Secure Message Embedding With AES-GCM, LSB Steganography, and Quantum Key Distribution
A Jenefa, U Pinacas, Nagarajan B, K Vidhya, Catherine Joy R, Antony Taurshia · 2025
Secure communication in digital platforms is increasingly critical due to rising threats such as interception and data breaches. Existing cryptographic systems often fail to ensure both confidentiality and imperceptibility. Traditional encryption methods struggle with secure key distribution, while basic steganography techniques like LSB are prone to detection. These limitations expose sensitive messages to potential vulnerabilities. Conventional approaches combine AES encryption with LSB steganography but lack quantum-safe key exchange, leaving encryption keys at risk. They also fail to ensure high integrity and resistance to tampering. This paper proposes a quantum resilient framework that integrates BB84 Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), AES-GCM encryption, and LSB steganography to securely embed and extract encrypted messages within images. A custom web-based application using Streamlit is developed and tested on a dataset comprising 100 images (JPEG, PNG formats) and text messages ranging from 100 to 1000 characters. Experimental evaluation reveals significant improvements over conventional methods, with an accuracy of 90%, precision of 85%, recall of 95%, and an embedding capacity of 1.2 bpp. This system ensures confidentiality, authentication, and imperceptibility, making it suitable for high-security applications in personal, corporate, and governmental domains.