Random selection based GA optimization in 2D-DCT domain color image steganography

摘要

Steganography, the hiding technique used to secure sensitive data (i.e., images, audio ) while communication takes place. In this paper, the message is embedded in color image in frequency domain exploiting Genetic Algorithm (GA) which provides the robustness i.e., the algorithm can withstand against any rigorous testing and brutal attack except destruction of the stego image. The fragmentation of 8-bit binary stream of each color component to 4-bit and applying Genetic Algorithm (GA) to increase the robustness of the scheme. Random Multiple bits are chosen to embed secret message which increases security along with the payload. The use of transform domain, hash function based random pixel and bit selections for data hiding, secrete data encryption and more over use of Genetic Algorithm (GA) for optimization is the novelty of the proposed work. Perspective and meticulous statistical analysis has been done to immune the algorithm from any attack. The algorithm proposed here is tested with benchmark tools like StirMark 4.0, Confusion Matrix (Receiver Operating Curve Characteristic (ROC) curve) along with steganalysis and statistical tools. Visual disturbance and distortion in stego image is also very insignificant here.