SOFTWARE ENGINEERING AND CYBERSECURITY

Method of Combining Symmetric Encryption and Adaptive Robust Steganography for Multilevel Protection of Information in Digital Images

Authors

V. V. Lukichov ORCID 0000-0002-3423-5436
Vinnytsia National Technical University ROR
Ya. О. Obolonska ORCID 0009-0004-5447-6423
Vinnytsia National Technical University ROR
DOI https://doi.org/10.31649/

Keywords

encryption threat information and communication system cybersecurity steganography cryptography AES-256 ChaCha20 ChaCha20-Poly1305 adaptive embedding robust steganography digital images data hiding stegoimages information security stegoanalysis

Abstract

The rapid development of information and communication technologies and the active use of digital data exchange channels necessitate the improvement of methods for protecting confidential information. When transmitting data over open networks, there are risks of interception, modification, or unauthorized access to information. It is urgent to ensure the protection of digital images, which are often used as data carriers in modern information systems. Therefore , the paper investigates an approach to adaptive information protection based on a combination of cryptographic and steganographic methods.

The research implements a method that combines the symmetric algorithms AES-256, ChaCha20, and ChaCha20-Poly1305 with adaptive robust steganography. The main idea of ​​the approach is to hide pre-encrypted data in digital images, taking into account the characteristics of the container. Before performing cryptographic processing, the input data undergoes a stage of preliminary normalization and conversion into a standardized digital image representation format (PNG). To do this, the  analysis of the texture areas, the level of entropy and noise characteristics of the image is carried out, which enables  to determine the most suitable areas for embedding information and reduce the probability of its detection.

The efficiency  of the proposed method was assessed by conducting a series of experiments with hiding messages in digital containers and further analysis of the quality of the resulting stegoimages. Metrics were used for the evaluation, which allowed determining the level of container distortion and the resistance of hidden data to external influences. The results obtained showed that after embedding information, the image retains high visual quality, and the changes remain practically imperceptible to the human eye.

The scientific novelty consists in the development of an algorithm for adaptive cryptosteganographic protection of digital images, which implements a two-stage adaptation procedure: determination of embedding areas based on an integral indicator that takes into account entropy, texture complexity and noise level of the container, and automatic selection of the optimal cryptographic algorithm according to a complex weighted stegoimage quality criterion formed using PSNR, MSE and SSIM metrics. Unlike the existing hybrid cryptosteganographic approaches that use fixed embedding parameters or a single encryption algorithm, the proposed method provides adaptive optimization of hiding parameters depending on the characteristics of the container and automatic selection of the most effective encryption algorithm.

A characteristic  feature of the implemented approach is ensuring the stability of hidden information to typical digital image processing operations, namely rotation, compression and noise addition. The results of the experiments confirmed the possibility of  the correct recovery of the hidden message even after geometric transformations of the container.

The practical value of the results obtained lies in the possibility of applying the developed approach to ensure the protection of confidential data in information and communication systems, electronic document management systems and multimedia services. The use of a combination of cryptographic methods and adaptive steganography contributes to increasing the level of security of information transmission and reducing the probability of detecting the  hidden data.

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How to Cite

[1]
“Method of Combining Symmetric Encryption and Adaptive Robust Steganography for Multilevel Protection of Information in Digital Images”, Вісник ВПІ, no. 4, pp. 150–160, Sep. 2026, doi: 10.31649/.

Author Biographies

V. V. Lukichov, Vinnytsia National Technical University

Cand. Sc. (Eng.), Associate Professor, Associate Professor of the Chair of Information Protection

Ya. О. Obolonska, Vinnytsia National Technical University

Student of the faculty of Information Technologies and Computer Engineering

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