A Novel Method for Information Hiding in Images
Ali Al-nuaimi
*
College of Education for Pure Science (Ibn Al-Haitham), University of Baghdad, Al Adhamiya, Baghdad 10053, Iraq.
Shaymaa Al-juboori
Faculty of Science and Engineering, School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Information security is a fundamental principle during data transmission. The main threat to information security is hacking. They are focusing on finding new techniques to breach encryption methods. Therefore, developing new approaches for hiding information against hacker attacks is a potential solution. Different steganography methods are available for hiding information, such as in texts, disk space, network packets, audio and images. In contrast to cryptography, which is concerned with data encryption. Steganography is the art of hiding transmitted information by using seemingly harmless carriers to hide the presence of information. Steganography is cost-effective and unrelated to hardware components. This study aims to develop a novel method for hiding information in images at low cost. The proposed method is combing between mathematical transformations (i.e., DCT transformation) and image characteristics (i.e., image components, and location of the image’s pixel). The JPEG colour images were used to apply the proposed method as a cover image. The text message was spread on the cover image without affecting its size. The proposed method has shown significant results in information hiding with a PSNR of 60.65 dB that exceeds the typical threshold of PSNR, which is near 40 dB to 60 dB. It can be utilised in data communication, user authentication, finance, and banking operations.
Keywords: Information hiding, steganography, DCT transformation, PSNR, RGB images