Secure LSB Steganography over Modified Vigenère-
AES Cipher and Modified Interrupt Key-AES Cipher
Aayushi Ajmera Shiraz Saptarshi Ghosh
Computer Engineering Computer Engineering
Mukesh Patel School of Technology Mukesh Patel School of Technology
Management and Engineering, NMIMS Management and Engineering, NMIMS
Mumbai, India Thane, India
aayuajmera@gmail.com shirazghosh@gmail.com
Abstract—Steganography is the art of hiding the existence of a
message between sender and intended recipient. Steganography has
been used to hide secret messages in various types of files, including
digital images, audio and video. In Image Steganography, secret
communication is achieved through embedding a Message Image
into a Cover Image. But some general Steganography techniques
like LSB, Pixel value Differencing are prone to Information theft.
In this paper, the LSB based Image Steganography is combined
with two newly proposed Cryptography techniques. The two
Cryptography techniques proposed are: Vigenère-AES Cipher and
Modified Interrupt Key. Vigenère-AES Cipher Steganography
performs a Vigenère Cipher on the Message Image followed by
AES Cipher. This Cryptographed Image is then embedded inside
the Cover Image using an LSB Lossless Steganographic technique.
The Modified Interrupt Key Steganography performs an Interrupt
Key based Cryptography on the Message Image. The
Cryptographed image is then embedded inside the Cover Image
using an LSB Lossless Steganographic technique. The results of
these techniques are more secured form of Information hiding as
they use Stego-Keys. The Stego-Keys are transmitted securely using
a Diffie- Hellman Key Exchange technique.
Keywords—LSB- Least Significant Bit, AES- Advanced
Encryption Standard, Vigenère Cipher
I. INTRODUCTION
With the rise of the Internet, it has become vital to safely
transfer data between to users. The Internet as we know it is
a connection of nodes over a hostile network. In certain
cases, the very presence of data renders the data useless.
Hence data in these cases must travel secretly. One of the
ways to ensure confidentiality, as well as the secrecy of
information is to hide sensitive data behind Cover Media.
Cryptography is a technique which keeps the contents of the
message as a secret whereas Steganography is a technique
which keeps the existence of the message to be transferred as
a secret.
The article “Image Steganography” by Arnab and Savitha
[1] explains that Steganography requires two pieces of data:
the Cover, and the Data to be protected. The cover is the
medium into which the data to be embedded is put. The data
ideally should not be larger than the cover since it won't be
able to store the data
The different types of steganography mentioned by
Arnab and Savitha [1] are:
• Text Steganography: Hiding a text file behind
another file.
• Image Steganography: Hiding an Image file
behind another file
Vijayetha. T
Asst Prof. Dept of Computer
Engineering
Mukesh Patel School of Technology
Management and Engineering, NMIMS
Mumbai, India
t.vijayetha@nmims.edu
• Audio Steganography: Hiding an audio file
behind another file or vise-versa
• Video Steganography: Hiding a video file
behind another file or vise-versa
This paper combines certain image steganography
approaches with cryptography approaches to provide a 2
tier security to the data that needs to be transmitted. The
Steganographic approach discussed is LSB lossless
Steganography, whilst the Cryptographic approaches
discussed are Vigenère-AES Cryptography and Modified
Interrupt Key Cryptography.
II. LITERATURE SURVEY
A. Least Significant Bit Steganography:
The article “Image Steganography” [1] states that
Least Significant Bit Steganography is a type of
steganography that takes advantage of the amount of Data
stored in binary equivalent of a pixel intensity. The human
eye cannot perceive the difference between the shades of
color that are very close to each other. For example,
grayscale intensity 252 and grayscale value 256 cannot be
differentiated unless closely looked at. A change in values
in the least significant bit of pixel intensities causes a
minor difference in the change of the shade. This minor
change since not perceivable is used to store information.
As shown in “Fig.1”, the LSB lossless technique deals
with an RGB cover image and a Grayscale message image.
In the Embedding process, Both the Cover and the
Message images are converted into 8-bit Binary
equivalent. This conversion gives us 8-bit representation of
Message Image as explained by Karim, Rahman, Hossain
[2]. Arora, Singh, Tharkal, Jarwal in “Image
Steganography using Enhanced LSB substitution method”
[3] studied that the cover image is an RGB image thus it
consists of three 8-bit planes. Champakamala, Padmini,
Radhika [4] state the idea that the Least Significant 3 bits
of the Red plane are replaced with the Most Significant 3
bits of the Message image. The Least Significant 3 bits of
the Green plane are replaced with the next unselected Most
Significant 3 bits of the Message image. The Least
Significant 2 bits of the Blue plane are replaced with the
Least Significant 2 bits of the Message image. Thus, the
Stego-Image is obtained as shown in “Fig.1”. Similarly,
the decryption process is done by reversing the embedding
process.
 C. Advanced Encryption Standard
As mentioned by J. J. Amador, R. W.Green [6], the
AES algorithm is a symmetric key algorithm. A. Ray, A.
Potnis, P. Dwivedy, S. Soofi and U. Bhade in [7] studied
an algorithm which divides data into blocks of a fixed
length of 128 bits, while the length of key used in
encryption or decryption can be of 128, 192, or 256 bits
long. As stated in [8], AES is an iterative algorithm that
uses 4 operational blocks that are repeated for a total of N
times. [5] explains that the Value N is decided based on
the size of the key i.e. N is 10, 12 and 14 for key of length
128, 192 and 256 respectively.
A. Ray, A. Potnis, P. Dwivedy, S. Soofi and U. Bhade
in [7] studied the following:
• Encryption: Rijndael's key schedule is used derive the
cipher key from the Key expansion round keys. For
each round, AES requires a separate 128-bit round
key block. “Fig.3” illustrated the encryption
procedure
a) Initial Round: uses the Add Round Key function that
takes each byte of the state and combines it with the
block of the round key using bitwise XOR.
b) Iterative Round’s:
i. Sub Bytes, a substitution step that replaces
Fig. 1. Least Significant Bit Lossless
each byte non-linearly with another using a lookup
table.
B. Vigenère Cipher Cryptography
As studied in [11] and [14], Vigenère cipher is also ii. Shift Rows, here the last three rows of the
known as a polyalphabetic substitution cipher. It constitutes state are shifted circularly for a certain number of
of 26 by 26 Caesar cipher shift matrix. The encryption is steps.
performed by adding each of the index of the plaintext iii. Mix Columns, is a mixing operation that
character to the index of the password character, based on combines the four bytes of the state.
the Vigenère square which is represented in “Fig.2”.
iv. Add Round Key
Phillip I Wilson, Mario Garcia in [10] stated the encryption
and decryption process of Vigenère Cipher in mathematical c) Final Round: Sub Bytes, Shift Rows, Add Round Key
representation of as follows: • Decryption: The inverse of sub bytes, inverse shift
Ci = E (Pi+Ki) modulus 26 rows and inverse mix columns are used in the opposite
order of which sub bytes, shift rows, and mix columns
Pi = D (Ci-Ki) modulus 26 are used. Just like encryption processes the key
C is the Cipher text, P is Plain text, K is the Key, E is expansion remains the same in decryption.
encryption function and D is the Decryption function.
Sanjeev Kumar Mandal and A.R Deepti in [9] identify that
the repeating nature of the encryption key is the main
limitation of this Cipher. This limitation which makes the
technique vulnerable to frequency analysis by kasiski
examination (a very common attack on Vigenère Cipher).

