Secrets
Hide4PGP
s-tools
Steganos

41.9
42
44.4
-3

(a) Hiding in speech embedding

(b) Hiding in speech pauses

Software

Payload

SNR

Audio
type

Method

Payload

SNR

PESQ

Invisible Secrets
Hide4PGP

21
21

64.8
67.93

Music

s-tools
Steganos

21
21

67.9
19.64

StegHide
Mp3Stego
StegHide
Mp3Stego
StegHide
Mp3Stego

21
0.78
5.86
0.076
5.86
0.076

67.8
30.2
60.5
36
44
31.6

4.499
2.54
-

Speech

(c) Hiding in music

Speech
pause

(d) Hiding in transform and coded domains

Table 5: Payload versus SNR in temporal domain (Table (5a), (5b) and (5c)) approaches depicted by each software
tool appearing in [4548] and in transform and coded domains (Table (5d) methods appearing respectively in [49,50].
To control the distortion induced by the embedding process, most audio steganography methods based on
18

transform domain use a perceptual model to determine the permissible amount of data embedding without
distorting the audio signal. Previous investigations evaluated frequency domain method are reported in
Figure 10. Related results are reported in Table (5d). In a more challenging environment, such as real time
applications, encoded domain methods ensure robustness against compression. A similar performance
investigation reports the results shown in Table (5d) and in Figures (10g), (10h) and (10i). Our results
show that while using the same embedding capacity in temporal and frequency domains, stego signals
generated in the frequency domain are less distinguishable than the ones produced by hiding data in the
temporal domain.

(a) Speech cover

(d) Speech cover

(g) Speech cover

(b) Speech pauses cover

(e) Speech pauses cover

(h) Speech pauses cover

(c) Music cover

(f) Music cover

(i) Music cover

Figure 10: Noise level induced in speech (Figure 10a, Figure 10g) speech pause (Figure 10b, Figure 10h) and music
(Figure 10c, Figure 10i) audio signal covers by data embedding using temporal (Stools, Stegnos and Hide4PGP),
transform (Steghide and [7]) and encoded (Mp3Stego) domains steganographic tools

19

5.2

Evaluation by Steganalysis

Steganalysis is the science of detecting the presence of hidden messages. To investigate the delectability
rates of steganographic algorithms presented in the above section, we use a reference audio steganalysis
method presented in [51]. The selected reference method was applied successfully in detecting the presence
of hidden messages in high capacity LSBs-based steganography algorithms. It allows the enhancement of
the signal discontinuities due to the noise generated by the hidden data [51]. The method is based on
extracting Mel-cepstrum coecients (or features) from the second order derivative of audio signals. A
support vector machine (SVM) with RBF kernel [52] is then applied to the features to distinguish between
cover- and stego-audio signals. For each studied steganographic tool and algorithm, two datasets are
produced: training and testing. Each dataset contains 350 stego and cover WAV audio signals of 10 s
length. All signals are sampled at 44.1-kHz and quantized at 16-bits. Each training and testing dataset
contains 175 positive (stego) and 175 negative (cover) audio signals. We used on-line audio les from
dierent types such as speech signals in dierent languages (English, Chinese, Japanese, French, and
Arabic) and music (classic, jazz, rock, blues). All stego-audio signals are generated by hiding data from
dierent types: text, image, audio signals, video and executable les. To make a fair comparison between
all assessed algorithms [4749], the cover-signals were embedded with the same capacity of data. More
precisely, S-Toolss with hiding ratio of 50% is used as a reference hiding capacity for the candidate
steganographic algorithms and tools. The performance of each steganographic algorithm is measured
through the levels by which the system can distinguish between the stego and the cover-audio signals
(Table 7a). In order to analyze the obtained results, we rst present the contingency table (see Table 6).
Table 6: The contingency table
Stego classied
Cover classied

Stego-signal
True positives (tp)
False positives (fp)

Cover-signal
False negatives (fn)
True negatives (tn)

The entries of the contingency table are described as follows:

tp: stego-audio classied as stego-audio signal
tn: cover-audio classied as cover-audio signal
fn: stego-audio classied as cover-audio signal
fp: cover-audio classied as stego-audio signal

In subsequent formula, all represents the number of positive and negative audio signals. The value of the
information reported in Table 6 is used to calculate the following measure:
20

Accuracy(AC) =

tp + tn
all

(2)

Following the preparation of the training and testing datasets, we used the SVM library tool available at
http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/cjlin/libsvm to discriminate between the cover- and the stego-audio signals.
The results of the comparative study are reported in Table 7a. The accuracy of each studied tool is
measured by the accuracy (AC). The values presented in Table 7a are the percentages of the stego-audio
signals correctly classied. Higher score values are interpreted as high-detection rates. Consequently,
frequency-domain steganography technique described in Steghide tool shows a performance improvement
over time domain techniques (Stools and Hide4PGP). These results are consistent with our nding in the
imperceptibility evaluation presented in the previous section.

Hiding methods
Stools

AC
0.73

Hiding methods
Stools

Steghide

0.68

Steghide

Hide4PGP

0.85

Hide4PGP

Audio signal
Music
Speech
Music
Speech
Music
Speech

AC
0.69
0.77
0.63
0.72
0.79
0.88

(a) Dataset of 350 music and

(b) Two separate datasets of 175 speeches and 175

speeches audio signals

music audio signals

Table 7: Overall steganalysis study results for data in audio (Table 7a), in speech signals only and in music only
(Table 7b) depicted by each software tool appearing in [4749].

