Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

@article{196189,
        author = {Dr. T. Sunil Kumar and Bagath Lokesh and Tarra Jogi Naidu and Shaik Sameer and Chikati Vamsi},
        title = {SECURE CHAT APPLICATION USING END-TO-END ENCRYPTION AND STEGANOGRAPHY},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {11},
        pages = {2299-2307},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=196189},
        abstract = {In the modern digital era, secure communication has become a critical requirement due to the increasing risk of cyber threats such as data interception, eavesdropping, and unauthorized access. Traditional messaging systems primarily rely on encryption to protect message content; however, they often fail to conceal the existence of communication, making them vulnerable to traffic analysis and targeted attacks. To address these challenges, this paper presents a secure chat application that integrates end-to-end encryption with image steganography to provide enhanced communication privacy and data protection. In the proposed system, messages are encrypted at the sender’s end using a symmetric cryptographic algorithm, ensuring that only the intended receiver can decrypt and access the original content. The encrypted message is then embedded within a digital image using the Least Significant Bit (LSB) steganography technique, effectively concealing the presence of the message during transmission. At the receiver’s end, the hidden data is extracted from the image and decrypted to reconstruct the original message. The implementation is carried out using Python and Flask for backend development, along with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the user interface. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system successfully ensures message confidentiality while simultaneously hiding communication, thereby providing a dual-layer security mechanism. The integration of cryptography and steganography significantly enhances the security of digital messaging systems and reduces the risk of detection and unauthorized access.},
        keywords = {Secure Communication, End-to-End Encryption (E2EE), Image Steganography, Cryptography, Data Hiding, Least Significant Bit (LSB), Secure Chat Application.},
        month = {April},
        }