@Article{cmc.2021.014802, AUTHOR = {Debajit Datta, Lalit Garg, Kathiravan Srinivasan, Atsushi Inoue, G. Thippa Reddy, M. Praveen Kumar Reddy, K. Ramesh, Nidal Nasser}, TITLE = {An Efficient Sound and Data Steganography Based Secure Authentication System}, JOURNAL = {Computers, Materials \& Continua}, VOLUME = {67}, YEAR = {2021}, NUMBER = {1}, PAGES = {723--751}, URL = {http://www.techscience.com/cmc/v67n1/41221}, ISSN = {1546-2226}, ABSTRACT = {The prodigious advancements in contemporary technologies have also brought in the situation of unprecedented cyber-attacks. Further, the pin-based security system is an inadequate mechanism for handling such a scenario. The reason is that hackers use multiple strategies for evading security systems and thereby gaining access to private data. This research proposes to deploy diverse approaches for authenticating and securing a connection amongst two devices/gadgets via sound, thereby disregarding the pins’ manual verification. Further, the results demonstrate that the proposed approaches outperform conventional pin-based authentication or QR authentication approaches. Firstly, a random signal is encrypted, and then it is transformed into a wave file, after which it gets transmitted in a short burst via the device’s speakers. Subsequently, the other device/gadget captures these audio bursts through its microphone and decrypts the audio signal for getting the essential data for pairing. Besides, this model requires two devices/gadgets with speakers and a microphone, and no extra hardware such as a camera, for reading the QR code is required. The first module is tested with real-time data and generates high scores for the widely accepted accuracy metrics, including precision, Recall, F1 score, entropy, and mutual information (MI). Additionally, this work also proposes a module helps in a secured transmission of sensitive data by encrypting it over images and other files. This steganographic module includes two-stage encryption with two different encryption algorithms to transmit data by embedding inside a file. Several encryption algorithms and their combinations are taken for this system to compare the resultant file size. Both these systems engender high accuracies and provide secure connectivity, leading to a sustainable communication ecosystem.}, DOI = {10.32604/cmc.2021.014802} }