Stego Block Chaining: A Secure 4LSB Steganography Technique

Abstract

Least significant steganography is the most adopted technique for data hiding in digital images. This results in quality stego image, but the retrieval of hidden information is very easy. The intruder only need to read the least significant bits of the cover image, if the presence of secret information is suspected. To make the retrieval of information difficult a new mechanism is presented in this paper. The proposed stego block chaining technique composed of multiple stages to enhance the security of hidden information. The stego block chaining is implemented using 4LSB steganography. The security of the stego block chaining increase with the increasing number of stages but the hiding capacity deceases. The stego block chaining results in the peak signal to noise ratio of more than 40dB.