Fuzzy Logic-based Steganographic Scheme for high Payload Capacity with high Imperceptibility

When communicating confidential information between two parties, it is crucial to consider the security of the information. Cryptography, as well as steganography, are essentially used to keep hidden, secret data. Cryptography mainly focuses on changing private messages into an unreadable format. However, cryptography is questionable because it shows the existence of covert communication; hence there is a need to use it combined with other more secure techniques. On the other hand, steganography conceals confidential data in a cover media to avoid suspicion of covert communication. Most practitioners use different steganographic algorithms selected based on their capacity to carry large payloads with a quality cover image. This paper introduces a new algorithm to hide confidential data using fuzzy logic in digital images with increased payload and high imperceptibility. We use fuzzy logic to identify an image's edges, which shows the level with which a pixel is attached to any edge during image processing; then, we apply a factor to the data to hide before embedding it to the pixels with low values. Our method effectively conceals large amounts of secret bits while producing a quality stego image that ensures confidentiality in communication through the insecure public network. Experimental results demonstrate the outperformance of our method over the existing schemes for both the peak signal-to-noise ratio and the payload size.