Development and implementation of hash function for generating hashed message

Steganography is a method of sending confidential information in a way that the existence of the channel in this communication remains secret. A collaborative approach between steganography and digital signature provides a high secure hidden data. Unfortunately, there are wide varieties of attacks that affect the quality of image steganography. Two issues that required to be addressed are large size of the ciphered data in digital signature and high bandwidth. The aim of the research is to propose a new method for producing a dynamic hashed message algorithm in digital signature and then embedded into image for enhancing robustness of image steganography with reduced bandwidth. A digital signature with smaller hash size than other hash algorithms was developed for authentication purposes. A hash function is used in the digital signature generation. The encoder function encoded the hashed message to generate the digital signature and then embedded into an image as a stego-image. In enhancing the robustness of the digital signature, we compressed or encoded it or performed both operations before embedding the data into the image. This encryption algorithm is also computationally efficient whereby for messages with the sizes less than 1600 bytes, the hashed file reduced the original file up to 8.51%.