International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD)

Volume 3 Issue 5, August 2019 Available Online: www.ijtsrd.com e-ISSN: 2456 – 6470

Secure Data Hiding System by using

AES Algorithm and Indicator-Based LSB Method
Myo Ma Ma, Zar Zar Hnin, Yin Min Htwe
Lecturer, Faculty of Computer Science, University of Computer Studies, Mandalay, Myanmar

How to cite this paper: Myo Ma Ma | Zar ABSTRACT

Zar Hnin | Yin Min Htwe "Secure Data Security of data is one of the most challenging problems in today's
Hiding System by using AES Algorithm technological world. In order to secure the transmission of secret data over the
and Indicator-Based LSB Method" public network (Internet), numerous data security and hiding algorithms have
Published in been developed in the last decade. Steganography combined with
International cryptography can be one of the best choices for solving this problem. In this
Journal of Trend in paper, the proposed framework is the dual layer of security, in which the first
Scientific Research layer is to encrypt the secret text message using advanced encryption standard
and Development (AES) algorithm and in the second layer to embed this message using the
(ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456- indicator-based least significant bit (LSB) method which is used to hide the
6470, Volume-3 | IJTSRD26500 encrypted text message into the cover image. It differs from the LSB algorithm
Issue-5, August in that it does not embed the bytes of the cover data sequentially but it embeds
2019, pp.970-974, into one bit or two bits at once. Actually, it depends on indicators to determine
https://doi.org/10.31142/ijtsrd26500 where and how many bits to embed at a time. The Mean Square Error (MSE)
and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) measure the imperceptibility of the
Copyright © 2019 by author(s) and system. Experimental results show that the stego image is usually
International Journal of Trend in Scientific indistinguishable from the cover image.
Research and Development Journal. This
is an Open Access article distributed KEYWORDS: advanced encryption standard (AES) algorithm, indicator-based
under the terms of least significant bit (LSB) method, encryption, embedding, MSE, PSNR
the Creative 1. INTRODUCTION
Commons Attribution Security is one of the major concerns which provide for the safe and secure
License (CC BY 4.0) transmission and receiving of data without any interference.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by
/4.0)
Internet is commonly used for the sharing of information. Therefore, the meaning of steganography is hidden writing.
Since the Internet is an open channel of communication, Secret information is embedding in a manner such that the
there is a need to protect the confidential data from existence of the information is hidden. The purpose of
intruders that are transmitted over the Internet. To protect steganography is to avoid drawing suspicion to the existing
the secret data, cryptography and steganography techniques communication.
are widely used. A combination of these two techniques can
be used to increase data security [1]. This paper is providing the security to the communication
channel thereby preventing attackers from hacking secure
Cryptography and steganography are the major areas which text message. The AES and indicator-based LSB method will
work on information hiding and security. Cryptography be provided the two layers of security which make difficult
means converting the text from readable format to to detect the presence of a hidden secret text message.
unreadable format. It applies encryption techniques to
convert the message into non-readable form but it does not The rest of this paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, a
hide the message i.e., the encrypted message is visible [2]. brief review of the related work is presented. In Section 3,
Cryptography was created as a technique for securing the AES algorithm, indicator-based LSB method, experiment and
secrecy of communication and many different methods have result and performance are described. Finally, Section 4
been developed to encrypt and decrypt data in order to keep concludes the paper.
the message secret. Unfortunately, it is sometimes not
enough to keep the contents of a secret message, it may also 2. RELATED WORK
be necessary to keep the existence of the message secret [3]. Internet is essential and fastest media for communication in
The technique used to implement this is called the modern era. In data communication, it is susceptible to
steganography. face many problems such as copyright protection, hacking,
eavesdropping etc. Security in communication is highly
Steganography hides secret data in a cover object. This cover appreciable. Cryptography and steganography are different
object may be a digital media such as image, an audio file, techniques for data security.
video file or network/protocol. Steganography provides
good security in itself and it also possible to combine with This paper [9] is focused on spatial domain technique i.e. LSB
encryption to increase the security of the system. The word technique of image steganography. The method used in the
steganography is a Greek word; Stefanos mean covered or paper hides the data in a combination of LSBs instead of
secret and graphy mean writing or drawing [4],[5],[6],[7]. hiding the data only in the least significant one bit.

