INTERNATIONAL

JOURNAL
OFand
COMPUTER
ENGINEERING
&
International
Journal of Computer
Engineering
Technology (IJCET),
ISSN 0976-6367(Print),
ISSN 0976 - 6375(Online), Volume
6, Issue 1, January (2015),
pp. 12-18 IAEME
TECHNOLOGY
(IJCET)
ISSN 0976 6367(Print)
ISSN 0976 6375(Online)
Volume 6, Issue 1, January (2015), pp. 12-18
IAEME: www.iaeme.com/IJCET.asp
Journal Impact Factor (2014): 8.5328 (Calculated by GISI)
www.jifactor.com

IJCET
IAEME

HIDING SECRET TEXT IN IMAGE USING RC4 AND

RIJINDEAL ALGORITHM
Asst.Teach.Rasha H.Ali1,
1,2

Sawsan H.Jaddoa2

Computer Department, Education College for women/ Baghdad University, Baghdad, Iraq

ABSTRACT
In this paper, a method introduced for hiding secret text in image file (JPEG). The proposed
method is to embed the secret text message in frequency domain of image. The proposed method
contained two stages: the first embedding phase and the second extraction phase. In embedding
phase the image transformed from time domain to frequency domain using discrete wavelet
decomposition technique (Haar). The text message encrypted twice first: using RC4 algorithm and
second using Rijndeal algorithm. Finally; the Least Significant bit (LSB) algorithm used to hide
secret message in high frequency. The proposed method tested in different images and showed the
success of hiding according to (PSNR) equation.
Keywords: Steganography, Secret Message, RC4 Algorithm, Rijndeal Algorithm, LSB Algorithm,
Wavelet Transform.
1. INTRODUCTION
Steganography is derived from the Greek word Stegano which means Covered or Secret, and
Graphy means written or drawn. The objective of steganography is to send a message through some
media known as a carrier, to a receiver, while preventing anyone else from knowing that the message
exists. The carrier can be one of many different digital media, but the most common is the image.
The image should not attract any attention as a carrier of a message and should compare as close as
possible to the original image by the human eye. When images are used as the carrier in
steganography, they are generally manipulated by altering one or more bits of the byte that make up
the pixels of the image. The Least Significant Bit (LSB) may be used to encode the bits of the
message. These LSB's can then be read by the recipient of the stego-image and put together as bytes
to reproduce the hidden message, providing they have the stego key the password for the stegoimage. Steganalysis is the art of discovering a message. Breaking a steganography has been used,
reading the embedded to third parties. Steganalysis methods are also used by the steganographer to
determine whether the message is secure and whether the process has been successful [1].
12

International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-6367(Print),

ISSN 0976 - 6375(Online), Volume 6, Issue 1, January (2015), pp. 12-18 IAEME

Steganography is used for transmitting data in a media such as image. Cryptography and
steganography are different in their methods of hiding information. Cryptography scrambles a
message and hides it in a carrier, so that if it is intercepted it would be generally impossible to
decode. Steganography hides the very existence of the message in the carrier. When the message is
hidden in the carrier a stego-carrier is formed e.g. a stego-image. If successful, it would be perceived
to be as close to the original carrier or cover image by the human eye. Images are the most
widespread carrier medium [2]. They are used for steganography in the following way: The
message may firstly be encrypted. The sender embeds the secret message to be sent into a graphic
file [3]. This results in production of what is called the stego-image. Additional secret data may be
needed in hiding process e.g. a stego key. The stego-image is then transmitted to the recipient. The
recipient or extractor extracts the message from the carrier image. The message can only be extracted
if there is a shared secret between the sender and the recipient. This could be the algorithm for
extraction or a special parameter such as a key (the stego-key) [4].
2. WAVELET ANALYSIS
The wavelet transform (WT) has gained widespread acceptance in signal processing and
image compression. Wavelet transform is the breaking up of a signal into shifted and scaled versions
of the original (or mother) wavelet. A wavelet is a waveform of effectively limited duration that has
an average value of zero. For signals; identity of the signal is given by the low-frequency
component. The high-frequency content only imparts save our or nuance. In human voice, if high
frequency components are removed, the voice sounds different, but still it can be understood. If low
frequency components are removed, signal sounds gabble. On applying wavelet transformations on
audio signal, approximation and detail components of audio can be obtained. The approximations are
low-frequency components of the signal and details are high-frequency components. The first level
detail coefficients have less importance in comparison with detail coefficients of next levels and
approximation coefficients because of their low energy level. Figure (1) shows the decomposition of
audio signal on wavelet transform [5].

