Abstract: Over last two decades, due to hostilities of environment
over the internet the concerns about confidentiality of information
have increased at phenomenal rate. Therefore to safeguard the information
from attacks, number of data/information hiding methods have
evolved mostly in spatial and transformation domain.In spatial domain
data hiding techniques,the information is embedded directly on
the image plane itself. In transform domain data hiding techniques the
image is first changed from spatial domain to some other domain and
then the secret information is embedded so that the secret information
remains more secure from any attack. Information hiding algorithms
in time domain or spatial domain have high capacity and relatively
lower robustness. In contrast, the algorithms in transform domain,
such as DCT, DWT have certain robustness against some multimedia
processing.In this work the authors propose a novel steganographic
method for hiding information in the transform domain of the gray
scale image.The proposed approach works by converting the gray
level image in transform domain using discrete integer wavelet
technique through lifting scheme.This approach performs a 2-D
lifting wavelet decomposition through Haar lifted wavelet of the cover
image and computes the approximation coefficients matrix CA and
detail coefficients matrices CH, CV, and CD.Next step is to apply the
PMM technique in those coefficients to form the stego image. The
aim of this paper is to propose a high-capacity image steganography
technique that uses pixel mapping method in integer wavelet domain
with acceptable levels of imperceptibility and distortion in the cover
image and high level of overall security. This solution is independent
of the nature of the data to be hidden and produces a stego image
with minimum degradation.