Computing in Covert Domain Using Data Hiding
This addresses privacy and security concerns in cloud computing by enabling covert data processing, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing information hiding techniques.
The paper tackles the problem of performing data computations on cloud servers without revealing the source data or results, by hiding data within covers like images or audio and executing computations in the covert domain. It demonstrates that this approach allows secure cloud computing over public channels while keeping data imperceptible to servers and adversaries.
This paper proposes an idea of data computing in the covert domain (DCCD). We show that with information hiding some data computing tasks can be executed beneath the covers like images, audios, random data, etc. In the proposed framework, a sender hides his source data into two covers and uploads them onto a server. The server executes computation within the stego and returns the covert computing result to a receiver. With the covert result, the receiver can extract the computing result of the source data. During the process, it is imperceptible for the server and the adversaries to obtain the source data as they are hidden in the cover. The transmission can be done over public channels. Meanwhile, since the computation is realized in the covert domain, the cloud cannot obtain the knowledge of the computing result. Therefore, the proposed idea is useful for cloud computing.