Full Capacity Image Steganography Using Seven-Segment Display Pattern as Secret Key

Abstract

Due to the vast interchange of images over the internet, exchanging secret message hidden in these images would be encouraged and the technique is referred to as image steganography. Hiding the secret data into the least significant bits of the images pixels is a common practice. However, the choice of the hidden key and the efficiency of utilizing all pixels of the carrier image is of great importance. This paper presents a new technique for key generation and embedding/extraction processes for image steganography. The randomness of secret key required for the embedding process is achieved by using the seven segment display patterns with different dimensions. Full embedding efficiency is also achieved through. Experimental measurements and comparison with traditional steganography using LSB have confirmed the feasibility of the proposed scheme. As it produces highly imperceptible stego-images, besides the key randomness for selecting the pixels, which leads to the addition of huge difficulties against attackers and provides genuine protection for the hidden information.