An Efficient Method of Steganography using Matrix Approach

A large number of the world business is going on using “INTERNET” and the data over the internet which is vulnerable for attacks from the hackers. Thus, uses of highly efficient methods are required for sensitive data transmission over the internet to ensure data security. One of the solutions to data security is to use an efficient method of steganography. The goal of steganography is to hide messages inside other ‘harmless’ messages in a way that does not allow any enemy to even detect that there is a second message present. Steganography can be used with a large number of file formats most commonly used in the digital world of today. The different file formats popularly used are .bmp, .gif, .txt etc. Thus the techniques of steganography are going to play a very important part in the future of data security and privacy on open systems such as the Internet. This paper presents an efficient method for hiding data into an image and send to the destination in a safe manner. This technique does not need any key for embedding and extracting data. Also, it allows hiding four bits in a block of size 5×5 with minimal distortion. The proposed algorithm ensures security and safety of the hidden information. The experimental results presented in this paper show the efficacy of the proposed method.