A novel image steganographic scheme using 8 × 8 Sudoku puzzle

Abstract

The word steganography has originated from two Greek words, namely, stegos and grahia meaning cover and writing, respectively. The concept behind steganography is that the transmitted message should be indiscernible to the regular eye. It is the art of concealing information within a medium. The main aim of steganography is to protect this concealed information. A message transmitted using a cipher text may incite suspicion, but an invisible message will not. Digital images constitute a flexible medium for carrying secret messages because slight modifications done to a cover image is hard to be distinguished by the human eyes. In this work, we have proposed an Image Steganographic Scheme using 8 × 8 Sudoku puzzle for secure data transmission. The originality of the work is that if any intruder changes any part of the secret message, then the proposed algorithm will be able to detect it.