Steganography in Color Animated Image Sequence for Secret Data Sharing Using Secure Hash Algorithm

This paper presents a high capacity steganographic approach with secret message validation scheme at the receiver end. The proposed idea develops specifically for animated GIF, the cover media, to conceal secret text messages where Least Significant Digit (LSD) method is employed to embed secret information in the form of ASCII value. To validate the secret information at the receiver end, the secret text is encoded with Secure Hash Algorithm-1(SHA1) which is subsequently embedded in certain pre-defined portion of the cover media. The proposed algorithm is experimented on a large set of colored animated image sequences by varying text messages which produces satisfactory results. The proposed method also maintains good visual perceptibility while securing high embedding capacity