A Secure Image Steganography Technique to Hide Multimedia Files in RGB Images

International Journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering

© 2018 by SSRG - IJECE Journal

Volume 5 Issue 6

Year of Publication : 2018

Authors : Revathy N and Vijitha G

10.14445/23488549/IJECE-V5I6P104

How to Cite?

Revathy N and Vijitha G, "A Secure Image Steganography Technique to Hide Multimedia Files in RGB Images," SSRG International Journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering, vol. 5,  no. 6, pp. 14-18, 2018. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.14445/23488549/IJECE-V5I6P104

Abstract:

Steganography the art of concealing a secret message inside a cover medium is a field that is still being investigated. A lot of developments are happening in steganography, as information security is a need of the hour. In the present scenario, communications no matter whether private or public is happening through Internet and other social networking sites. Internet is not a safe area for secret communication because hackers and eavesdroppers are flying around to get into the secret communication space. This paper deals with hiding multimedia files in true color RGB cover images with an aim of reducing the cover image size, increasing hiding capacity and enhancing security of the hidden data. A secure image steganography technique is presented in which a secret audio, video and image files are hidden inside two RGB cover images, regardless of its type, and is processed without compression. The cover images can be same images or images of same size. The multimedia files are split vertically into two parts; one part contains the least significant half-bytes, and the other part contains the most significant half-bytes. The two parts of secret files are hidden inside two uncompressed RGB cover images using a least significant 4-bit replacement technique. The embedding of the secret files is performed in RGB components of the image. The resulting dual stego images are sent through a communication channel. Extraction of the secret file is achieved through merging of LSB and MSB of the secret files. The extracted files are identical to the original embedded files. The proposed model provides better security of the hidden file, in case an attacker captures any one of the stego images and recover the hidden content the attacker will only get a set of half-byte bits, using these half bytes the original hidden data cannot be formed. The proposed method can be used for communication in applications that limit the cover image size.The other advantage of the proposed system is that hiding a video file inside an image is not commonly used due to the large video size compared to the cover image.Here two cover images are used to hide a video file so the problem of selection of large cover image is over come.Also the hiding of video file inside an image affects the visual quality of an image. But if the idea of splitting and hiding is used, along with a video file, an audio and image files can also be embedded without compromising the visual transparency, capacity and security. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated using PSNR, MSE and SSIM and is implemented using MATLAB.

Keywords:

cover image; stego image; vertical splitting; PSNR; LSB substitution.

References:

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