In Table 7b, further investigation is done to put more emphasis on the behavior of the tested algorithms
when music- and speech-audio signals are used separately to convey hidden data. The results show that
hiding in music is less detectable than speech audio signals. In fact, the reference steganalysis method uses
features extracted from high frequencies (lower in energy) to discriminate between cover- and stegosignals. Therefore, it allows to intensify the signal discontinuities due to the noise generated by data
embedding. As the number of low-energy frequency components in music audio signals is smaller than that
in speech audio-signals, the detection rate is expected to be lower.

Applications and Trends

A various range of audio steganographic applications have been successfully developed. Audio
Steganography techniques can be applied for covert communications using unclassied channels without

21

additional demand for bandwidth or simply for storing data. In general, three application types for audio
steganography techniques are distinguished and can be categorized as discussed next.

6.1

Secret Communication

To maintain patients medical records secrecy, [53] proposed to telemedicine users, a multilevel-access
control audio steganography system for securing transmission of medical images. The system embeds
medical images in audio les that are sent to dierent recipients such as doctors in-charge of the
corresponding patient. For more security, only intended receivers have the knowledge of a key that will be
used to extract the medical images. To exploit the expanding use of audio multimedia messaging (MMS)
among mobile phone users, [54] presented an alternative way for hidden communications, where data are
hidden in text messages (SMS) or in MMS. However, in [55], a real time application that hides text in
image and then disseminates it in MMS is presented. The system is created on a pair of Nokia 3110c
handsets in Java 2 platform, micro edition (J2ME). The system makes use of the 4 last bits of a snapshot
image taken by the camera phone to embed the message and then send it using a carrier medium such as
MMS or Bluetooth. A preestablished key between the sender and the receiver is used to open the image
and read the message. The general principle of MMS use in audio steganography is shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11: Audio steganography in MMS.

6.2

Improved Communication

In order to improve the intelligibility and the perceived quality of telephone speech (PSTN), [56, 57]
proposed a data hiding technique to extend the PSTN channel bandwidth. Since human voice occupies 8
kHz or more in bandwidth, wideband speech (which lies in an interval of 50 Hz to 7 kHz) provides a higher
intelligibility compared to narrowband speech (where the only information that could be transmitted is in
the frequency band of 200 Hz to 3.5 KHz). Wideband speech is divided into three subbands: lower band
(LB) 50-200, narrowband 0.2-3.5 and upper band (UB) 3.5-7 kHz. The characteristics (magnitude
frequencies and their locations) of LB and UP are embedded in the narrowband part of the speech based
22

on a perceptual masking principle. While this hidden signal is not audible to the human ear, PSTN
channel utilizes normal narrowband speech, but at the receiver side the embedded sub-bands are extracted.
Thus, the speech takes the form of a wideband speech with higher intelligibility and better quality.
Improved communication was also a target for steganographic systems where hidden data are sent over
acoustic channels as described in Figure 12. In [58, 59], data are pushed into live music or ambient sounds
and transmitted over an acoustic channel. The transmitter in this case is a speaker, and the receiver is a
microphone which are already present in numerous devices and environments. The developed technique
was applied in a simple navigation system, where acoustic data are embedded into background music to
indicate the location of the receiver.

Figure 12: Embedded data transmission over acoustic channels.

6.3

Data storage

Given the possibility to hide more than 16 Kbps in a wide-band audio le with a conventional LSB
encoding method, digital information can be reliably stored in audio steganographic systems. Another
application for data storage could be seen in subtitled movies. Actors speech, lm music, background
sounds could be used to embed the text needed for translation. In this case, bandwidth is substantially
reduced.

Conclusion

In order to provide better protection to digital data content, new steganography techniques have been
investigated in recent researcher works. The availability and popularity of digital audio signals have made
them an appealing choice to convey secret information. Audio steganography techniques address issues
related to the need to secure and preserve the integrity of data hidden in voice communications in
particular. In this work, a comparative study of the current-state-of-the-art literature in digital audio
steganography techniques and approaches is presented. In an attempt to reveal their capabilities in
ensuring secure communications, we discussed their strengthes and weaknesses. Also, a dierentiation
between the reviewed techniques based on the intended applications has been highlighted. Thus, while

23

temporal domain techniques, in general, aim to maximize the hiding capacity, transform domain methods
exploit the masking properties in order to make the noise generated by embedded data imperceptible. On
the other side, encoded domain methods strive to ensure the integrity of hidden data against challenging
environment such as real time applications. To better estimate the robustness of the presented techniques,
a classication based on their occurrence in the voice encoder is given. A comparison as well as a
performance evaluation (i.e., imperceptibility and steganalysis) for the reviewed techniques have been also
presented. This study showed that the frequency domain is preferred over the temporal domain and music
signals are better covers for data hiding in terms of capacity, imperceptibility and undetectability. From
our point of view, the diversity and large number of existing audio steganography techniques expand
application possibilities. The advantage on using one technique over another one depends on the
application constraints in use and its requirement for hiding capacity, embedded data security level and
encountered attacks resistance.

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26