Design secure multi-level communication system based on duffing chaotic map and steganography

Abstract

Cryptography and steganography are among the most important sciences that have been properly used to keep confidential data from potential spies and hackers. They can be used separately or together. Encryption involves the basic principle of instantaneous conversion of valuable information into a specific form that unauthorized persons will not understand to decrypt it. While steganography is the science of embedding confidential data inside a cover, in a way that cannot be recognized or seen by the human eye. This paper presents a high-resolution chaotic approach applied to images that hide information. A more secure and reliable system is designed to properly include confidential data transmitted through transmission channels. This is done by working the use of encryption and steganography together. This work proposed a new method that achieves a very high level of hidden information based on non-uniform systems by generating a random index vector (RIV) for hidden data within least significant bit (LSB) image pixels. This method prevents the reduction of image quality. The simulation results also show that the peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) is up to 74.87 dB and the mean square error (MSE) values is up to 0.0828, which sufficiently indicates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.