Fig. (1) Signal Decomposition

3. RC4 ALGORITHM
RC4 is a stream cipher designed in 1987 by Ron Rivest for RSA Security. It is variable key
size stream cipher with byte-oriented operations. The algorithm is based on the use of a random
permutation. Analysis shows that the period of the cipher is overwhelmingly likely to be greater than
10100 [7]. Eight to sixteen machine operations are required per output byte, and the cipher can be
expected to run very quickly in software.

13

International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-6367(Print),

ISSN 0976 - 6375(Online), Volume 6, Issue 1, January (2015), pp. 12-18 IAEME

The RC4 algorithm is remarkably simply and quite easy to explain. A variable-length key of
from 1 to 256 bytes (8 to 2048 bits) is used to initialize a 256-byte state vector S, with elements S
[0], S [1], , S[255]. At all times, S contains a permutation of all 8-bit numbers from 0 through 255.
For encryption and decryption, a byte k is generated from S by selecting one of the 255 entries in a
systematic fashion. As each value of k is generated, the entries in S are once again permuted [8].
Figure (2) shows the steps of RC4 algorithm.

Fig. (2) The steps of RC4

4. RIJNDAEL ALGORITHM
The Rijndael algorithm is a block cipher which means that for a given encryption key, the
algorithm performs a series of transformations on a block of data. The same encryption key can be
used to reverse these transformations in the process of decryption. Rijndael was selected as the
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) in 2001 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST). As a result the AES specification was created, although it should be noted that this is limited
to 128-bit blocks of data, using 128, 192 or 256-bit keys. Figure (3) shows the steps of Rijndeal
algorithm [9].

14

International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-6367(Print),

ISSN 0976 - 6375(Online), Volume 6, Issue 1, January (2015), pp. 12-18 IAEME

Fig. (3) The structure of Rijndeal Algorithm

5. THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

In this paper, propose a method for hiding secret text message in image. The text encrypted
by using RC4 and Rijndeal algorithm for more secure then embedding it in frequency domain by
taking DWT for color image. The cover image (color image) is decomposed into four sub-band (LL,
LH, HL, HH) using DWT. Then the secret message will be hided in image by using Least Significant
Bit (LSB). This method contains two phases, the embedding and extraction, as shown in figure (4).

15

International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-6367(Print),

ISSN 0976 - 6375(Online), Volume 6, Issue 1, January (2015), pp. 12-18 IAEME

Fig. (4) The proposed method

1- Embedding Phase
The embedding phase contains:
A. Applied DWT on image to transform image from spatial domain to frequency domain using
Haar transformation.
B. Encrypt text message will be hidden in image, firstly the message encrypted by RC4 method
then encrypted by Rijndeal method for more secrete. The secret message converted into ASCII
code.
C. Hiding secret message in the high frequency coefficient of image by using the LSB (Least
Significant Bit) algorithm.
2- Extraction Phase
The Extraction Phase contains:
A. Extract the cipher text form stego-image.
B. Decrypt the hidden message by decryption of Rijindeal and RC4 algorithm serially.
C. Take the inverse of wavelet transform for stego-image.
6. IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS
The proposed method was used images from type (JPEG) with size 256*256. Peak Signal to
noise ratio (PSNR) of the stego cover images objects was used for calculating the noise, as shown in
(1,2,3)[10]. The word want be hidden is "hello world" and the key is "hi" firstly encrypted using
RC4, so the word after encrypted became "darbIQumTRksC5g=".
The resulted secret text encrypted secondly using Rijndeal algorithm with the same key, so the
word became "9BThNJzNa8Wv2LMveaGOiQ= =".

