Since the mid 1990s, data hiding has been proposed as an enabling technology for securing multimedia communication and is now used in various applications including broadcast monitoring, movie fingerprinting, steganography, video indexing and retrieval and image authentication. Data hiding and cryptographic techniques are often combined to complement each other, thus triggering the development of a new research field of multimedia security. Besides, two related disciplines, steganalysis and data forensics, are increasingly attracting researchers and becoming another new research field of multimedia security. This journal, LNCS Transactions on Data Hiding and Multimedia Security, aims to be a forum for all researchers in these emerging fields, publishing both original and archival research results. The seven papers included in this special issue were carefully reviewed and selected from 21 submissions. They address the challenges faced by the emerging area of visual cryptography and provide the readers with an overview of the state of the art in this field of research.

Wai Keung (Andrew) Lau directs this martial arts action drama set in Japanese-occupied 1920s Shanghai. Seven years after the apparent death of Chen Zhen (portrayed by Bruce Lee in the 1972 film 'Fist of Fury' and played here by Donnie Yen), the avenging hero returns. When he is not courting sultry nightclub singer Kiki (Qi Shu), Zhen takes it upon himself to stop the wave of assassinations sweeping Shanghai, donning a black mask to infiltrate the mob and track down the Japanese hitmen who have been killing off those named in their top-secret Death List.