High Capacity Image Steganography System based on Multi-layer Security and LSB Exchanging Method

Data security is becoming an important issue because of the vast use of the Internet and data transfer from one place to another. Security of these data is essential, especially when these data represent critical information. There are several techniques used to hide these data, such as encryption. Steganography can be utilised as an alternative to encryption because encryption is susceptible to data modification during transmission. Steganography is the hiding data on a cover multimedia such as images, audio, and video. The technique allows security for data transmission so unwanted third parties cannot notice the hidden data. The challenge of steganography is the trade-off between the hidden data's payload capacity and the system's imperceptibility and robustness. If the hidden data increases, the imperceptibility and the robustness will be decreased. This case is a big challenge in this digital world where social media, Internet, and data transfer are used hugely. Because of this, this paper proposes using a modified Least Significant Bit (LSB) method for the embedding process called Multi-Layer Least Significant Bit Exchange Method (MLLSBEM). This proposed algorithm uses the AES encryption method to encrypt the secret text and then uses Huffman coding to compress the encrypted message as pre-processing data. The proposed study seeks to strike a compromise between important issues, provide maximum payload capacity, and retain high security, imperceptibility, and reliability for secret communication Using image processing and steganography techniques. Simulation findings demonstrate that the suggested method is superior for existing PSNR, SSIM, NCC, and payload capacity investigations. The proposed method is immune to the histogram, chi-square, and HVS attacks.

@article{Hameed2022,
  title     = {High Capacity Image Steganography System based on Multi-layer Security and LSB Exchanging Method},
  journal   = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
  volume    = {13},
  number    = {8},
  year      = {2022},
  publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
  author    = {Rana Sami Hameed and Siti Salasiah Mokri and Mustafa Sabah Taha and Mustafa Muneeb Taher},
  doi       = {10.14569/IJACSA.2022.0130814},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2022.0130814}
}