HCCS Encoding Method: Enhancing Text Protection in Images Using Hybrid Cryptography and Steganography Techniques

During recent decades, the utilization of digital communication has played a fundamental role across various industries such as healthcare, banking, and information technology corporations. All data that is transmitted via the Internet require a high level of protection to ensure safe transmission of the original data from the source to the intended destination. Cryptography and information hiding techniques have emerged as two key components for protecting sensitive data and communication channels, providing another layer of security. The proposed method combines Least Significant Bit (LSB) embedding, Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) compression, Huffman coding, and the ECIES (ECC Based Hybrid AES- 256-GCM) to ensure secure encryption and transmission authentication of confidential a greater number of messages within steganographic cover images. As a result, this integration satisfies the requirements of capacity, security, and robustness for secure data transmission over an open channel.