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Training-Free Coverless Multi-Image Steganography with Access Control

arXiv cs.CV / 3/11/2026

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Key Points

  • Coverless Image Steganography (CIS) hides information without altering the cover image, enhancing imperceptibility and robustness against detection.
  • Existing CIS methods lack robust access control, limiting selective content disclosure to authorized users in multi-user environments.
  • MIDAS is a novel training-free, diffusion-based CIS framework that supports multi-image hiding with user-specific access control through latent-level fusion.
  • MIDAS uses a Random Basis mechanism and Latent Vector Fusion to improve stealth, image quality, and robustness against noise and steganalysis.
  • Experimental results show MIDAS outperforms existing training-free CIS approaches, offering a scalable and practical solution for privacy-sensitive, multi-user steganography applications.

Computer Science > Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

arXiv:2603.09390 (cs)
[Submitted on 10 Mar 2026]

Title:Training-Free Coverless Multi-Image Steganography with Access Control

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Abstract:Coverless Image Steganography (CIS) hides information without explicitly modifying a cover image, providing strong imperceptibility and inherent robustness to steganalysis. However, existing CIS methods largely lack robust access control, making it difficult to selectively reveal different hidden contents to different authorized users. Such access control is critical for scalable and privacy-sensitive information hiding in multi-user settings. We propose MIDAS, a training-free diffusion-based CIS framework that enables multi-image hiding with user-specific access control via latent-level fusion. MIDAS introduces a Random Basis mechanism to suppress residual structural information and a Latent Vector Fusion module that reshapes aggregated latents to align with the diffusion process. Experimental results demonstrate that MIDAS consistently outperforms existing training-free CIS baselines in access control functionality, stego image quality and diversity, robustness to noise, and resistance to steganalysis, establishing a practical and scalable approach to access-controlled coverless steganography.
Subjects: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV)
Cite as: arXiv:2603.09390 [cs.CV]
  (or arXiv:2603.09390v1 [cs.CV] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.09390
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arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

Submission history

From: Minyeol Bae [view email]
[v1] Tue, 10 Mar 2026 09:02:39 UTC (8,654 KB)
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