Pixel Value Differencing Based Image Steganography using AES and SHA-2 Cryptography Method

Abstract

The growing use of Internet and availability of public and private digital data and its sharing among professionals and researchers need particular attention to information security. This information needs to be protected against unauthorized access and attacks. Digital communication witnesses a noticeable and continuous development in many applications in the Internet. Hence, secure communication sessions must be provided. The security of data transmitted across a global network has turned into a key factor on the network performance measures. So, the confidentiality and the integrity of data are needed to prevent eavesdroppers from accessing and using transmitted data. Presently, three main methods of information security being used: watermarking, cryptography and steganography. The aim of this paper is to develop a new approach to hiding a secret information in an image by taking advantage of benefits of combining cryptography and steganography. In this method first, the message is encrypted by using AES algorithm and hashed the key using SHA-2 to prevent from attacks. After that, we performed some modifications on PVD algorithm by adding a key to make hiding process non sequential. Results achieved indicate that our proposed method is encouraging in terms of robustness and security.