Title: A modified image steganographic method based on chaotic text encryption using lifting wavelet transform

Authors: K. Sheela Sobana Rani; M. Yuvaraju; V. Sathya; R. Lavanya; R. Gayathri

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Sri Ramakrishna Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India ' Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Anna University Regional Centre, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India ' Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Anna University Regional Centre, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India ' Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Sri Ramakrishna Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India ' Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Sri Ramakrishna Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India

Abstract: Steganography is an art of concealing text into cover image over a covert channel, enabling covert communication. In this paper, a modified steganographic approach using lifting wavelet transform (LWT) is proposed. The key for encrypting the text are generated randomly using chaotic maps. The concept of confusion and diffusion is applied using one of the widely used dynamic systems namely Lorenz, Chen and Lu. By applying chaos strategy effectively in secret communication, the strength of the anticipated algorithm is improved to a significant level. The encrypted text can be concealed into the cover image using adaptive least significant bit (ALSB) algorithm. The stego image obtained at the end of data embedding process undergoes few security statistical analyses such as peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), mean square error (MSE), elapsed time and correlation calculations. With the significant knowledge of above parameters, it is observed that the suggested methodology proves to have advantages over existing ones, providing higher level of security against some existing attacks.

Keywords: data hiding; chaos encryption; adaptive least significant bit replacement; ALSB; lifting wavelet transform; LWT; chaos decryption.

DOI: 10.1504/EG.2021.118105

Electronic Government, an International Journal, 2021 Vol.17 No.4, pp.391 - 403

Accepted: 04 Jun 2020
Published online: 12 Oct 2021 *

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