A Secure Exchange Technique for Secret Information and Encryption Key Using Hybrid System
Jamal N. Bani Salameh, Mokhled AlTarawneh · International Journal on Communications Antenna and Propagation (IRECAP) · 2019
Due to the growth of transferring and sharing information between entities, an efficient security model is needed to protect secret information while storing or transferring over unsecured network systems. Symmetric cryptography algorithms could be used to secure information; they are immune from many kinds of attack but their main weakness is the exchanging for the secret key. In this paper, a hybrid system that combines steganography, cryptography, and data hiding techniques has been used to secure the secret information while transmitting over the Internet and to maintain a safe exchange for the encryption key between the transmitter and the receiver. In order to hide the secret information into the cover image, a simple technique that represents the steganography algorithm has been used. It does bit-by-bit Xoring between the secret information and the cover image in order to get the steganography image. For cryptography the algorithm MJEA (for Modified Jamal Encryption Algorithm) has been used; it is a symmetric block encryption algorithm with 64-bit block size and 120-bit key size. This algorithm is used to encrypt the steganography image. The performance of the proposed technique has been evaluated by adopting different simulation metrics such as visual testing and histogram analysis. All results ensure the strength of the proposed system in securing the secret information as well as providing a safe distribution for the encryption key between the communicating parties.