Abstract
The paper proposes a secure audio cryptosystem that realize integrity, authentication and confidentiality. The proposed audio cryptosystem achieves integrity by applying a message digest algorithm, authentication by employing LSB watermarking and confidentiality through encryption with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) or RC6. The main concept of the proposed audio cryptosystem relays on XORing the plain-audio with one selected image from a private image database. Then, the mixed plain-audio blocks are LSB watermarked with the selected image hash value prior to ciphering. The proposed audio cryptosystem is prepared with the potential of increasing immunity against brute force attacks and providing integrity, authentication and confidentiality through the selected image hash value addition using LSB embedding as an extra key. Also, the extra XORing step removes residual intelligibility from the plain-audio blocks, fills the speechless intervals of audio conversation and helps in destroying format and pitch information. The proposed audio cryptosystem is compared with audio encryption using AES, and RC6 through encryption key performance indicators. The comparison outcomes ensured the superiority of the proposed audio cryptosystem. Security investigation of the proposed audio cryptosystem is studied from a precise cryptographic standpoint and tests ensured the superiority of the proposed audio cryptosystem from a cryptographic standpoint.