Presenting an Imperceptible Steganographic Algorithm through Genetic Algorithm and Mix Column Transform

Due to growth and development of data communications, the need for fast and secure transmission of information is very important. In order to address this problem, especially over the internet, some of the security systems such as cryptography and steganography can be used. Steganography is a way for secure and confidential communication. In this paper, an algorithm for color image steganography through mix column transform and the genetic algorithm is presented, which is a distinct type of the transform. The proposed method divides the image into blocks and the mix column transform of each block is obtained. Then, the genetic algorithm is applied to determine the best permutation for inserting the secret message. By using the genetic algorithm, bits of the message is embedded in the least significant bits of the image. Experimental results show that, not only the visual quality of the stego image is improved, but also the embedding time of the image and the capacity are increased.