Segmenting and Hiding Data Randomly Based on Index Channel

Information hiding is a technique of hiding secret using redundant cover data such as images, audios, movies, documents, etc. In this paper, a new technique of hiding secret data using LSB insertion is proposed, by using the RGB channels of the cover image for hiding segmented data. One of the three channels became the index to the two other channels. Firstly, the secret data are segmented into Even segment and Odd segment. Then, four bits of each segment is hidden separately inside the two channels depending on the numbers of "1"s inside the index channel. If the numbers were Even, then four bits of Even segment will be hidden. However, if they were Odd then four bits of Odd segment will be hidden. The opposite process retrieve the secret data from image by reading the bits of the index channel and check the numbers of "1"s to extract the Even segment and Odd segment. Finally, recombining the two segments to extract the secret data. Experimental results show that the proposed method can provide high data security with acceptable stego-images.