A Color Image Steganography Using A Chaotic Map Based On K-Least Significant Bits

Nowadays, information security has a very important place in digital communication. Encrypting important information in end-to-end communications or hiding it by embedding it on a carrier is one of the methods used for information security. In some cases, methods are used in a mixed manner to increase security. An encrypted information can be hidden on the carrier or a hidden information can be encrypted and released into communication channels. The common purpose of these methods is to send the important information from the source to the target by transforming it into an incomprehensible form or before it gets into the hands of unrelated people.In this study, after giving brief information about steganography, the proposed color image hiding method is explained. In this method, first the data in the image or text to be hidden is randomly distributed using an expanded 1D logistic map, and then replaced with the least significant k-bits (K-LSB) in the colored cover image. It is aimed to increase information security by encrypting the information that is desired to be hidden. The success of the method is tested on images and texts of different sizes according to the number of bit planes in which the information will be stored. PSNR and MSE criteria, which are important safety evaluation criteria, are examined. PSNR and MSE are calculated as 54.4359, 0.23415 respectively in the process of hiding the 75x100 image using 1 bit plane, by the way PSNR and MSE are calculated as 56.7213, 0.13834 respectively in the process of hiding the 7500byte. PSNR and MSE are calculated as 36.503, 14.5472 respectively in the process of hiding the 150x150 image using 4 bit plane, by the way PSNR and MSE are calculated as 38.657, 8.8585 respectively in the process of hiding the 22500byte. With experimental results, it is proven that the algorithm has good performance, good performance against statistical analysis attacks.