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A Hybrid Secured Approach Combining LSB Steganography and AES Using Mosaic Images for Ensuring Data Security

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Abstract

Steganography is a technique of hiding information in digital media such as images, text, audio, etc. This digital media is used as the cover to make the private message invisible. Apparently, the attackers do not have any idea about the original message that is being hidden in the cover media. In this research, the proposed technique has focused on implementing the least significant bit (LSB) matching steganography algorithm. For ensuring better security, the advanced encryption standard (AES) technique is used before applying the steganography technique to ensure two-layer security of the private message. Another feature that is used in this research is using mosaic images as the cover media. Mosaic image is capable of hiding up to five LSB layers. Different survey papers show that the success rate of using mosaic images as the cover media is approximately 99% comparing with approximately 50% the success of normal image in case of data hiding. Our proposed approach overcomes the problem of stego image distortion using mosaic images. The improved LSB steganography algorithm also effectively handles mosaic images. Using a better version of LSB, Stego images were given more excellent peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) value than other approaches when the hidden message was integrated into the mosaic image. Compared with different space domain strategies, the PSNR value of our proposed system is 85.65 dB for a maximum capacity of 32 bytes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology, Chittagong, 4349, Bangladesh

    Saralya Roy & Md. Moinul Islam

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This article is part of the topical collection “Cyber Security and Privacy in Communication Networks” guest edited by Rajiv Misra, R K Shyamsunder, Alexiei Dingli, Natalie Denk, Omer Rana, Alexander Pfeiffer, Ashok Patel and Nishtha Kesswani.

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Roy, S., Islam, M.M. A Hybrid Secured Approach Combining LSB Steganography and AES Using Mosaic Images for Ensuring Data Security. SN COMPUT. SCI. 3, 153 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42979-022-01046-8

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