Title: Exploring advanced steganography techniques for secure digital image communication: a comparative analysis and performance evaluation

Authors: Rohit Deval; Nachiket Gupte; Johann Kyle Pinto; Adwaita Raj Modak; Akshat Verma; Anirudh Sharma; S.P. Raja

Addresses: School of Computer Science and Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamilnadu, India ' School of Computer Science and Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamilnadu, India ' School of Computer Science and Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamilnadu, India ' School of Computer Science and Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamilnadu, India ' School of Computer Science and Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamilnadu, India ' School of Computer Science and Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamilnadu, India ' School of Computer Science and Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamilnadu, India

Abstract: This is a digital age. In a world where everything seems to be public, privacy and confidentiality have never been more important. So, the combination of this aspect of our life and this need of our age is the ability to securely hide data in the digital world in a way where it is not so easy to detect. Thus, the culmination of this thought process helped the authors arrive at the topic of our paper, which is steganography in digital images. Image steganography is defined as the process of 'concealing a message or piece of data inside an image file'. Image steganography is crucial in the digital era, when the transmission and storage of digital information are widespread, for protecting the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive data. To this end, it has been reviewed in the latest technology and has attempted to put forth the best techniques/algorithms by which data of many kinds can be hidden in digital images. After extensive research, it narrowed down to six techniques, which are presented in this paper.

Keywords: steganography; digital images; data hiding; encryption; secret message; least significant bit; LSB; steganography; image processing; image compression; image steganalysis; image quality metrics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESDF.2025.143471

International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 2025 Vol.17 No.1/2, pp.233 - 266

Received: 17 Apr 2023
Accepted: 13 Jul 2023
Published online: 23 Dec 2024 *

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