ENHANCING DATA SECURITY IN ANDROID SMARTPHONES USING IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY, RSA ENCRYPTION WITH LSB INSERTION

Abstract

The use of contemporary devices such as android, blackberry and other smartphones is as a result of an improvement of technologies in communication over the period. As a result of this, there are several security concerns which keep coming up because the mechanisms in place to ensure, that data and information are protected is inadequate. Many have tried using either cryptography or steganography. Others have tried combining the two which is the best but have failed to use the optimum methods of both cryptography and steganography. Fortunately, this work combines the use of the best techniques under both steganography and cryptography to come up with a system that is more robust, hence resistible to attacks. The act of converting a message or an information into a non-readable file format so that a third party or an intruder, either than the intended recipient will not know the content of the message is known as cryptography. Steganography also deals with the act of hiding a message from the view of an unauthorized person in a cover object. This work employs an optimum steganography and cryptography. The Least Significant Bit (LSB) algorithm is used to insert or embed a message into a cover object. The cryptography used under this study employs the use of the asymmetric cryptography known as the RSA. The combination of both the LSB insertion technique and the RSA technique for use by the proposed system makes it one of the best applications to ensure data security and secrecy on android smart devices It can be realized that the security and strength of the proposed system for use by smartphones lies in the combination of cryptography and steganography. One fascinating thing about the proposed system is that unlike the other existing steganographic systems which is unable to accept different image file types, the proposed system is able to do so.