An efficient multi-bit steganography algorithm in spatial domain with two-layer security

Abstract

Steganography is a very useful technique which aims at preventing loss of privacy during the process of data communication, especially over the internet. It can involve different forms of media like image, video (i.e., image sequence), audio etc. We propose a novel steganographic approach in spatial domain using pixel value differencing (PVD) or sample value differencing (SVD) technique and Galois field (GF (28)) operations in order to provide a two layered security for hiding message bits. Our method not only has a very high embedding capacity, but is also capable of withstanding statistical attacks. The proposed method embeds from 2 to 6 bits of the message per pixel in each image component, whereas it can embed a minimum of 6 bits and a maximum of 13 bits of message per sample in audio component at the expense of no perceivable distortion and loss of the cover media quality.