Multi-Layered Password-Based Steganography: A Novel Approach for Tiered Information Hiding
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Since the advent of the Internet, information security has become one of the most crucial aspects of information technology and communication. Over the past decade, numerous image steganographic techniques have been developed, primarily concentrating on optimizing payload capacity and image quality. However, a trade-off between these two metrics remains a persistent challenge. This paper presents a multi-layered steganography technique that effectively addresses the limitations of traditional single-layer methods by introducing a novel tiered encryption framework, enabling secure tiered access control. Each message layer is encrypted independently, with unique keys. The resulting ciphertext of each layer is embedded into an image using the least significant bit (LSB) steganography. Experimental results indicate that increasing the layers improves security significantly. This technique is most effective for message sizes up to 1000 KB and when utilizing 3-4 layers. Despite some drawbacks related to image quality, file size, and encoding time, the distortion remains imperceptible, with PSNR values exceeding 60 dB, even in the five-layer configuration. The increased MSE and Chi-Square values demonstrate the method's resilience against steganalysis and brute-force attacks, highlighting its security strengths.
Authors: Md. Akmol Masud, Sanjida Akter, Nadia Sultana, Mohammad Abu Yousuf, Md Zia Uddin
Institutions: Jahangirnagar University, SINTEF Digital
Language: English
Subfield: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4410854563