A New Image Steganography Technique Based on Pixel Intensity and Similarity in Secret Message

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new enhanced image steganography scheme for color images. The proposed scheme is based on the pixel intensity of the cover image and the similarity in secret message. It can hide the secret text data into the color or gray scale images. In this scheme, we try to exploit the characteristic of the secret data which is the closeness in its basic elements. We firstly preprocess the secret data that is to be hidden; then the resultant secret data is embedded into the LSBs of the cover image according to intensity values of the pixels in cover image. In preprocessing, we actually divide the secret data into clusters in a sequential manner and then the basic information about each cluster such as its size, its minimum value and the cluster itself are embedded. The preprocessing reduces the size of the secret data significantly which helps in improving the quality of the stego-image. The security of this method also increases because of the preprocessing as the actual data is not embedded.