Genetic Algorithm Based Image Steganography for Enhancement of Concealing Capacity and Security

This paper proposes a Genetic Algorithm based steganography for enhancement of embedding capacity and security. Steganography is a method to provide secret communication between sender and receiver by concealing message in cover image. LSB bit encoding method is that the simplest encoding method to cover secret message in color pictures and grayscale pictures. Steganalysis is a method of detecting secret message hidden in a cover image. RS steganalysis is one of the most reliable steganalysis which performs statistical analysis of the pixels to successfully detection of hidden message in an image. This paper presents a secured steganography method using genetic algorithm to protect against the RS attack in color images. The proposed steganography scheme embeds message in integer wavelet transform coefficients by using a mapping function. This mapping function based on GA in an 8x8 block on the input cover color image. After embedding the message optimal pixel adjustment process is applied. By applying the OPAP the error difference between the cover image and stego image is minimized. Frequency domain technique is used to increase the robustness of proposed method. Use of IWT prevents the floating point precision problems of the wavelet filter. GA is used to increase the hiding capacity of image and maintains the quality of image. Experimental results are shows that the proposed steganography method is more secured against RS attack as compared to existing methods. Result showed that Peak signal to noise ratio and image utilization, 49.65 db and 100% respectively.