Image authentication technique based on advanced encryption standard (AES), secure hash algorithm and steganography

Due to the widespread for digital imaging devices, forgery of digital media became more convincing. This led to increasing interest in developing image authentication techniques to prevent tampering of images contents or duplication by unauthorized users. This paper proposes a model that uses encryption techniques Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-128) to encrypt the image content, Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-1) and steganography. The aim of this model is authenticating the original image using embed a dynamic code (watermark) to the image code to prevent the attacker from tampering the image and to decide whether the image forged or not. The evaluation of the hybrid model is implemented by applying three different techniques to discover which one is better than another one. The three techniques are Least Significant Bit (LSB), bit number four and Most Significant Bit (MOS). This paper measures the image quality based on mathematical metrics.