Improved Steganographic Method for Hiding Secure Data Based on Efficient Keystream Generator

Dr. Ismail K. Ali, Salah T. Allawi, May M. Abbas

Abstract: Secure transmissions of information become a critical issue in the digital world with the growing importance of the internet. Cryptography and steganography helps in providing this much-needed data confidentiality. This research presented an improved steganographic method for hiding secure data. The proposed system is incorporating of text encryption, steganography and data compression based on an efficient keystream generator. In the first step, the secret data has been encrypted using stream cipher. This cipher text is embedded into BMP image format cover using pseudorandom keystream generator as a private key. Then the image file transmitted is compressed by using discrete cosine transform to obtain the JPEG image format. The experimental results show that the proposed method is provide improved robustness, security due to multi-level security and the use of the efficient keystream generator increases the complexity of the encryption process.

Keywords: Cryptography, Image Steganography, Data Compression, Keystream Generator