An Efficient technique for data hiding in audio signals

Abstract

Data hiding, a form of steganography, is one of the emerging techniques that embeds secret data into a digital media and thus ensures secured data transfer. In this paper, the steganographic method used, is based on audio steganography which is concerned with embedding secret data in an audio file. The basic idea of our proposed method is that the host signal (the sound wave cover media) undergoes preprocessing, and then the results takes the shape of an image in which the data can be securely hidden in the image layers. The secret data is then hidden in a preprocessed sound wave using a traditional steganographic technique. The proposed method offers high quality of steganography process in terms of Peak Signal–to-Noise Ratio (PSNR). Only minor changes in the contents of the audio file occur, which are indiscernible to human ears. In addition, several attacks on the sound wave were performed; the results showed that the hidden secret data can be retrieved with minimal distortion.