A Password and Least Significant Bit Substitution Based Steganography Technique for Image Hiding

Abstract

The proposed work introduces an image steganography technique using text-based password that acts as the symmetric key of encryption and decryption. It contains two components, an encoder, and a decoder. An encoder takes a secret image that needs to be hidden inside another cover image. The Combined image is encrypted with an eight characters’ password. The starting position of the cover image from where the secret image starts to hide depends on the password. Then the (Least Significant Bit) LSB Substitution technique is used to hide the entire secret image inside the cover image. The decoder takes the encrypted image and the password to retrieve the secret image back. The proposed work produces an encrypted image by keeping 99% information of the cover image and 100% information of the secret image, thus it provides lossless retrieval of the secret image. The proposed work includes dynamicity of position in steganography that ensures more security of image data over the network than the existing state of art methods.