An Efficient Method for High Secured Image Steganography Using Image Segments

摘要

Steganography is the science of communicating secret data using an appropriate carrier. It is based on the concept that if the feature is revealed then it is liable to attack. Thus the main aim of steganography is to conceal the embedded data from eavesdroppers. Moreover it should maintain the quality of the carrier medium and anti-steganalysis should be hard to accomplish. This paper introduces a novel approach to image steganography which attains the above by performing mod-3 and stratification. To begin with, mod-3 operation is performed in each byte of the secret image. The result would either be a 0, 1 or 2. Based on the result that byte is placed in anyone of the three data files. As a result, three data files of the secret image are obtained. The carrier image is chosen and the three data files are appended below the carrier image one after the other. A pass-key is used for security purpose and it is also used as a delimiter between the layers. Text can also be encrypted and appended as one of the layers to the carrier image. The receiver receives the Stego image and performs the reverse process. The experimental result shows that the carrier image and secret image are independent of size. This is done after pointing out the related approaches and then highlighting this model's contributions with respect to the embedding and extraction processes.