Secret information hiding in image randomly method using steganography and cryptography

In this research paper, we will present how to hide confidential information in a color image randomly using a mathematical equation; by apply this equation to the number of image bytes after converting the image into a digital image, the number of randomly selected bytes depends on the length of the secret message. After specifying the bytes, we include the secret message in those selected bytes utilizing least significant bit (LSB) of steganography, and return the new bytes in the same place in the original image by using the same mathematical equation, after the hiding process using steganography, and then we encrypt the image and send it to the recipient. Several statistical measures applied to the original image, compared with the image after embedding, and after the image encrypted. The results obtained are very good. The statistical measures were used the histogram, mean square error (MSE) and the peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR). The system is designed to perform these processes, which consists of two stages, hiding stage and extract stage. The first stage contains from four steps, the first step of this stage reading the image and converting it to a digital image and make an index on each byte of the image bytes and the application of the mathematical equation to select the bytes by randomly, second step is the process of hiding the secret message in selected bytes and return those bytes to the original locations, third step is the calculation of the statistical measures to determine the rate of confusion after the inclusion of the confidential message, fourth step to encrypt the image of the message carrier and measure the rate of confusion after the encryption and compare with the original image. The extraction process consists of three steps, the first step is to use the private key to decrypt, and the second step is to apply the same mathematical equation to extract the embedded bytes of the confidential message, third step use the same method of hiding the information and extracting the confidential message.