An efficient image cryptography using hash-LSB steganography with RC4 and pixel shuffling encryption algorithms

For secure data transmission over internet, it is important to transfer data in high security and high confidentiality, information security is the most important issue of data communication in networks and internet. To secure transferred information from intruders, it is important to convert the information into cryptic format. Different methods used to ensure data security and confidentiality during transmission like steganography and cryptography. This paper improve information security through developing efficient image cryptography algorithm by using encryption with steganography. The proposed algorithm ensure the encryption and decryption using RC4 stream cipher and RGB pixel shuffling with steganography by using hash-least significant Bit (HLSB) that make use of hash function to developed significant way to insert data bits in LSB bits of RGB pixels of cover image. The security evaluations are presented by calculating a peak signal to noise ratio and mean square error. For secret image, PSNR is infinity and MSE is 0. For cover image, PSNR is about 63 db and MSE is about 0.03. The results show that high level of the similarity exists between the stego-images and cover images and the same is for secret images and extracted image as represented also in In Histogram Analysis of secret images. These algorithms is performed by using MATLAB program.