Image Steganography: Hiding Secrets in Random LSB Pixels

Abstract

Steganography is the art of secret communication and evolved rapidly in the research community, and hiding data in images is relatively secure against spoofing; buying these point researchers targeted hiding secrets in LSBs of image pixels, and that particular method is known as LSB image steganography and evolved as an emerging method of secure data transmission over Internet. Influenced with this fundamental concept, this research is presenting a secure data hiding approach that ensures to maintain the quality of stego image while concealing more data per image. This research leverages the LZW compression technique to enlarge the text coverage in cover images, and for added security, it hides data in random pixels of the image which deliver the strength of “transposition cryptography.” LSB-based presented approach is influenced by the novel invention of H. B. Kekre and same algorithm would be considered for the comparative analysis of data hiding capabilities of presented method. This research is focused to hide data in LSB bits and will target MSBs only in the cases when LSB bits of all image pixels have conceived the secret bits, and this approach is the heartbeat of this research and ensures the better quality stego image after the hiding process, it could be considered that a bare eye cannot distinguish any difference comparing with original image. Presented approach is fully secured against the possibility of R-S detection attacks. Experimental analysis indicates that presented approach is very secure even having 2 times more data concealing as compared to kekre’s method. Apart from that all digested data was recovered at the destination, this approach is a lossless data hiding approach.