A Comparative Analysis of LSB & DCT Based Steganographic Techniques: Confidentiality, Contemporary State, and Future Challenges

In order to maintain anonymity and security, the steganography is the technique of cloaking confidential data within what seems like harmless digital material. Several steganographic methods have been established devised over time, but those centered around the discrete cosine transformation (DCT) and the least significant bit (LSB) have drawn the most consideration. In this study, two common steganographic methods are compared and contrasted with an emphasis on the secrecy they can keep, the usage they are now receiving, and any potential difficulties in the future. As an alternative, the DCT-based method uses the frequency domain properties of cover media to obfuscate hidden information. Since it spreads the concealed information across several frequency coefficients, it provides greater security than LSB-based techniques. The resilience and imperceptibility of the concealed data are improved by a variety of DCT-based algorithms, such as the modified quantization and matrix encoding approaches, which we explore in detail. We also give a general summary of both approaches' current state in terms of their application, constraints, and areas in which they may be used. We evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of each approach, considering elements like payload size, computing difficulty, and detection resistance.