Steganography based on Adaptive Embedding of Encrypted Payload in Wavelet domain

H S Manjunatha Reddy, K B Raja Abstract— Steganography is the method of hiding the secrete message in a cover object for covert communication. In this paper we propose Steganography based on Adaptive embedding of Encrypted Payload in Wavelet domain (SAEPW). The LWT2 (dB2) is applied on cover image and only XD band is considered for embedding. The XD band is further decomposed into three blocks say XD0, XD1 and XD2. The payload of different sizes and formats are considered and segmented into two blocks namely block1 and block2. The LWT2 (Harr) is applied on payload block2 to generate wavelet sub bands and considering only XA band. The payload block1 pixel values and block2 XA coefficients are scaled down using key1 and key2 to represent each value by only three bits in binary. Key1 and key2 values are embedded in XD0 of cover image. The scaled down values of payload block1 and block2 are embedded into XD1 and XD2 of cover image respectively to generate stego object. The ILWT2 (dB2) is applied on stego object to generate final stego image. At the destination the embedded payload is retrieved from the stego image by adopting reverse process of embedding. It is observed that the values of PSNR and capacity are better in the case of proposed algorithm compared to existing algorithm.