A Secure Method to Hide Confidential Data Using Cryptography and Steganography

Abstract

The rate at which encrypted messages are being sent over the internet and other electronic means will easily capture the attention of hackers and possibly make them try to disrupt or even hack those messages so as view the original message. Steganography is designed to hide the presence of a message by hiding the secret message inside an innocent file. For effective security, steganography is sometimes combined with cryptography. In this paper, steganography and cryptography are combined to provide a robust system capable of encrypting a secret message using RSA algorithm. To hide the message, advanced LSB method is used. The original message is encrypted at the initial stage and then separated into two portions P1 and P2. An XOR operation is applied to the first portion (P1) using the odd location and to the second portion (P2) using the even position of the LSB+1.The Position of the LSB is then used to hide the XORed encrypted message.