Cryptography and Steganography for Data Hiding in Images: A Novel Architecture and Implementation

The proposed system presents safe data concealment and communication by combining compression, steganography, and cryptography. It ensures data confidentiality and integrity through the encryption module, implemented using AES-256-CBC. Dynamic least significant bit (LSB) steganographic techniques allow for an undetectable method with PSNR values higher than 55 dB and SSIM scores greater than 0.99. The best outcomes are: with the lossless DEFLATE compression, the embedding efficiency improved, and average payload size is reduced by 41.23%. The modular structure used in Flask makes it suitable for real time applications, mainly because it has scalability and smooth integration features. The experimental results depict a general system accuracy of 99.98% with negligible computing overhead, thereby proving its reliability and feasibility. Security, imperceptibility, and performance all reveal it to be much superior to the present techniques. Although safe data concealing is a major concern, the approach recommended here offers a flexible solution that suits the situation.