Integrated AES Encryption and Image Steganography with Multi-Factor Authentication for Secure Data Handling in Government Orders

Abstract

Public service departments handle a significant volume of Government Orders (GO) and administrative documents that often contain highly confidential information. With the rapid adoption of digital governance, ensuring secure storage and controlled sharing of such data has become critical. Existing approaches rely on manual handling or unsecured digital methods such as emails and shared repositories, which lack centralized control, proper authorization, and data protection mechanisms. These limitations lead to risks such as unauthorized access, data leakage, lack of traceability, and operational inefficiencies. To overcome these challenges, this work presents a secure web-based system for managing and sharing administrative documents using Multi-Level Access Control (MLAC). The system is developed using Python and the Flask framework, supporting three distinct user roles: Government, Collector, and Local Body, each with predefined access permissions. Sensitive documents are protected using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) in Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) mode to ensure confidentiality during storage and controlled access. Tiny Database (TinyDB) is utilized as a lightweight database to manage user credentials, encrypted document metadata, permissions, and notifications in a structured manner. In addition to encryption, the system incorporates steganography to enable secure hidden communication through image-based message embedding. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), secure session management, and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) further strengthen system security.