Shailender Gupta¹, Bharat Bhushan¹, Surbhi Singhania¹ and Jeetesh Gulani², ¹YMCA University of Science and Technology, India and ²Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur, India

For a very long time, various forms of steganographic and cryptographic techniques have been used to ensure security in data communication. Whereas steganography is the art of hiding the fact that any communication is taking place, cryptography on the other hand ensures data security by changing the very form of the data being communicated by using a symmetric or an asymmetric key. But, both the methods are susceptible to being weakened by a challenger. In steganography, there is always a possibility of detection of the presence of a message by the opponent and most of the cryptographic techniques are vulnerable to disclosure of the key. This paper proposes a hybrid approach where in image steganography and cryptography are combined to protect the sensitive data thereby ensuring improved security in data communication. To find the impact of the same, a simulator was designed in MATLAB and corresponding time complexities were recorded. The simulation results depict that this hybrid technique although increases the time complexity but ensures an enhanced security in data communication.

Cryptography, Image Steganography, information hiding, time complexity