16

International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-6367(Print),

ISSN 0976 - 6375(Online), Volume 6, Issue 1, January (2015), pp. 12-18 IAEME

The secret message was hidden in image. The results images obtained from the proposed
method compared with the original images by using PSNR, it can be seen that the steganographed
image is not distinguishable from the original. As shown in Table (1).
PSNR = 10 log (
/ ) (1)
Where:

=




   (, )

.. (2)

And the Mean Square Error (MSE) defined as:





  =  
 (, )  (, ) .. (3)

Where   represents the pixel in the stego image (the result of the steganography system).
Table (1) The Result of Implementation
Image
name

MSE
value

PSNR
value

Lana1

0.0132

66.9357

M1

0.0720

59.5599

S1

0.0105

67.9058

The image

17

Steg-image

International Journal of Computer Engineering and Technology (IJCET), ISSN 0976-6367(Print),

ISSN 0976 - 6375(Online), Volume 6, Issue 1, January (2015), pp. 12-18 IAEME

7. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we introduce technique for hiding secret text message in image using discrete
wavelet transform. DWT is applied on color images. We use multilayer security by using two
encryption methods. The Encryption and Decryption techniques by RC4 and Rijndeal respectively
have been used to make the system more secure. The evaluation of the proposed method shows
good performance that cannot distinguish between the stego-image and original image.
REFERENCE
1.

2.
3.

4.

5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

10.
11.

12.

13.

K. Curran, L. Xuelong, R. Clarke, 2005, "An Investigation into the use of the least
Significant Bit Substitution Technique in digital Watermarking", International Technologies
Research Group, University of Ulster, magee Campus, Northland Road, Northern Irland, UK,
American Journal of Applied Science 2(3), pp: 648-654.
E. Cole, "Hiding in Plain Sigt", John W. Wiley, ISBN:0-471-44449-9, 2003.
A. Wstfield, and Pfitzmann, "Attacks on Steganographic System", Third International
Workshop, IH'99 Dresden Germany, October Proceedings, Computer Science, 1768:61-76,
1999.
J. Zollner, H. Federrath, H. Klimant, A. Pfitzmann, R. Piotraschke, A. Westfeld, Wicke and
G. Wolf, "Modeling the Security of Steganographic System", Information Hiding, 2nd
International Workshop, IH'98 Portland, Oregon, USA, Computer Science,1525: 344254,1998.
Michael Weeks, "Digital Signal Processing Using MATLAB and Wavelets", Pearson
publications, ISBN 81-297-0272-X 2(13) :15-16, 2011.
Steinbuch, M Van de Molengraft and M.J.G, "Wavelet Theory and Applications", A
Literature Study, Eindhoven University of Technology, 53(7):53, 2005.
Robshaw, M. Stream Ciphers. RSA Laboratories Technical Report TR-701,
http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/index.html, July, 1995.
The RC4 Stream Encryption Algorithm, William Stallings, fifth edition, 2005.
Ali.K, Mahmod. R, "A Faster Version of Rijndael Cryptographic Algorithm Using Cyclic
Shift and Bit Wise Operations", International Journal of Cryptology Research 1(2): 215-223
(2009).
Lee K. and Chen H., "A High Capacity Image Steganographic Model", in IEEE Proceedings
on Vision Image and Signal Processing, China, pp.288-294, 2000.
Shamim Ahmed Laskar and Kattamanchi Hemachandran, Steganography Based on Random
Pixel Selection For Efficient Data Hiding International journal of Computer Engineering &
Technology (IJCET), Volume 4, Issue 2, 2013, pp. 31 - 44, ISSN Print: 0976 6367, ISSN
Online: 0976 6375.
Geetha C.R. and Dr.Puttamadappa C., Modified Weighted Embedding Method For Image
Steganography International journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering
&Technology (IJECET), Volume 4, Issue 3, 2013, pp. 154 - 161, ISSN Print: 0976- 6464,
ISSN Online: 0976 6472.
Eng. Zaynab Najeeb Abdulhameed and Prof. Maher K. Mahmood, High Capacity
Steganography Based on Chaos and Contourlet Transform For Hiding Multimedia Data
International journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering &Technology
(IJECET), Volume 5, Issue 1, 2014, pp. 26 - 42, ISSN Print: 0976- 6464, ISSN Online: 0976
6472.

18