Enhancing LSB Using Binary Message Size Encoding for High Capacity, Transparent and Secure Audio Steganography-An Innovative Approach

Abstract

We propose a novel LSB-BMSE method that enhances LSB audio steganography. It uses an innovative mechanism, Binaries of Message Size Encoding (BMSE), to embed a secret message after hiding its size in random samples. First, the secret message is compressed using Huffman coding, then encrypted by AES-128. The audio cover is split into number of blocks depending on secret message size. A secure keyBMSE, output from the BMSE mechanism, is used to embed the secret message in random blocks and bytes adaptively according to its size. It is implemented using MATLAB and standard parameters: Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality and NIST Statistical Test Suite were used to measure imperceptibility between cover stego audios and randomness of BMSE mechanism respectively. The fidelity was tested using Mean Square Error, Peak Signal to Noise Ratio and Signal-to-Noise Ratio. Comprehensive experiments on widely used metrics demonstrate that LSB-BMSE significantly surpasses existing methods in terms of hiding capacity and imperceptibility. Moreover, LSB-BMSE shows resistance to brute force attacks and statistical analysis. Although it was robust towards re-sampling attacks, nevertheless was not vigorous towards noise nor LSB attacks. The keyBMSE complies with Kerckhoff's principle and exhibits avalanche criteria. The tested proposed LSB-BMSE proclaimed its effectiveness.