Steganalysis and improvement of a quantum steganography protocol via a GHZ₄ state

Quantum steganography that utilizes the quantum mechanical effect to achieve the purpose of information hiding is a popular topic of quantum information. Recently, El Allati et al. proposed a new quantum steganography using the GHZ₄ state. Since all of the 8 groups of unitary transformations used in the secret message encoding rule change the GHZ₄ state into 6 instead of 8 different quantum states when the global phase is not considered, we point out that a 2-bit instead of a 3-bit secret message can be encoded by one group of the given unitary transformations. To encode a 3-bit secret message by performing a group of unitary transformations on the GHZ₄ state, we give another 8 groups of unitary transformations that can change the GHZ₄ state into 8 different quantum states. Due to the symmetry of the GHZ₄ state, all the possible 16 groups of unitary transformations change the GHZ₄ state into 8 different quantum states, so the improved protocol achieves a high efficiency.