Silent Sentinels: Unveiling Hidden Messages in an Image using Steganography and Cryptography

Image Steganography is the process of hiding information in images, the information can be text, image or a video. The person cannot differentiate between a steganographic image and an original image Traditionally, the Least Significant Bit (LSB) method has been the most popular choice for steganography due to its simplicity and effective in hiding the text data in an image. This LSB is a beginner friendly technique and could be understood by a naive user even. Making changes to the least significant bit of every pixel doesn’t change the content of an image. Making a strong steganographic image that maintains the data integrity and security and resilience to a cyber-attack is a concern these days. Here first the message that needs to be embedded in an image is first encrypted with a cryptographic algorithm with a secret key. This secret key is only shared between the sender and receiver.Later the message is embedded in the image using the Least Significant Bit (LSB). It is responsibility of the user to distinguish between the a bundle of steganographic image and the original image, further upon discovering the steganographic image he/she should detect the encrypted message from the steganographic image. Upon discovery of the encrypted message he/she should decrypt the secret message using the same encrypting algorithm and the secret key used for encrypting the message. This message, that is, the secret message is now made available to the user to see it.