Security Enhancement of Light Weight Data Transmission by Using Combination of Image Steganography and Cryptography

Abstract

Today, everyone around the world demands privacy in terms of secure communication. For this purpose, the most used techniques are cryptography and steganography. Cryptography is used to encrypt text-type data of information into cipher text by using some encryption algorithm. Steganography is the process of hiding data in a digital image which is the original medium called cover medium used as the career of information. This research proposed a technique to hide the secret data in the LSB of the cover image pixel. First, we encrypt the data being concealed using the AES algorithm. Then we applied a mathematical model on encrypted data and embed it in the cover object using the three least significant bits in reverse order. Concealed information is extracted in reverse steps of the proposed technique. Experimental results show that for lite weight data, the human eye cannot observe the existence of the hidden data in the Stego image.