Steganography tools

Payload (computing)

Cryptography

Computer network

Algorithm

Steganography

Network packet

Encryption

Artificial intelligence

Computer science

Embedding

IEEE Access

Internet of Things (IoT) is a domain where the transfer of big data is taking place every single second. The security of these data is a challenging task; however, security challenges can be mitigated with cryptography and steganography techniques. These techniques are crucial when dealing with user authentication and data privacy. In the proposed work, a highly secured technique is proposed using IoT protocol and steganography. This work proposes an image steganography procedure by utilizing the combination of various algorithms that build the security of the secret data by utilizing Binary bit-plane decomposition (BBPD) based image encryption technique. Thereafter a Salp Swarm Optimization Algorithm (SSOA) based adaptive embedding process is proposed to increase the payload capacity by setting different parameters in the steganographic embedding function for edge and smooth blocks. Here the SSOA algorithm is used to localize the edge and smooth blocks efficiently. Then, the hybrid Fuzzy Neural Network with a backpropagation learning algorithm is used to enhance the quality of the stego images. Then these stego images are transferred to the destination in the highly secured protocol of IoT. The proposed steganography technique shows better results in terms of security, image quality, and payload capacity in comparison with the existing state of art methods.

SSII: Secured and High-Quality Steganography Using Intelligent Hybrid Optimization Algorithms for IoT