Fig. 2. Vigenère Cipher Square

Fig. 3. Advanced Encryption Standard


D. Key Exchange using Diffie Hellman Algorithm
As explained by S. Kallam in [13], the Di e–Hellman
key exchange is a method for exchanging cryptographic
keys between the sender and the intended recipient. It is the
most practical example implemented for exchanging the
Cryptographic keys. The Di e–Hellman key exchange
method permits two parties involved in communication
having no prior knowledge of each other to establish a shared
secret key over a hostile network. This key is used to encrypt
communications securely using a symmetric key cipher.
The working, advantages and disadvantages of the
algorithm are explained in [12] as follows;
sender and the receiver using the Diffie-Hellman Key
exchange technique. Since AES is one of the most
trustworthy encryption techniques, AES cipher is then
performed on this Vigenère encrypted image. The algorithm
for AES encryption is explained in the Literature Survey.
Thus, the final Vigenère-AES encrypted image is obtained.
LSB lossless Steganography is then performed on the final
enciphered image. Similarly, decryption process is done by
performing LSB lossless decryption followed by reversing
the AES Ciphering. The resultant image is then decrypted
again by using the same Vigenère key and then subtracting
the Key values from the resultant Image. This results in the
final decrypted image. Working of the technique is shown in
“Fig.4”.

