Encryption Based Data Hiding Architecture with Text Pattern Authentication and Verification

Security of hidden data is a tradeoff between capacity, robustness and embedding against induced distortion. In this paper, authors have used the fourth parameter, authentication and verification. Authors have used 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for encryption and Least Significant Bit (LSB) algorithm to hide textual data behind Bitmap images. Selected images by user can be transformed into text pattern and then used for authentication and verification or as hidden message. The password protection mechanism is supported at both the stages of encryption and data hiding respectively to provide better security. Security is further enhanced by the presence of file destruction mechanism after 3 wrong password trials. The present paper claims the superiority of the designed model over existing one in terms of combined security provided by its robust authentication / verification system, encryption and data hiding. This paper demonstrates the security robustness through a comparison with existing software's.