@ IJTSRD | Unique Paper ID – IJTSRD26500 | Volume – 3 | Issue – 5 | July - August 2019 Page 970
 International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) @ www.ijtsrd.com eISSN: 2456-6470
Combination of bits used is LSB (1, 2) bits and (2, 3) bits. Steganography is a message hiding technique so that a user
Results are compared qualitatively using parameters PSNR, can send or communicate to the other user about their secret
MSE, BER, Entropy, Standard deviation. message securely. LSB is one of the most popular techniques
in image steganography which are used for hiding the secret
Paruchuri [10] proposed a system in which steganography is message. So LSB technique for hiding the encrypted file is
combined with cryptography to enhance security. First the easy to detect the secret message as it is directly replaced
message to be sent is embedded into a cover image using into the least significant bit of the pixels of the cover image.
steganography and the stego image is encrypted to produce Therefore there may be one possibility to remove this
the cipher image. The cipher image is then sending to the problem and will make the secret message more secure and
recipient. This approach is secure, but the existence of the enhance the quality of the image is proposed.
message is not hidden since the encryption is done after
steganography and the cipher image is sent to the recipient. 3. METHODOLOGY
The cipher image does not resemble the cover image and will AES algorithm is firstly to transform secret messages into
be distorted. unintelligible forms, thus whoever does not have the secret
key cannot obtain the original message. Secondly, the
In [11], Ajit Singh and Swati Malik proposed a combination indicator-based LSB method is randomly dispersing the bits
of steganography and cryptography has been used for of the encrypted message in the cover image and thus
improving the security. The blowfish encryption algorithm is making it harder for unauthorized people to extract the
encrypting the message to be hidden inside the image for original message. This indicator-based method is the
making it non readable and secure. After encryption, this randomness used to confuse intruders as it does not use
paper will be applied LSB technique of steganography for fixed sequential bytes and it does not always embed one bit
further enhancing the security. For cryptography, Blowfish at a time. The block diagram of the AES algorithm and
algorithm is used which is much better than AES and DES but indicator-based LSB method are described as Fig.1.
LSB technique for hiding the encrypted file is easy to detect
the secret message as it is directly replaced into the least
significant bit of the pixels of the image.

