An effective steganographic technique for hiding the image data using the LSB technique

Abstract

Steganography is the art and science of writing secret messages so that neither the sender nor the intended recipient knows there is a hidden message. Data hiding is the art of hiding data for various reasons, such as keeping private data, secure, confidential data, etc. With increasing data exchange over a computer network, information security has become a significant issue. There are many methods used for data hiding, and steganography is a well-known technique. Steganography is the art of invisible contact and science. Steganography is the process through which the presence of a message can be kept secret. The objective of this paper is to hide data using the LSB (Least Significant Bit) technique into images that can be detected only by the specified user. We have developed a user-friendly GUI such that it can be used with the utmost ease. This paper is motivated to hide the message stated by the user in the dialog box given within the picture. The secret text is converted to the ciphertext to make it more stable. The sender selects the cover image, and it is used to generate the secured Stegno image, which is identical to the cover image. With the support of a private or public communication network, on the other hand, the stegno image can be saved and sent to the designated user, i.e., the recipient downloads the stegno image and can retrieve the secret text concealed in the stegno image using that same application. As for the watermarking, we have visible and invisible we have used the same LSB technique. In visible watermarking, text or image is embedded in the cover image, which can be noticed easily. As for invisible watermarking, some specific text is inserted into an image, and while retrieving it, it generates a QR code^, which can be scanned to get the watermarked text. We used the three different types of cover images i.e. Gray, and RGB also estimated the performance metrics. SNR, MSE, and PSNR the three performance metrics are used, and found that PSNR achieved good results i.e.,71.4733. The RGB image with the hidden text is achieved up to 77.6697