Triple Layered Security for Data Hiding Using Steganography and Visual Cryptography

Abstract

The proposed system makes use of steganographic method along with visual cryptography for hiding data in images and to provide better security.  Even though extensive research work has been done previously, but most of the research work gives no robust security for the image that has been encrypted. The method proposed in this paper is capable of hiding some secret message in least significant bits of the original image, thereby hiding the secret message in way to make its detection difficult. The secret image is then under went to visual cryptography algorithm. Thereby, creating shares of the secret image, which are noise like structures. Further, the method proposes to hide these shares in least significant bits of different images so as to create three levels of security for the message. The main objective of the proposed method is to combine the use of data hiding techniques, steganography and visual cryptography algorithms for designing a secure algorithm so that security, reliability and efficiency of secret message can be improved. The framework is implemented in matlab.