Integration between Cryptography and Steganography to Hide Secret Message inside an Image

Abstract

The information hiding is progression of hiding the details of a function or object or both of them. On the other hand it represents an important way that used in data security. Another name for information hiding is the steganography, which hides the data inside another data such as embed text inside image or image inside another one. The steganography techniques were used from ancient times and through uses of many mechanics and different ways, such as writing in invisible ink in the Greek Testament, while Cryptography is the process of hiding information by encrypt this data using a complex algorithms. Cryptography is used when collaborating over an untrusted intermediate such as internet. The steganography and cryptography work similarly but in different contexts. In this study, an integration of cryptography and steganography to produce an efficient and robust model has been presented. In terms of cryptography, the Data Encryption Standard (DES) algorithm is implemented, whereas in steganography, the Least Significant Bit (LSB) algorithm is used. Our results show efficient time implementation and a robust algorithm mechanism in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and mean square error (MSE).

Keywords: Steganography, Cryptography, Data Hiding, Data Encryption Standard (DES), Least Significant Bit (LSB).