A Secure Image Encryption and Embedding Approach using MRSA and RC6 with DCT Transformation
M Ganavi, S Prabhudeva, Sankhya N Nayak · International Journal of Computer Networks And Applications · 2022
The growing potentialities of recent communications necessitate information security on the computer network.The various fields such as banking, E-commerce, education, and health sectors depend on the online network to communicate.Information security is becoming more significant.Hackers can get the data if it is sent as it is in an unsafe network.Therefore, security challenges like confidentiality, integrity & undetectability are essential to safeguard sensitive data from unauthorized users.To secure communicated information from a third party, it is necessary to convert the information into a scrambled form.Researchers have used various cryptographic and steganographic algorithms.The public key and private key cryptographic algorithms are suitable to scramble the input secret data.Using private key algorithms, key exchange is a challenge.Always two-level of scrambling of data is safe.After scrambling, embed it in cover media by using suitable transform domain techniques to provide higher security.In the proposed method, two-level scrambling of input secret images is carried out by applying faster processing symmetric algorithms such as Rivest Cipher 6 (RC6) & One Time Pad (OTP) to enhance the security of images.As these algorithms use the key on their own, it becomes difficult for any intruder to extract and identify the keys.Also, there is a necessity to safely send keys to the recipient.These two keys are scrambled using a public key cryptographic algorithm such as Modified Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (MRSA) algorithm.This reduces the chances of stealing the keys.Another level of security for the scrambled image is provided by embedding it in cover media using DC coefficients resulting in the stego image.Send the stego image and scrambled keys to the receiver.Simulation outcomes and analysis show that the proposed method provides two-level security for color image mediation and key authentication.