A new steganography technique using magic square matrix and affine cipher

Abstract

Methods that provide effective protection of data have now become necessary due to the huge growth of multimedia applications on networks. Steganography is one of the most widespread approaches of protecting data. The challenge of steganographic methods is to create a rational balance between the quality of the file and the size of data that can be transferred. In addition, the robustness of the technique and security of the obscure data must be maintained. This thesis proposes a new steganography approach to fulfill requirements of steganography which are imperceptibility, payload and robustness. In this study, the color space of the image is first converted from RGB to YCbCr color space. Then, Cb or Cr channel selected to hide the secret data. The secret data is encrypted using the affine cipher to increase the security of data. The Magic Square Matrix is applied to embed the secret code onto the Cb or Cr component using ISB (Intermediates Significant Bits) approach. Finally, the robustness of the cover image is evaluated by applying Salt-and-Pepper noise. The results show that the new proposed method not only improves the security problem but proposed technique can withstand attacks.