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Shikha Choudhary (ME-IT)

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 STEGANOGRAPHY
The word steganography is derived from the Greek words stegos meaning cover and Grafia
meaning writing defining it as covered writing. In image steganography the information is
hidden exclusively in images. Steganography is the art and science of secret communication
.It is the practice of encoding/embedding secret information in a manner such that the
existence of the information is invisible. The original files can be referred to as cover text,
cover image, or cover audio. After inserting the secret message it is referred to as stegomedium. A stego-key is used for hiding/encoding process to restrict detection or extraction of
the embedded data [2].

1.2 STEGANOGRAPHY AND CRYPTOGRAPHY

Steganography differs from cryptography [4]:

Steganography: Hide the messages inside the Cover medium, Many Carrier formats.

Breaking of steganography is known as Steganalysis.

Cryptography: Encrypt the message before sending to the destination, no need of

carrier/cover medium.

Breaking of cryptography is known as Cryptanalysis.

1.3 HISTORY
The term steganography came into use in 1500s after the appearance of Trithemius book on
the subject Steganographia [8].

1.3.1 Past
The word Steganography technically means covered or hidden writing. Its ancient origins can
be traced back to 440 BC. Although the term steganography was only coined at the end of the
15th century, the use of steganography dates back several millennia. In ancient times,
messages were hidden on the back of wax writing tables, written on the stomachs of rabbits,
or tattooed on the scalp of slaves. Invisible ink has been in use for centuries for fun by
children and students and for serious undercover work by spies and terrorists.

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1.3.2 Present
The majority of todays steganographic systems uses multimedia objects like image, audio,
video etc. as cover media because people often transmit digital pictures over email and other
Internet communication. Modern steganography uses the opportunity of hiding information
into digital multimedia files and also at the network packet level.

Hiding information into a medium requires following elements:

1. The cover medium(C) that will hold the secret message.
2. The secret message (M) , may be plain text, digital image file or any type of data.
3. The steganographic techniques
4. A stego-key (K) may be used to hide and unhide the message.

In modern approach, depending on the cover medium, steganography can be divided into five
types: 1. Text Steganography 2. Image Steganography 3. Audio Steganography 4. Video
Steganography 5. Protocol Steganography [8].

Text Steganography: Hiding information in text file is the most common method of
steganography. The method was to hide a secret message into a text message. After
coming of Internet and different type of digital le formats it has decreased in
importance. Text stenography using digital files is not used very often because the
text _les have a very small amount of excess data.

Image Steganography: Images are used as the popular cover medium for
steganography. A message is embedded in a digital image using an embedding
algorithm, using the secret key. The resulting stego-image is send to the receiver. On
the other side, it is processed by the extraction algorithm.

Audio Steganography: Audio steganography is concerned with embedding

information in an innocuous cover speech in a secure and robust manner.
Communication and transmission security and robustness are essential for
transmitting vital information to intended sources while denying access to
unauthorized persons.

Video Steganography: Video Steganography is a technique to hide any kind of files

in any extension into a carrying Video file.

Protocol Steganography The term protocol steganography is to embedding

information within network protocols such as TCP/IP. We hide information in the
header of a TCP/IP packet in some fields that can be either optional or are never used.

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APPLICATIONS OF STEGANOGRAPHY
i)
ii)
iii)
iv)
v)
vi)
vii)

Confidential Communication and Secret Data Storing

Protection of Data Alteration
Access Control System for Digital Content Distribution
E-Commerce
Media
Database Systems.
Digital watermarking [8].

1.5 OBJECTIVE
The main objective of the research is to design a feasible RS steganalysis resistant secure
algorithm which combines the use of both steganography and cryptography with the goals of
improving security, reliability, and efficiency for secret message. DES encryption algorithm
is used for encrypting the data into cipher text. Apart from that, LSB Steganography is
combined with the Visual Cryptography and Genetic Algorithm making it more secure from
RS steganalysis.

