Unified Multimedia Steganography: AES-Protected Data Concealment

Abstract

Steganography plays a vital role in secure communication and data protection in the digital realm. This paper explores the integration of Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption with the Least Significant Bit (LSB) steganography technique to bolster the security of hidden information in multimedia files. By encrypting data before embedding it using LSB, the content remains unintelligible without the decryption key, regardless of whether the existence of hidden data is detected or not. The proposed system extends the application of LSB steganography with AES encryption to text, images, audio, and video files. Performance evaluation through experiments measures payload capacity and Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) for different media types and levels of data embedding. The results are graphically presented to illustrate the system's effectiveness in concealing information securely within multimedia files.