Implementation of Image Steganography with Least Significant Bit Insertion for Secure Communication

Abstract

Data hiding is a methodology of hiding secret message into a cover media such that an illegal observer does not predicts the presence of the existence of the hidden messages. It defines a group of processes used to embed data, into different forms of media such as audio, image or text. Data hiding, while similar to compression, is different from encryption. This new method is called steganography. In this one is the message image and other is the cover image. We can hide our message image in the cover image by using bit shifting method. Characteristics of cover image will not change so there will be no evidence of the presence of message inside an image. We can decode this and at the end we can separate the message image and the cover image. The methods which are initially proposed like, cryptography, water marking etc. are not readable but the existence of secret is evidenced, so one can easily notice that some sort of data has been transferred. Also, the security mechanism of these methods can be easily broken. Hence previous methods lack in providing complete security for data transfer.

So this paper is organized in different sections. First section explains the different type of images. Second section explains the data hiding techniques followed by a section that explains steganography. Last section includes the results and discussions.