An efficient bit plane X-OR algorithm for irreversible image steganography

Abstract

The science of hiding secret information in a message is known as steganography; hence, the presence of secret information is concealed. It is the method of hiding cognitive content in same or another media to avoid detection by intruders. This paper introduces a new method wherein irreversible steganography is used to hide an image in the same medium so that the secret data is masked. The secret image is known as a payload and the carrier is known as a cover image. X-OR operation is used amongst mid level bit planes of carrier image and high level bit planes of secret image to generate new low level bit planes of the stego image. Recovery process includes the X-ORing of low level bit planes and mid level bit planes of the stego image. Based on the result of the recovery, subsequent secret image is generated. An RGB colour image is used as carrier and the secret image is a grayscale image of dimensions less than or equal to the dimensions of the carrier image. The proposed method greatly increases the embedding capacity without significantly decreasing the PSNR value.