Image based steganography using LSB insertion technique

Steganography is the art and science of hiding the existence of communication. The techniques used in steganography make it difficult to detect that there is a hidden message inside an image file. This way we not only hide the message itself, but also the fact that we are sending the message. In this paper a steganography system is designed for encoding and decoding a secret file embedded into an image file using random LSB insertion method in which the secret data are spread out among the image data in a seemingly random manner. This can be achieved using a secret key. The key used to generate pseudorandom numbers, which will identify where, and in what order the hidden message is laid out. The advantage of this method is that it incorporates some cryptography in that diffusion is applied to the secret message.