Securing confidential messages using the IRSA-PI-PVD model in the spatial domain of image steganography
Karthikeyan N, Shanthi S · Journal of the Chinese Institute of Engineers · 2025
The rapid advancement of technology has significantly increased network usage, making data privacy a critical concern in secure communications. To protect sensitive information, researchers have developed various techniques, including cryptography, steganography, and watermarking. Within this context, the author presents an all-encompassing three-layer security model that integrates cryptography and steganography techniques to reinforce the protection of confidential information in the spatial domain of image steganography. The author introduces the IRSA-PI-PVD model [Improved RSA (IRSA) -Pixel Indicator (PI) -Pixel Value Differencing (PVD)] as a mechanism for ensuring data security. The initial phase entails the encryption of confidential data using the IRSA algorithm, followed by the reversal of the binary representation of each encrypted character in the concealed message. Subsequently, the reversed encrypted binary bits are seamlessly incorporated into the cover image using the PVD technique, with the pixel indicator functioning as a reference channel for the embedding process. The proposed model aims to improve embedding capacity while preserving high image quality and resilience against various attacks. Experiments show it achieves an average PSNR of 37.58 dB for 512×512 images, with a payload capacity of 31.1 KB and an embedding rate of 3.98 bpp, outperforming several existing methods.