Parallel Color-Specific LSB Steganography: A New Approach for Data Hiding in BMP Images

Steganography plays a vital role in information security as it enables the covert transmission of sensitive data. Among various steganographic techniques, least significant bit (LSB) steganography is one of the most widely employed methods for embedding hidden information in digital images. This paper introduces a novel parallel colorspecific LSB steganographic technique designed for 24- bit *.BMP images. The proposed method selectively embeds data into pixels that match a specific color within a defined tolerance, leveraging parallel processing to enhance computational efficiency and reduce encoding and decoding times. Experimental evaluations, including histogram analysis and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) calculations, confirm that the proposed algorithm maintains high imperceptibility and ensures minimal distortion to the cover image. Furthermore, the parallel implementation significantly reduces execution time, especially when utilizing multiple CPU cores, making the method highly scalable and suitable for large datasets. The results demonstrate the potential of the proposed approach for secure, highperformance data embedding in real-world steganographic applications.