Image steganography for securing secret data using hybrid hiding model Sumeet Kaur 1 & Savina Bansal 2 & Rakesh Kumar Bansal 2 Received: 22 May 2020 /Revised: 14 August 2020 /Accepted: 17 September 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract Image steganography is the process of concealing the confidential message in digital images. The purpose of this research is to secure the transmission of an image from attackers. This research introduced an innovative Image Hiding Encryption and Decryp- tion (IHED) for encrypting and decrypting images. Moreover, the encoding process is performed on the Mid-frequency (MF) values are identified by a novel Mid Search African Buffalo Model (MSABM). The efficiency of the proposed model is validated by applying some attacks such as a novel White Floor Square Attack (WFSA), RS steganalysis, Chi- square attack, and visual attack. Furthermore, the proposed methodology showed that the embedded image has high Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), embedding rate, Structural Similarity Index Metric (SSIM) and reduced Mean Square Error (MSE). Finally, the proposed strategy is compared with existing approaches and achieved better results by increasing the security of embedded secrets in the steganography system. Keywords Image steganography . Encryption . Decryption . Whitefloor Square Attack . Mid-frequency . RS Steganalysis 1 Introduction Steganography is the technique for hiding a document, text, image, or video in another document, text, image, or video [11]. Generally, steganography is hiding a confidential Multimedia Tools and Applications https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-09939-7 * Sumeet Kaur purbasumeet@yahoo.co.in 1 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, I.K. Gujral Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar-Kapurthala Highway, VPO-Ibban, Kapurthala, Punjab 144603, India 2 Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Maharaja Ranjit Singh Punjab Technical University, Dabwali Road, Lal Singh Nagar, Bathinda, Punjab 151001, India