Puzzle based highly secure steganography

Steganography is the insertion of secret data inside a normal cover media such as digital image, audio, video or text. The inserted message must not be damaged when processing is applied on the cover media. Several image processing operations such as format conversion, lossy and lossless compression, noise removal and other enhancement. This paper presents multi layer image encryption and decryption using random puzzle based method to embed secret data into the cover image. This approach enhances the security and provides robust embedding. In this work, a 8×8 Sudoku puzzle which has a 64×64 reference matrix is used. The proposed method gives a superior average capacity of 5 bits per pixel. The message is embedded at the sender using random permutation puzzle. At the Receiver end, the user has to rearrange the image thereby solving the puzzle. The attacker lacks knowledge of original image order and is unable to solve the puzzle. Our outcome indicate that the recommended approach provides high steganographic security while providing high embedding capacity of about 5 bits per pixel. A brief analysis of the performance and security aspects of the proposed method are presented.