In the proposed framework system [12], the data is dual

encrypted and the resultant cipher is then embedded within
an image using LSB steganographic technique to ensure
secrecy and privacy. The encryption algorithms used are
much secure as each step in the process is fully dependent
on the key. The LSB steganographic technique hides the data
in the least significant bits of the pixels of the image and
therefore the reflected change in the stego image is hardly
noticeable to the human eye. The key management for the
system is done using the RSA encryption technique. These Figure1. Block diagram of the AES algorithm and
two algorithms are computational complexity for the indicator-based LSB method
encryption process and for hiding process; the hidden data
can be easily destroyed by the third party. 3.1. Advanced Encryption Standard
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), also known as
This research [13] discussed the data hiding information Rijindael is used for securing information. AES is a
using steganography and cryptography. The steganographic symmetric block cipher that has been analyzed extensively
method is used to find the similarity bit of the message with and is used widely nowadays. The plain text (secret text)
a bit of the MSB (Most Significant Bit) image cover. The must be 128 bits because the block size is 128 bits in AES. In
finding of similarity process is done by divide and conquer the proposed system, the key size 128 bits choose as
method. The results are bit index position and then standard key size. Also, 192 bits and 256 bits are strong
encrypted using cryptographic. In this paper we using DES keys, but the key is so long and difficult to remember. The
(Data Encryption Standard) algorithm. The experiment with block diagram of AES 128-bit algorithm is shown in Fig.2.
adding noise to the image has been caused some changes in The plain text (secret text) of size 128bits is given as input
the message content. In the black and white image, the using a symmetric key enables to perform four-step
changes are not significant, while in the colorful image the operations to get the ciphertext (unreadable form). The four-
message content has been changed a lot. Damage occurred step operations involve the substitution of bytes, shifting
on the addition of salt and pepper noise start from MSE rows, mixing of columns, and add round key. This encryption
0.00049. and decryption processes of AES consist of four-step
operations undergo 10 rounds. These four steps are namely
This paper [14] presented to provide the transfer of secret as follow:
data embedded into a master file (cover-image) to obtain 1. SubBytes: AES contains 128-bit data block, which
new image (stego-image), which is practically means each of the data blocks has 16 bytes. In sub-byte or
indistinguishable from the original image, so that other than substitute byte transformation, each byte (8-bit) of a data
the indeed user, can not detect the presence of the secrete block is transformed into another block using an 8-bit
data sent. Least Significant Bit (LSB) and Pseudo-Random substitution box which is known as Rijndael S-box.
Number Generator (PRGN) are used to hide the secret data.
2. Shift Rows: It is a simple byte transposition. The bytes
The proposed approach is better in PSNR value and capacity
in the last three rows of the state, depending upon the row
as shown experimentally than existing techniques.
location, are cyclically shifted. The first row is not shifted,

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 International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) @ www.ijtsrd.com eISSN: 2456-6470
the second row is circularly left-shifted by one-byte position, The indicator-based LSB method consists of previous bytes,
the third row is circularly left-shifted by two-byte position, indicator byte and next bytes. This indicator byte is included
and the last row circularly left-shifted by three-bit positions. two-bit positions of RGB bytes array of cover image pixels.
3. MixColumns: A round is equivalent to a matrix The first-bit position of indicator byte determines the
multiplication of each column of the states. A fix matrix is previous or next bytes for hiding the secret bits. The second-
multiplied to each column vector. In this operation, the bytes bit position of indicator byte determines for hiding one or
are taken as polynomials rather than numbers. two bits of secret data bits. Embedded secret bits depend on
the bit positions of indicator byte of cover image as shown in
4. AddRoundKey: Round key is combined with each byte
Table 1.
of the state using bitwise XOR operation. The 4X4 matrix is
used to represent the original key consisting of 128 bits. This Table1. Embedded Secret Bits Depend on Indicator
4-word key is converted to a 43 words key. Bytes
Indicator Byte
1st Bit 2nd Bit Embedded Secret Bits
Position Position
1 bit of secret bits are hidden
0 0 into the previous byte of RGB
bytes array of the cover image
2 bits of secret bits are hidden
0 1 into the previous byte of RGB
bytes array of the cover image
1 bit of secret bits are hidden
1 0 into the next byte of RGB bytes
array of the cover image
2 bits of secret bits are hidden
1 1 into the next byte of RGB bytes
array of the cover image
Figure 4 shows the flow chart of the hiding process. All of
these factors increase the randomness and confusion of the
hiding process, which makes it hard to retrieve the secret
data by unauthorized parties. The hiding process is not done
sequentially like simple LSB. The secret bits are hidden into
Figure2. Block diagram of AES 128-bit algorithm cover bytes randomly depending on the values of the two
bits position of indicator byte of the cover image.
Decryption algorithm uses the expanded key in reverse
order. All functions are easily reversible and their inverse
form is used in decryption. Decryption algorithm is not
identical to the encryption algorithm. In the beginning, there
is a pre-round operation using the ciphertext as the state
matrix and the last round key as the key matrix (i.e. W40 to
W43). The final round consists of only three stages. Mix-
column operation is omitted here.

