Pixel and Block Permutation on Combinations of Bit Planes with LSB Steganography

Protecting confidential information from getting into the hands of intruders has been a matter of concern since ancient times. With the increasing advances in technology and computing resources, researchers have been proposing techniques with varied objectives to serve the current requirements of data communication. Also, advances in security techniques also face the threat of advances in attacks by intruders. While encrypting the data before transfer was enough to provide security, intruders were capable of breaking the code and hence multiple layers of security became the need of the hour. This paper proposes dual permutation of image applied on a group of four of the bit planes. First, using Rubik's cube principle for pixel permutation and second using block permutation. Thus, the correlation between pixels and blocks is reduced significantly in the encrypted image which is evident from the correlation coefficient. Encryption followed by Steganography using LSB substitution provides the third layer of security at the bit level.