One time pad for enhanced steganographic security using least significant bit with spiral pattern

Abstract

Data is an important commodity in today’s digital era. Therefore, data needs to get adequate security to prevent misuse. A common data security practice in the transmission of information is cryptography. Another approach is steganography, which hides secret messages in other media that are not confidential and can be accessed by the public. In this study, the spiral pattern is used for data placement using the least significant bit (LSB) method. Modifications were made to the 2-bits LSB to increase the data capacity that can be hidden. In order to increase security, the data is first converted into a datastream using random numbers as one time pad (OTP). exclusive-OR (XOR) operation is performed on datastream and OTP to get encrypted data to be hidden. The results showed that the image quality of the steganography results at a capacity close to 100% was still fairly good, as indicated by a peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) value greater than 46 dB. Visually, the steganographic image does not look different from the original one. Likewise, the use of random numbers as OTP succeeded in changing the hidden data significantly, as indicated by the avalanche effect value above 50%.