3.2. Indicator-Based LSB Method

The indicator byte is a fixed bit in every byte of the cover
bytes other than the least two bits because the last two bits
are used to hide the secret data. Firstly, byte array [0] is
assigned the previous byte, byte array [1] is set indicator
byte and after indicator byte is next byte as byte array [2].
The first-bit position of indicator byte is assumed index 4
from the right of RGB byte array which determines the
previous or next bytes for hiding the secret bits. Let the
second-bit position of indicator byte be index 3 from the
right of RGB byte array. The indicator-based LSB method
consists of first-bit position and second-bit position as
shown in Figure.3

Figure4. Flow chart of hiding process of indicator-

Figure3. Indicator-based LSB method based LSB method

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 International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) @ www.ijtsrd.com eISSN: 2456-6470
3.3. Peak Signal to Noise Ratio 3.6. Performance
The evaluation of the quality of the stego image is evaluated The most popular measurements of steganography
by using the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), the most performance are MSE and PSNR. As a consequence there are
popular measurements of steganography performance. PSNR 256 possibilities of varying intensities of each primary color,
is expressed in terms of a logarithmic decibel scale. The altering the most significant bit of pixel results in only a
PSNR value is defined as follows: small change in the intensity of the color. These small
 ΜΑΧ 2  changes cannot be perceived by the human eye and thus the
PSNR=10log10 
(1) message is successfully hidden. Our method is applied on
 ΜSΕ  only image size for 125x125 of the 24-bit color image; Lena.
Capacity can save as maximum between 5.72 bytes and
Where MAX is the maximum possible pixel value of the 11.44 kbytes. The MSE should be as less as possible. If the
images. For example, if the pixels are represented using 8 original image and the stego image are the same then MSE is
bits per sample, then the MAX value is 255. zero. Higher PSNR value means lesser distortion. The results
of MSE and PSNR are given in below Table 2.
3.4. Mean Square Error
MSE is the mean square error between the cover and stego Table2. MSE and PSNR Values
images which is described as the following equation 2: Image Size Hidden Message PSNR
2 MSE
1 m n
∑ ∑ (f (i, j) − g(i, j))
(pixels) Size (KB) (dB)
MSE = (2)
mn i=1 j=1 125x125 0.05 0.008 69.1
125x125 0.19 0.03 63.36
Where f represents the matrix data of the original image, g 125x125 1 0.172 55.776
represents the matrix data of stego image, m represents the
125x125 2 0.346 52.74
numbers of rows of pixels of the images and i represents the
index of that row, n represents the number of columns of 125x125 3 0.517 50.996
pixels of the image and j represents the index of that column. 125x125 4 0.692 49.73
125x125 5 0.873 48.721
3.5. Experiment and Result
This approach was implemented and tested on photos 125x125 5.38 0.939 48.404
without any noticeable. This is because the approach uses 125x125 5.59 0.975 48.241
the LSB technique for hiding data, and this technique does 125x125 5.72 1.007 48.101
not make any noticeable modification in the carrier medium. 125x125 8.58 1.497 46.379
A carrier image before and after the hiding process is shown
in Figure 5 and 6.
A PSNR value is more than 40 decibels (dB) is very good. If it
is between 30 dB and 40 dB, can be acceptable, but a PSNR
less than 30 dB is not acceptable because the distortion is
very high. The experimental results show that the proposed
scheme can embed 8.58 kbytes of information while keeping
an acceptable visual quality in Figure 7.

Figure5. The cover image

Figure7. MSE and PSNR values versus secret message

size

Figure 8 shows PSNR values versus message size for

125x125 pixels of the cover image.

Figure6. The Stego image

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 International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) @ www.ijtsrd.com eISSN: 2456-6470
[4] Amitava Nag, Saswati Ghosh, “An Image Steganography
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5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Software Engineering, Volume 3, Issue 5, May 2013.
My thanks go to all of my teachers and I would like to
express my deep appreciation to my dearest parents who [12] A Aswathy Nair, Deepu Job, “A Secure Dual Encryption
have always given great help, encouragement, sacrifice and Scheme Combined With Steganography”, International
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– Volume 13 Number 5 – Jul 2014.
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