Evaluation of Multi Level System of Steganography

This paper proposes and evaluates a multi-level system of steganography (MLSS) which is a combination of steganography, cryptography and compression. Data encryption standard is the encryption algorithm used while the compression algorithm is Lempel-Ziv. Our approach scans through each of the cover image pixels, encodes the message bits with the green object of the pixel component and replaces the blue object with it. In evaluating the performance of the proposed work, several tests were carried out and recordings taken. The compression algorithm yields 91% average compression rate on the dataset. The efficiency of the MLSS was determined by testing it against xsteg stegodetect steganalysis software and comparing its peak signal to noise ratio (PNSR) with that of two existing steganography applications P2P and Quickstego. The average computed PNSR for MLSS, Quickstego and P2P are 67.78, 61.18 and 54.01 respectively. The proposed scheme yielded a stego image with large hidden capacity, improved hidden message security, and high PNSR value. KeywordsSteganography, compression, encryption, peak signal to noise ratio