A New Image Steganographic Technique using Pattern based Bits Shuffling and Magic LSB for Grayscale Images

Image Steganography is a growing research area of information security where secret information is embedded in innocent-looking public communication. This paper proposes a novel crystographic technique for grayscale images in spatial domain. The secret data is encrypted and shuffled using pattern based bits shuffling algorithm (PBSA) and a secret key. The encrypted data is then embedded in the cover image using magic least significant bit (M-LSB) method. Experimentally, the proposed method is evaluated by qualitative and quantitative analysis which validates the effectiveness of the proposed method in contrast to several state-of-the-art methods.