Enhanced Position Power First Mapping (PPFM) based image steganography

Abstract

The booming technological trends of the global world bring along with it several disincentives, surmounting which has become a challenging task. The realm of modern communication, in order to shun the attention of any third-party demands certain measure that affirms immense security along with the confidentiality of information. Steganography ratifies the stated fact. With reference to this context, we propose a new image steganographic approach that competently masks the secret information bits without enticing the hackers and crackers. A two-level security mechanism in the form of two-way scrambling has been incorporated in this approach. Arnold transform is implemented on the cover in the very first step, which is succeeded by a new scrambling mechanism based on a unique technique of permutation. The aforesaid steps dexterously encrypt the cover image, thereby ensuing a two-level security in the steganographic method. The embedding mechanism of Position Power First Mapping (PPFM) is next effectuated. Incorporation of the inverse permutation-based scrambling method followed by the technique of inverse Arnold transform consummates the whole procedure and spawns an imperceptible stego. The resultant hefty embedding capacity is the prime advantage here, along with the clear resemblance of the cover and stego formed.

Keywords:

• Steganography
• Arnold transform
• Position Power First Mapping (PPFM)
• peak signal-to-noise ratio
• cross-correlation coefficient