Working:
• A shared secret is established that can be used for
exchanging data secretly over a public network.
• Initially, the sender and the receiver agree upon a
common Key that is publicly available.
• The sender performs an operation using the Public key
and its own Secret key and thus, computes a value and
sends it to the receiver over a hostile network.
• The receiver performs an operation using the Public key
and its own Secret key and thus, computes a value and
sends it to the sender over a hostile network.
• The sender uses the new value received from the receiver
and its own Secret Key to compute a new value again.
• The receiver uses the new value received from the sender
and its own Secret Key to compute a new value again.
• These computed values are compared and found
similar. Thus, it considered to be the final common
Secret Key between the Sender and the Receiver.

Advantages:
• Solving the discrete logarithm is extremely tough and
challenging.
• The shared key (i.e. the secret) is never itself transmitted
over the channel.

III. PROPOSED MODEL

A. Modified Vigenère-AES Cipher Steganography: Fig. 4. Vigenère-AES Cipher Steganography

The Vigenère Cipher is an already existing Cryptography

technique which uses a Key mapping technique and works
only on alphabets [11]. By referring [15] and [16], we have
proposed and implemented the Modified Vigenère Cipher
Cryptography technique which works on the Image values
also. In this technique, the Key plays an important role in
Modifying the message image. The message Image is
encrypted by specifying a single Private key. The Key digits
should be balanced i.e. If all the numbers in the key are higher
than 128 or all lower than 128, the result would be Digital
Negation of the Message image and thus, there would be no
major modification of the message image. Since the Images
we are dealing with are 256 X 256 images in this paper, the
key that we use for encrypting has to be balanced in such a
way that the numbers in the key are alternate digits that are
higher than 128 and lower than 128. In Vigenère cipher, the
key is added to the Image values of the message image i.e.
all the values are shifted by the Key values. The loop of
shifting the values continues until the last image value is
encountered. The Key could be of any specific length as
required by the Sender. This key is exchanged between the
B. Modified Interrupt Key-AES Cipher Steganography:
“Fig.5” shows the algorithm for the Modified Interrupt
Key Steganography. This cryptography technique is a
modified version of Vigenère cipher where instead of just 1
key, 2 keys are used. The usage of the first is just like
Vigenère key cryptography where in the embedding process,
these key values are added to the pixel values of the message
image. The second key dictates the number of key values that
shall be used out of the whole key. Key exchange performed
using Deffie-Hellman technique. Since AES is one of the
most trustworthy encryption techniques, AES cipher is then
performed on this Modified Interrupt Key encrypted image.
The algorithm for AES encryption is explained in the
Literature Survey. Thus, the final Modified Interrupt Key-
AES encrypted image is obtained. LSB lossless
Steganography is then performed on the final enciphered
image. Similarly, decryption process is done by performing
LSB lossless decryption followed by reversing the
Ciphering. The decrypted image is then decrypted again by
using the same Modified Interrupt Key cipher keys and then
subtracting the Key values from the resultant Image. This
results in the final decrypted image. Working of the
technique is shown in “Fig. 5”.
existence of this image while transmitting it over a hostile
network will be unidentifiable.
“Fig. 7” shows the RGB cover image. The
enciphered message image is hidden behind this image.
“Fig. 8” is the Vigenère enciphered message image.
Here, the Vigenère Cipher Cryptography is performed on the
message image to make the image unclear for the attacker to
identify the message image.

Fig. 6. The original message image

Fig. 5. Modified Interrupt Key Steganography

INFERENCES
The Steganography techniques proposed above provides a
2-tier security to the message image. The message image is
first secured by using Cryptography techniques and then the
Cryptographed image is secured again by performing Least
Significant Bit Steganography on it. The key exchange is
done using Deffie-Hellman technique which is one of the
most secured and trusted technique.

