Title: Intensity-based randomised image steganography technique with novel AES encryption

Authors: Rashmi Shirole; Shiva Murthy Govind Swamy

Addresses: NMAM Institute of Technology, Nitte Deemed to be University, Nitte-574110, Karnataka, India ' Visvesvaraya Technological University, Muddenhalli, Karnataka, India

Abstract: In the present digital age, data is the currency of any organisation. Microsoft Word is the most popular word processor. To protect the word document, many password-based encryption techniques are available. The main issue with these techniques is not that passwords are hard to hack but rather that they may be freely disseminated. The purpose of this work is to present the two-level protection mechanism that relies on combining cryptography and steganography for its implementation in order to conceal secrets in a cover media from word document. This work aims to introduce a novel security mechanism to protect MS-word document which deals with the combination of advanced AES cryptography and optimised image steganography technique. To generate ciphertext, operation on S-boxes in AES algorithm is modified. The generated ciphertext is embedded in an image using low intensity randomised technique. A few cryptanalysis and steganalysis attacks were conducted to test this new methodology which is demonstrated through histogram, avalanche effect, attack scenario, execution time, PSNR value, Manhattan-Zero normalisation, delta E and correlation coefficient.

Keywords: symmetric encryption; S-boxes; low intensity transformation; zero normalisation; avalanche effect.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICS.2024.142698

International Journal of Information and Computer Security, 2024 Vol.25 No.1/2, pp.167 - 188

Received: 14 Dec 2023
Accepted: 10 Apr 2024
Published online: 18 Nov 2024 *

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