A strong algorithm for randomly hiding a secret files inside true color image using large primary secret key
Aamer Tahseen Suhail, Harith Ghanim Ayoub, Ammar Abdulmajeed Gharbe · Egyptian Informatics Journal · 2025
Hiding in image files is one of the widespread techniques to achieve information security, as it has proven its efficiency. Because of the hiding technology has become the best way to maintain the confidentiality of private information, the attackers have doubts about any translated media, such as various image files, because the possibility of containing important confidential data, then trying to use different methods and algorithms to extract its containing. Therefore, the traditional methods of regular and sequential hiding have become at a steady pace within the media, weak and easy to detect by the attackers, so the trend was to find a new algorithm that adopts the method of random hiding scattered within those media. During the research, a method was developed to hide secret files inside true color images, by distributing the content of it within the image elements in a way that makes the distance between the locations of the image elements in irregular and not fixed space, based on an algorithm random distribution depend on a large prim secret key that agreed upon paging coefficient among the authorized persons, which makes it difficult to extract the hiding locations of those parts within them using image analysis methods, or through statistical analyzes that used in this field. This method succeeded in hiding the secret files without causing a state of distortion to the original image, or the possibility of noticing the changes that occurred in it as a result of the hiding process, and these files were easily retrieved without losing any of their components, in addition to the fact that this extracting process takes place without require the original cover image or need to create a table of shows hiding locations.