A new approach for Steganography: Bit shifting operation of encrypted data in LSB (SED-LSB)

Abstract

In this article, a new method is presented by adding bit shift of encrypted data in LSB method (SED-LSB). The message to be embedded in the cover image is encrypted by the key received from the user. Then, secret data are obtained by bit shifting operation using this encrypted text. Finally, the secret data is hidden inside the cover image using the LSB method. SED-LSB is performed by preparing GUI in MATLAB. The quality of the cover image is measured by Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), besides the similarity between the cover and stego image is determined by the Structural Similarity Index (SSIM). The 512 x 512 size of colored images as Lena, Peppers, Fruits and Baboon are used to hide 87373 byte data. PSNR values are between 51.615 – 51.656 and SSIM values are between 0.99937 – 0.99982. In the proposed method, when data are hidden at a higher capacity, stage image is found not only secure but also high quality.