Efficient and secure data hiding in encrypted images: A new approach using chaos

ABSTRACT

The recent trends in technology have made it possible to reproduce and share digital media more easily and more rapidly. This leads to the problem of exploiting the media illegitimately. To alleviate this problem, many cryptographic techniques are used to secure the data by encrypting them. However, the cloaked form of encrypted data attracts the intruder and shows the way to malicious attacks. Due to this, in recent times steganography has drawn more attention to secure the data. This article presents a new technique that embeds data in intermediate significant bit (ISB) and least significant bit (LSB) planes of the cover image. The method employs chaotic maps to generate random locations to hide the data bits as well as permutation order to encrypt the cover image. The cover image is first encrypted by applying permutation order, then embedding is carried out on the random locations generated. After embedding, the decrypted cover image is transmitted. This method provides two-level security in extracting the hidden data. Experimental outcomes (PSNR, MSE, NAE, and NCC) confirm that the method is proficient. The randomness of the values generated by chaotic maps is assessed by the NIST standard test suite.