(IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2014 156 | Page www.ijacsa.thesai.org Spatial Domain Image Steganography based on Security and Randomization NamitaTiwari Department of CSE & IT MANIT Bhopal, India Dr. Madhu Sandilya Department of ECE MANIT Bhoapl, India Dr. Meenu Chawla Department of CSE & IT MANIT Bhopal, India Abstract—In the present digital scenario secure communication is the prime requirement. Commonly, cryptography used for the said purpose. Another method related to cryptography is used for the above objective is Steganography. Steganography is the art of hiding information in some medium. Here we are using image as a means for covering information. Spatial domain image Steganography has been used for the work because of its compatibility to images. Objective of the paper is to increase the capacity of hidden data in a way that security could be maintained. In the current work MSB of the randomly selected pixel have been used as indicator. Result analysis has been performed on the basis of different parameters like PSNR, MSE and capacity. Keywords-- Spatial domain; PSNR; MSE I. INTRODUCTION Steganography can be used to hide or cover the existence of communication of encrypted data. A major drawback to encryption is that the existence of data is not hidden. Data that has been encrypted, although unreadable, still exists as data. A solution to this problem is Steganography [1]. The purpose of both Steganography and Cryptography is to provide secret communication. Cryptography hides the contents of a secret message from an attacker, whereas Steganography even conceals the existence of the message. In cryptography, the system is broken when the attacker can read the secret message [2]. Breaking a steganographic system has two stages: first the attacker can detect that Steganography has been used second he is able to read the embedded message. In section II requirement and importance of steganography has been described. Section III explains about different techniques of image steganography. Section IV shows LSB technique. Section V describes about different LSB based methods. Section VI defines the objective of proposed work. Section VII explains different parameters for result analysis. Section VIII shows the comparative result analysis. Section IX describes conclusion and future work of the paper. II. REQURIMENTS FOR STEGANOGRAPHIC SYSTEM  Imperceptibility: The stego image and original image should be perceptually identical.  Undetectable embedded data.  Security  Maximizing Capacity of embedded data.  Robustness: The embedded data should survive against various attacks. Applications and Importance of a Steganographic system that it is used as Security reinforcement layer to cryptography [1]. It is used in digital watermarks, fingerprinting, defense, business, and education field. Image Steganography is about exploiting the limited powers of the human visual system (HVS)[2]. Within reason, any plain text, cipher text, other images, or anything that can be embedded in a bit stream can be hidden in an image. Image Steganography has come quite far in recent years with the development of fast, powerful graphical computers. III. TECHNIQUES FOR IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY A. Spatial Domain based Steganography It includes LSB (Least Significant Bit) Steganography. The spatial methods are most frequently employed because of fine concealment, great capability of hidden information and easy realization. LSB Steganography includes two schemes: Sequential Embedding and Scattered Embedding. [4] B. Transform Domain based Steganography The method of transform domain Steganography is to embed secret data in the transform coefficients. C. Document based Steganography This method embeds data in documents files by adding tabs or spaces to .txt or .doc files. D. File Structure based Steganography This method inserts secrets data in the redundant bits of cover files, such as the reserved bits in the file header or the marker segments in the file format. IV. SPATIAL DOMAIN EMBEDDING In the LSB technique, the LSB of the pixels is replaced by the message to be sent, this has the effect of distributing bits evenly, thus on average only half of the LSB's will be modified [4, 5].