Publication

Abstract : This paper uses a novel color image stego-crypto technique to enhance the capacity, security and robustness of data embedding process. The proposed scheme uses a base64 encoding technique and along with QR code generator to transform the secret data, i.e., watermark to a 2D binary matrix, i.e., QR code that considered as a first-level encryption process. Followed by, embedding of individual QR code into the color image components, namely red, green and blue using a dynamic bit replacement technique that guarantees a second level of security. Subsequently, scrambling of random block-pixels and the encryption of logistic chaos are performed. The experimental outcome of three levels of security scheme has proved to be with a much larger key space and a strong resistance to brute force, statistical and differential attacks. The correlation between adjacent pixels is observed to be uniformly distributed in the cipher image and the information entropy value is close to an ideal value of 8. From the simulation results, it is observed that the proposed security scheme has outperformed the existing standard encryption techniques within a single round of iteration in terms of security and robustness.