Abstract

Today's data transmission over an unsecure channel has increased widely. There is a crucial need to some security measures to transmit our data securely. Steganography is an art of "invisible" communication. In steganography the secret message is concealed inside other media cover such as text, image, video and audio form. Firefly Algorithm (FA), metaheuristic algorithm has been used for solving various optimization problems. In this study, Levy flight firefly algorithm (LFA) is employed to solve the problem of 24-bit color image steganography. In the proposed approach, firefly algorithm is initialized with a population of fireflies which will carry each secret byte in the form of different patterns based on rotated reversed method to improve the search process and enhance the security issue. During the iterations, the pattern of the more attractive (brighter) firefly

References

• Darshni, P.; Ghanekar, U., "A Hybrid Data Hiding Scheme to Enhance the Capacity of One-Third Probability Embedding Method," Computational Intelligence & Communication Technology (CICT), 2015 IEEE International Conference on , vol., no., pp.269,272, 13-14 Feb. 2015.
• Das, P.; Kushwaha, S.C.; Chakraborty, M., "Multiple embedding secret key image steganography using LSB substitution and Arnold Transform," Electronics and Communication Systems (ICECS), 2015 2nd International Conference on , vol., no., pp.845,849, 26-27 Feb. 2015.
• Mishra, Rina; Bhanodiya, Praveen, "A review on steganography and cryptography," Computer Engineering and Applications (ICACEA), 2015 International Conference on Advances in , vol., no., pp.119,122, 19-20 March 2015.
• Huy Nguyen Tien; Bac Le, "Noise reduction approach for LSB matching revisited," Computing and Communication Technologies, Research, Innovation, and Vision for the Future (RIVF), 2013 IEEE RIVF International Conference on , vol., no., pp.76,79, 10-13 Nov. 2013.
• Shelke, S.G.; Jagtap, S.K., "Analysis of Spatial Domain Image Steganography Techniques," Computing Communication Control and Automation (ICCUBEA), 2015 International Conference on , vol., no., pp.665,667, 26-27 Feb. 2015.
• Nayak, D.K.; Bhagvati, C., "A threshold-LSB based information hiding scheme using digital images," Computer and Communication Technology (ICCCT), 2013 4th International Conference on , vol., no., pp.269,272, 20-22 Sept. 2013.
• Blum C, Merkle D (eds) (2008) Swarm intelligence: introduction and applications. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany.
• Ching-Sheng Hsu; Shu-Fen Tu, "Finding Optimal LSB Substitution Using Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm," Communication Software and Networks, 2010. ICCSN '10. Second International Conference on , vol., no., pp.293,297, 26-28 Feb. 2010.
• Majid Kiamini ,Saeid Fazli ,” A High Performance Steganographic Method using JPEG and PSO Algorithm,” IEEE, 2008.
• Arora, S.; Singh, S., "A conceptual comparison of firefly algorithm, bat algorithm and cuckoo search," Control Computing Communication & Materials (ICCCCM), 2013 International Conference on , vol., no., pp.1,4, 3-4 Aug. 2013.
• X.-S. Yang and X. He, Firefly algorithm: Recent advances and applications. International Journal of Swarm Intelligence 1, 36 (2013).
• Fister, I., Fister Jr, I., Yang, X-S. and Brest, J. (2013b) ‘A comprehensive review of firefly algorithms’, Swarm and Evolutionary Computation, Vol. 13, pp.34–46.
• Yang X-S. Firefly algorithm, Levy flights and global optimization. In: Research and development in intelligent systems XXVI. Springer; 2010. p. 209–18.
• Arora, S.; Singh, S., "A conceptual comparison of firefly algorithm, bat algorithm and cuckoo search," Control Computing Communication & Materials (ICCCCM), 2013 International Conference on , vol., no., pp.1,4, 3-4 Aug. 2013.
• Pravalika, S.L.; Joice, C.S.; Raj, A.N.J., "Comparison of LSB based and HS based reversible data hiding techniques," Devices, Circuits and Systems (ICDCS), 2014 2nd International Conference on , vol., no., pp.1,4, 6-8 March 2014.
• Z.-H. Wang, C.-C. Chang, and M.-C. Li: Optimizing Least-significant-bit Substitution Using Cat Swarm Optimization Strategy, Information Sciences, In Press (2010).
• S. Wang, B. Yang, and X. Niu, Secure steganography method based on genetic algorithm, Journal of Information Hiding and Multimedia Signal Processing, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 28-35, 2010.
• Rafael Lima De Carvalho, Warley Gramacho Da Silva and Ary Henrique Oliveira De Morais. Optimizing Image Steganography using Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm. International Journal of Computer Applications, Volume 164 - No.7, April 2017.
• Shelke, S.G.; Jagtap, S.K., "A novel approach: Pixel matching based image steganography," Pervasive Computing (ICPC), 2015 International Conference on , vol., no., pp.1,4, 8-10 Jan. 2015.
• Patel, K.; Ragha, L., "Binary image Steganography in wavelet domain," Industrial Instrumentation and Control (ICIC), 2015 International Conference on , vol., no., pp.1635,1640, 28-30 May 2015.
• B. Dunbar, “A detailed look at Steganographic Techniques and their use in an Open-Systems Environment”, Sans Institute, Vol. 2002, pp. 1-9, 2002.
• M. E. Eltahir, L. M. Kiah, and B. B. Zaidan and A. A. Zaidan, "High Rate Video Streaming Steganography," 2009 IEEE International Conference on Information Management and Engineering (ICIME), Kuala Lumpur, 2009, pp. 550-553.
• ] X. S. Yang, Firefly algorithms for multimodal optimisation, Proc. 5th Symposium on Stochastic Algorithms, Foundations and Applications, (Eds. O. Watanabe and T. Zeugmann), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5792: 169-178 (2009).
• Mantegna, R. N., “Fast and Accurate Algorithm for Numerical Simulation of L’evy stable Stochastic Processes”, in Physical Review E, vol. 49, Issue 4, 1994, pp. 4677-4683.