TABLE I. IMPORTANT FEATURES OF THE PROPOSED TECHNIQUES

Features Vigenère-AES Cipher Modified Interrupt
Steganography Key-AES
Steganography Fig. 7. The cover image
No. of Keys 1 key for 2 keys for Modified
used Vigenère Cipher Interrupt Key Cipher
1 key for AES 1 key for AES
Key space nk Not fixed
where,
n is the number of pixels,
k is the number of
elements in key

Key sensitivity Low Low

Secure Comparatively less Comparatively more

“Fig. 6” shows the grayscale message image. The image

of the map is to be enciphered and hidden behind a cover
image which is then trasmitted to the reciever. Thus, the
Fig. 8. Vigenère encrypted message image
 “Fig. 9” is the output for the Vigenère-AES encrypted
message image. Here, AES enciphering is performed on the
Vigenère encrypted message image. This makes the image
more secure from being attacked.

Fig. 11. Modified Interrupt Key encrypted message image

Fig. 9. Vigenère-AES encrypted message image

“Fig. 10” is the final Steganographed Image behind which

the Vigenère-AES encrypted image is hidden, that is sent to
the reciever. The difference between the Original Cover
Image and the Steganographed Image is negligible.

Fig. 12. Modified Interrupt Key-AES encrypted message image

Fig. 10. Vigenère-AES cipher Steganographed Image

“Fig. 11” is the Modified Interrupt Key enciphered

message image. Here, the Modified Interrupt Key Cipher
Cryptography is performed on the message image to make
the image unclear for the attacker to identify the message
image.
“Fig. 12” is the output for the Modified Interrupt Key -
AES encrypted message image. Here, AES enciphering is
performed on the Modified Interrupt Key encrypted message Fig. 13. Modified Interrupt Key-AES cipher Steganographed Image
image. This makes the image more secure from being
attacked. The Decryption process works in the opposite way. LSB
decryption is used to retrieve the encrypted message image
“Fig. 13” is the final Image after applying LSB
from the cover. This image is further decrypted using the AES
steganography behind which the Modified Interrupt Key -
decryption algorithm. Modified interrupt key or Vigenère
AES encrypted image is hidden, that is sent to the receiver.
The difference between the Original Cover Image and this Decryption is applied to the AES decrypted Image to provide
Image is negligible. the decrypted message image. Both the techniques mentioned
provide a lossless output of the original message image. “Fig.
14.” and “Fig. 15” shows us decrypted message images for
Modified Vigenère-AES Cipher and Modified Interrupt Key-
AES Cipher decryption algorithms respectively.

Fig. 14. Decrypted Image using Modified Vigenère-AES Cipher decryption.
CONCLUSION
A new technique for hiding Information is proposed. The
two novel techniques proposed are: Vigenère-AES Cipher
Steganography and Modified Interrupt key-AES Cipher
Steganography
These techniques prove to be more secure as there is 2-
tier security: Proposed Cryptographic techniques followed
by AES Cipher followed by LSB Lossless Steganography for
hiding the Information. The time required for the techniques
is reasonable according to the size of the data.
The first technique modifies the already existing
Vigenère Cipher by working on images. A key is used for
ciphering. These key values have some conditions and are
responsible for the changes in the message image. Since AES
encryption is one of the secured algorithms, the Vigenère
Ciphered image undergoes AES ciphering. This resultant
image is then hidden behind a cover image using LSB
lossless Steganography.
The second technique works the same as the first
technique but uses two keys in ciphering. The first key has
the same conditions as in the previous technique. The second
key decides on the number of elements to be considered from
the first key. Thus, both the keys are responsible for the
changes in message image. AES encryption is performed on
this ciphered image. Resultant image is hidden behind the
cover image using LSB lossless Steganography.
The keys used in both the techniques are shared using the
Deffie-Hellman exchange technique over a hostile network.
Deffie-Hellman technique ensures that the private key of the
sender and the receiver is not exposed to anyone.
Thus, these techniques state that the attacker can rarely
identify the original message image.

Fig. 15. Decrypted Image using Modified Interrupt Key-AES Cipher FUTURE WORK
decryption. In the future, we plan on improving our code to handle
color message images. The Cryptographic techniques will
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
also be combined with other more accurate and secure
TABLE II. IMPORTANT FEATURES OF THE PROPOSED TECHNIQUES Steganographic techniques to provide even tougher
resistance to attacks. We plan on using public key
Algorithms Encryption speed (in ms) Encryption speed (in ms)
cryptography to make key exchange easier.
with input for Modified Vigenère- for Modified Interrupt
image of AES Cipher Key-AES Cipher
size 524288 Steganography: Steganography:
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