Data security and data hiding have been studied throughout history. Studies show that steganography and encryption methods are used together to hide data and avoid detection. Large amounts of data hidden in the cover multimedia distort the image, which can be detected in visual and histogram analysis. The proposed method will solve two major drawbacks of the current methods: the limitation imposed on the size of the data to be hidden in the cover multimedia and low resistance to steganalysis after stego-operation. In the proposed method, plaintext data are divided into fixed-sized bits whose corresponding matching bits’ indices in the cover multimedia are accumulated. Thus, the hidden data are composed of the indices in the cover multimedia, causing no change in it, thus enabling considerable amounts of plaintext to be hidden. The proposed method also has high resistance to known steganalysis methods because it does not cause any distortion to the cover multimedia. The test results show that the performance of the proposed method outperforms similar conventional stenographic techniques. The proposed Ozyavas–Takaoglu–Ajlouni (OTA) method relieves the limitation on the size of the hidden data, and hidden data is undetectable by steganalysis because it is no longer embedded in the cover multimedia.

A Novel and Robust Hybrid Blockchain and Steganography Scheme

The rapid increase in Internet speed led to people exchanging a huge amount of information every moment, including sensitive and private information. Hence, confidentiality and privacy are a big concern. Image steganography is a tool used to ensure that sensitive information is securely shared by concealing it in a cover image. Many techniques have been proposed to protect the information, such as the Least Significant Bit (LSB), Pixel Value Differencing (PVD), Pixel Indicator Techniques (PIT), etc. This paper presents a new PIT -based technique for RGB images to enhance the requirement ofimperceptibility and security. This technique uses the LSB of the green channel as an indicator to hide and encode the secret information in the red and blue channels. The technique is developed in three versions wherein two LSBs, two to four LSBs, or four LSBs of the red and blue channels are utilised to encode up to six bits of the secret information. The experimental results of the proposed method are obtained using MATLAB 2022a. The experimental results showed promising results against standard images with higher Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) values and Mean Square Error (MSE). 

Imperceptible Image Steganography Technique Using a Novel PIT-Based Technique

The rapid increase in Internet speed led to people exchanging a huge amount of information every moment, including sensitive and private information. Hence, confidentiality and privacy are a big concern. Image steganography is a tool used to ensure that sensitive information is securely shared by concealing it in a cover image. Many techniques have been proposed to protect the information, such as the Least Significant Bit (LSB), Pixel Value Differencing (PVD), Pixel Indicator Techniques (PIT), etc. This paper presents a new PIT -based technique for RGB images to enhance the requirement ofimperceptibility and security. This technique uses the LSB of the green channel as an indicator to hide and encode the secret information in the red and blue channels. The technique is developed in three versions wherein two LSBs, two to four LSBs, or four LSBs of the red and blue channels are utilised to encode up to six bits of the secret information. The experimental results of the proposed method are obtained using MATLAB 2022a. The experimental results showed promising results against standard images with higher Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) values and Mean Square Error (MSE).

Steganography is a subject of study that has been used to hide information throughout history. In cryptology science, the information to be hidden is encrypted. Both study subjects are widely used in information security and protection. In our study, digital image steganography, which is one of the application areas of steganography, was developed and applied to hide text in the selected images. While doing this, the low bands that will hide the data using the discrete Haar wavelet transform of the images obtained first. The text to be hidden is encrypted with the one-time-pad algorithm. The key used for the encryption is transmitted to the receiver using a transmission layer based on a Highly Secured Information Exchange Algorithm. The algorithms use a randomly generated key pool maintained by both the transmitter and the receiver. A key is selected from the pool randomly by generating a random key start point for every message. The pool size and the randomness are critical factors in guaranteeing no key repetition, which is a requirement for a one-time-pad. The ciphertext and the key starting point indicator are hidden in the low bands of the pictures by utilizing the least significant bit method. The optimal pixel adjustment process was applied to the pre-stego-images, this resulted in an improvement in the results. The results obtained in this study are compared against the pre-optimal pixel adjustment process results and the results obtained through peer studies. The test results show that the proposed method outperformed all the methods in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio, structural similarity index metric, mean absolute error, mean consequential error and the encryption key security.

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Highly Secured Hybrid Image Steganography with an Improved Key Generation and Exchange for One-Time-Pad Encryption Method

Steganography is the process used hide the existence of information during transmission. Cover mediums like text, image, audio, and video protocols are used to hide the secret information. This process helps to provide secret communication between two parties. As data is unknown, it is challenging to attract the attention of any third parties. Therefore, steganography becomes the best and most secure method for data transmission. Digital images are the most common cover media or carriers in steganographic processes, where the secret payload is embedded into images. Several techniques are coming under image steganography, and there includes a different method to ensure the secrecy of messages. This chapter gives an overview of the different commonly used techniques in this area and the latest existing image steganography methods and the comparison of techniques.

Image Steganography: Recent Trends and Techniques

In the modern era, a lot of information is transferred over the internet. This information has to be transferred securely to retain privacy. Many techniques have been developed so that this information is transferred securely without being intercepted by the third party. Steganography is also such techniques in which information can be transferred securely. In steganography, the existence of secure information is completely hidden from the third party. Only sender and receiver know that about the secret information being transferred. In steganography, information is embedded into some cover medium like text, image, audio or video etc. In image steganography, the image is used as a cover medium to hide the secret data. Most common technique for image steganography involves least significant bits (LSB) of image pixels which are altered with the secret message bits. There are a lot of limitations in the LSB techniques, due to which many new image steganography techniques are developed. Pixel Indicator Technique is such a technique. In this paper, an altered version of the PIT is presented in which advantage of 24 bits of each pixel is taken to hide the data in three data channels of RGB. In this method, no separate key is used for encryption and decryption, thus avoiding any overhead of managing key. This technique provides enhanced capacity and security over any other image steganography techniques.

Pixel Indicator Steganography Technique with Enhanced Capacity for RGB Images

In the era of the Internet, many files (text, image, audio, and video) are shared through the Internet. Security is the main issue, during sharing information. To resolve the security problem, two techniques are used to make our information secure, i.e., cryptography and steganography. Cryptography is used for encryption but does not hide the information. So, it is not too much secure. The emerging Internet technology has led to the need for a high level of security which is provided by steganography. Steganography is used to hide the existence of a secret message. As a result, unauthorized users cannot access secret information in different multimedia files. This paper gives a brief overview of steganography, type of steganography, insertion technique used in image steganography search such as LSB, GLM, parity checking, and interpolation. It also includes the application and a set of parameters to test the imperceptibility of an algorithm. In image steganography, the cover medium used for hiding data is an image. The most common technique for image steganography involves the least significant bits (LSBs) of image pixels which are altered with the bits of secret message. There are a lot of limitations in the LSB techniques, due to which many new image steganography techniques are developed. The cyclic LSB technique is such a technique. In this paper, an altered version of the cyclic LSB technique is presented. The advantage of this method is that RGB channels of the image are rotated into the cycle, i.e., red channel is used for hiding first bit, the green channel is used for hiding the second bit, the blue channel is used for hiding third bits, and then this cycle is repeated. In this method, no separate key is used for encryption and decryption, thus avoiding any overhead of managing key. This technique provides enhanced capacity and security over any other image steganography techniques.

Mangal Sain

Papers

Pixel Indicator Steganography Technique with Enhanced Capacity for RGB Images

Steganographic Method Based on Interpolation and Cyclic LSB Substitution of Digital Images