A new steganography technique based on genetic algorithm

Abstract

As technology grows, it affect our daily lives becomes more penetrating. Our private information may be violated when communications media are used, to achieve information security this paper was based on a new technique of steganography using cryptography, color model and genetic algorithm. First, the secret text was encrypted with the advanced encryption standard (AES) algorithm. Second, the hiding was applied in two stages. First, the cover-image was converted in to the hue saturation intensity (HSI) color model and select one of the models, then divide it into a group of blocks and hiding the text in them by using least significant bit (LSB) method on specified bytes randomly, then using the genetic algorithm that calculates peak signal-to-noise-ratio (PSNR) for all blocks after the hiding process and thus obtain the best value for PSNR for the optimal block. Second, includes the final hiding of all blocks based on the results of the first stage of the best random distribution of bytes according to the results of the genetic algorithm. The PSNR and mean square error (MSE) measures were adopted to prove the accuracy and efficiency of the results.