CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION SECRET METHOD

Abstract

The article deals with the issues of hiding text information in a graphic file. Most often, one or two least significant bits of the image pixels are modified. To do this, each byte of the secret message is divided into 8 or 4 parts. The use of the least significant bits of the graphic file for transmitting a secret message significantly limits the size of the original message, in addition, it allows steganographic analysis programs to detect and decrypt the transmitted data. A formula for hiding textual information in image pixels is proposed. The algorithm for hiding information is that the bytes of the secret message are mixed with the bytes of pixels of the key image using a secret formula. The result is new bytes of image pixels. A steganography scheme has been developed for embedding secret text in random image pixels. Random bytes are pre-embedded in each pixel row of the original image. As a result of the operations, a key image is obtained. Text codes are embedded in random pixel bytes of a given RGB channel. To generate a secret message, the characters of the table of ASCII codes are used. The detection and decryption program compares the pixels of the received image with the pixels of the key image in the specified RGB channel and extracts the codes of the encrypted text. The use of abstract images as a key image significantly increases the reliability of the protection of confidential information, since in such images there is a random change in pixel values. Demonstration programs for encryption and decryption in the Python 3.5.2 programming language have been developed. A graphic file is used as the decryption key. The developed steganography scheme allows not only transmitting sensitive information, but also adding digital fingerprints or hidden tags to the image

Keywords

• steganography
• information hiding
• image key
• image pixels
• embedding formula