Bit Level Key Agreement and Exchange Protocol for Digital Image Steganography

Abstract

Background/Objectives: Key agreement and exchange process plays a critical role in information security. The existing steganographic key handling techniques use a symmetric key feature, where a single key is used by both parties for information concealing for security. Methods/Statistical analysis: This paper introduces a bit level key agreement and secured key exchange protocol for the digital image steganographic applications. This protocol is constructed with the help of simple binary arithmetic and the XOR operation, mostly suitable for digital image steganographic algorithms. The key exchange is supported by the trusted third party image database. The image database is a collection of different small size images suitable for low processing and small memory mobile computing system. Findings: The present research offers a secure way to exchange the steganographic keys between both parties engaged in the information security. With the help of this technique, the secret key needs not transfer from one end to another for information hiding and uncovering from the cover object. The method discussed in this paper requires a very short key size as compared to other methods. The key transmission process is secure along with the less processing time require to generate the keys. The key generation is carried out by the LSB insertion technique with the partial secret of each party engaged in the security data transfer. The key exchange protocol of this method is secure against the different types active and passive attacks. The secret key requirement is not dependent on the concealing side; besides, the key is directly available to the revealing side with the help of trusted third party with small binary computation. So the secret key becomes safe and undisclosed from the intruders. Application: This technique is flexible, confidential and beneficial for the variety of the steganographic data security techniques. It is suitable for low bandwidth wireless system and mobile computing applications, where the key transmission insecure because of the vulnerable communication network.