SECURE DATA HIDING IN DIGITAL MEDIA USING HYBRID STEGANOGRAPHY TECHNIQUES

Abstract

Cybercrime has become a dangerous threat to all the technical users and layman. Due to lack of skill on using the secured means in the data communication, many users as well as organizations are suffering. Steganography offers an approach to address this issue by providing an efficient method to secure data communication. Steganography is the practice of hiding a message or information within another message or object, with the goal of concealing its existence. It is a form of security through obscurity, where the message is kept secret by not drawing attention to its presence. The motivation behind steganography is to provide a way for people to communicate and share information in a way that is secure, private, and undetectable to anyone who does not have the proper tools and knowledge to uncover the hidden message. However, traditional steganography software can be inefficient and vulnerable to detection. The objective of this project is to overcome the limitations of traditional steganography software by developing an advanced and efficient steganography system. This system aims to address the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of traditional steganography software and provide improved security for data communication. The proposed two-layered approach combines the Least Significant Bit algorithm and Hybrid AES-RSA encryption techniques. The secret message is first encrypted using AES symmetric key and then embedded in the LSB of cover media. This approach ensures that the information is well-hidden within digital content, while encryption provides an additional layer of protection to prevent unauthorized access. Our proposed method Hybrid AES-RSA Encrypted LSB achieves an SSIM (Structural Similarity Index Measure) index of 0.9999 for images, 0.9773 for videos, and an RMS (Root Mean Square) value of 0.000178 for audio files. The achieved accuracy is 97%, which is 13.25% higher than traditional LSB. These metrics demonstrate that the processed images, videos, and audio files closely resemble their originals.