Enhanced Model for Data Security in Cyber Space Using Combined Steganographic and Encryption Techniques

In today’s digital reality, transmitting data over an insecure channel is a major concern due to intruders actively expanding across the internet. Security measures must be implemented to prevent sensitive data theft, and encryption is a widely used strategy. While steganography and cryptography are two well-known encryption methods, they are more effective when used together. This article proposes an enhanced model for double encryption of steganographic data. Sensical, nonsensical, and suspicious images can be filtered using advanced artificial intelligence systems, and hidden data can be decrypted through image saturation and segmentation techniques. The proposed model reads pixels and changes the last bit of each character by embedding secret data and creating a sensical, nonsuspicious, and trustworthy encrypted image. This model follows the LSB model and uses the symmetric-key encryption method. The resulting image is indistinguishable from an unencrypted steganographic photo, even to the human eye, and is not recognizable by a computer without a stego-image for comparison. The encrypted data remains unreadable, even after applying image saturation or data extraction techniques.