Emerging Cryptographic Techniques in Watermarking and Steganography for Secure Communication and Privacy

Dear Colleagues,

The rapid expansion of digital communication, multimedia applications, and artificial intelligence has created new challenges in ensuring data confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity. Traditional cryptographic techniques, while powerful, are no longer sufficient on their own to address increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, multimedia piracy, and privacy breaches. To address these challenges, researchers are developing hybrid approaches that integrate cryptography, watermarking, and steganography to enhance the security of communication systems.

This Special Issue invites original research articles, reviews, and case studies that present novel methods, frameworks, and applications at the intersection of encryption, watermarking, and steganography. Contributions may include the design of innovative algorithms, privacy-preserving multimedia security, covert communication techniques, post-quantum cryptographic schemes, AI-driven security models, and hybrid solutions that integrate these three domains. Practical applications may range from secure cloud and IoT systems to medical image protection, blockchain-based verification, and smart city infrastructures.

By uniting cryptography, watermarking, and steganography on one platform, this Special Issue seeks to highlight emerging trends, promote interdisciplinary collaboration, and provide robust solutions for the future of secure and private digital communication.

Prof. Dr. Mhamed Sayyouri
Guest Editor

Dr. Mohamed Amine Tahiri
Guest Editor Assistant

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Cryptography is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• design of novel cryptographic and hybrid security algorithms
• privacy-preserving multimedia protection techniques
• advanced steganography and covert communication methods
• post-quantum cryptography for multimedia and communication systems
• AI-driven cryptographic and security models
• blockchain-based verification and trust frameworks
• protection of medical images and sensitive healthcare data
• watermarking for copyright protection
• digital watermarking