Compensation of degradation, security, and capacity of LSB substitution methods by a new proposed hybrid n-LSB approach

Abstract

This study proposes a new hybrid n-LSB (Least Significant Bit) substitution-based image steganography method in the spatial plane. The previously proposed n-LSB substitution method by authors of this paper is combined with the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA), RC5, and Data Encryption Standard (DES) encryption algorithms to improve the security of the steganography, which is one of the requirements of steganography, and the Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW), Arithmetic and Deflate lossless compression algorithms to increase the secret message capacity. Also, embedding was done randomly using a logistic map-based chaos generator to increase the security more. The classical n-LSB substitution method and the proposed hybrid approaches based on the previously proposed n-LSB were implemented using different secret messages and cover images. When the results were examined, it has been seen that the proposed hybrid n-LSB approach showed improvement in all three criteria of steganography. The proposed hybrid approach that consists of previously proposed n-LSB, RSA, Deflate, and the logistic map had the best results regarding capacity, security, and imperceptibility.

A Novel M-Log Chaos Method for Enhanced Security Blended with Pristine d-Hybrid LSB Approach for Reducing Image Degradation Hinged on Huffman Compression of English Text for Payload Improvement

“…For the third facet i.e., reducing image degradation, it was observed that the n-Hybrid technology proposed by (Tütüncü et al, 2021) had a research gap of not considering the high degradation caused by MSBs change of the SI pixel while trying to reduce the PVD without changing secret embedded 3-LSBs. Thus, a novel d-hybrid approach which is an improvement of the n-Hybrid approach proposed by (Tütüncü et…”

“…For the second objective, to develop a steganographic technique that is highly secured, the posited method introduced a novel M-Log chaos technique for embedding. In the end, after the embedding process, the proffered method used the d-Hybrid LSB method which is inspired from and is an amended version of the n-Hybrid LSB method proposed by (Tütüncü et al, 2021) for degradation reduction in the SI.…”

“…The gap in n-Hybrid 3-LSB approach: In the embedding procedure, for PVD 5 and -5 the readjustment of SI pixel lead to a major change in MSBs of SI thus leading to PVD reduction at the cost of major MSBs change which defeats the procedural objective of reducing the image degradation. Thus, to overcome this issue this manuscript proposes a new novel d-Hybrid 3-LSB approach for reducing image degradation which overcomes the gap in the method proposed by (Tütüncü et al, 2021).…”

“…This technology is proposed by(Tütüncü et al, 2021) and is hinged on the idea that for 3-LSB embedding if PVD between SI and CI belongs to[-4,4] then no change is done, but if the PVD is 5,6 or 7 then add DECI 8 and if the PVD is -5,-6,-7 then subtract DECI 8 to bring down the PVD and as a result reduce image degradation.…”