Sharing Confidential Images with Abbreviated Shares using Steganography and AES Algorithm

Abstract

‘Steganography’ derives from the Greek steganos (=“covered”) and graphy (=“writing”) so its literal meaning is “covered writing.” It is concerned with communication that is ‘invisible’. There are many steganographic approaches for hiding vital information in various file formats, some of which are more difficult than others, and each has its own set of strengths and weaknesses. In the Least Significant Bit (LSB) embedding approach, data is embedded in the cover picture's least significant bits in a manner that renders the unaided eye incapable of discerning the image in the cover file. This approach could work in both 24-bit and 8-bit settings. In BPCS steganography, the image is the vessel data, secret info is embedded in the vessel's bit-planes. Without degradation of image quality, we replace with secret data, every “noise-like” region within the bit-planes of the vessel image. This steganography may be called “BPCS-Steganography,” or Bit-Plane Complexity Segmentation Steganography. In this paper we describe an experimental approach to hide the secret image by using LSB and BPCS steganography and AES algorithm.