Compressed and encrypted secret hides in image for rugged stego

Abstract

This study projects a unique means of steganography incorporating two diverse plots for images viz., compression and encryption. Being inhspensable for the sake of e-world, where images are numerously involved information security has caught attention of many. In this heterogeneous distributed computing world data are transferred accurately and faster. Many transmission mehums are available to send the data through internet. The main concern of the data transfer is to secure the data without any unauthorized access. To have a secured data transfer steganography and cryptography methods are involved. Cryptography scrambles the data whereas steganography conceals the data transfer. In this proposed method secret text is compressed using Shannon fano method and then encrypted using rail fence cipher followed by ceaser cipher to improve the security. Mean Squared Error (MSE) and Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) are calculated and analysis is done, K-bit embedhng is employed in this study to put the secret out of sight. This study pledges security, embedding capability and imperceptibility possessing high hardiness to security threats. © 2013 Academic Journals Inc.