Optimizing data security by using Integration between double stegging by pixel value difference and advanced encryption standard

Abstract

Advancement of internet technology has led to massive text and multimedia data delivery over the internet, Steganography and cryptography are two prominent methods for secure communication through public network such as the Internet. Steganography predates cryptography somewhat Because of its stealthy features. In this paper, a new method has been proposed which combines cryptography and steganography to make communication even more secure. In this method first the secret data is embedded inside digital image ( cov 1 ) using adaptive pixel value difference (PVD) technique, thereafter advanced encryption standard ( AES) algorithm is applied to encrypt the previous digital image. Then encrypted digital image (cov1) will embed inside another digital image (cov2) using the same previous embedding technique. An additional layer of security has been introduced by applying double steganography to ensure the security of sensitive data, also this proposed method aims to keep the value of (PSNR) and (MSE) within accepted range and enhance the amount of secret data to be embedding. Peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and mean square error (MSE) are used as a benchmark to measure the performance of the proposed method.