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CONCEPT AND PRINICIPLES

2.1 BASIC WORKING OF STEGANOGRAPHY

Steganography is the technique of hiding confidential information within any media.
Steganography is often confused with cryptography because the two are similar in the way
that they both are used to protect confidential information. The difference between the two is
in the appearance in the processed output; the output of steganography operation is not
apparently visible but in cryptography the output is scrambled so that it can draw attention
[8].

Figure 2.1.1 Steganography Diagram

Steganography today, however, is significantly more sophisticated than the examples above suggest,
allowing a user to hide large amounts of information within image and audio files. These forms of
steganography often are used in conjunction with cryptography so that the information is doubly
protected; first it is encrypted and then hidden so that an adversary has to first find the information
(an often difficult task in and of itself) and then decrypt it [7].

Figure 2.1.2 Block Diagram of Steganography and Data Transmission

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2.2 STEGANALYSIS
Steganalysis is "the process of detecting steganography by looking at variances between bit
patterns and unusually large file sizes". The goal of steganalysis is to identify suspected
information streams, determine whether or not they have hidden messages encoded into them,
and, if possible, recover the hidden information. The challenge of steganalysis is that:
1. The suspect information stream, such as a signal or a file, may or may not have hidden
data encoded into them. 2. The hidden data, if any, may have been encrypted before being
inserted into the signal or file. 3. Some of the suspect signal or file may have noise or
irrelevant data encoded into them (which can make analysis very time consuming) [6].

2.3 CRYPTOGRAPHY
Cryptography encodes information in such a way that nobody can read it, except the person
who holds the key. More advanced crypto techniques ensure that the information being
transmitted has not been modified in transit. There is some difference in cryptography and
steganography, in cryptography the hidden message is always visible, because information is
in plain text form but in steganography hidden message is invisible [6].

Figure 2.3.1 Basic Cryptography Model

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CHAPTER 3

LITERATURE SURVEY

3.1 LSB ALGORITHM

The proposed scheme uses RSA or Diffie Hellman algorithm to encrypt secret information.
To provide higher security the secret information is encrypted first and encrypted ASCII
value is converted in binary form. In this method the least significant bits of some or all of
the bytes inside an image is replaced with a bits of the secret message. The image is now used
as a cover to embed the encrypted information. The Least Significant Bit algorithm is faster
and reliable and compression ratio is moderate compared to other algorithms.

Sender Side: The image pixels at the same time are also converted into binary form. The
image is now used as a cover to embed the encrypted information. This process is done by
LSB encoder which replaces the least significant bit of pixel values with the encrypted
information bits. The modified picture is now termed as Stego image [7].

Figure 3.1.1 Proposed Steganography Mechanisms for Sender

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Receiver side: Upon reception of Stego image the receiver firstly converts the pixels into
their corresponding binary values. The LSB decoder then detaches the encrypted data from
image pixel values. The encrypted data is decrypted using decryption algorithms. This is
how; the plain text is recovered from image [7].

Figure 3.1.2 Proposed Steganography Mechanisms for Receiver.

3.2 VISUAL CRYPTOGRAPHY

Visual Cryptography is a special encryption technique to hide information in images in such a
way that it can be decrypted by the human vision if the correct key image is used. The
technique was proposed by Naor and Shamir in 1994. Visual Cryptography uses two
transparent images. One image contains random pixels and the other image contains the
secret information. It is impossible to retrieve the secret information from one of the images.
Both transparent images and layers are required to reveal the information.
Each pixel of the images is divided into smaller blocks. There are always the same number
white (transparent) and black blocks. If a pixel is divided into two parts, there are one white
and one black block. If the pixel is divided into four equal parts, there are two white and two
black blocks [4].

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Figure 3.2.1 Pixel Partition

3.3 GENETIC ALGORITHM

To ensure the security against the RS analysis, a new steganography method based on genetic
algorithm is been introduced.. After embedding the secret message in LSB (least significant
bit) of the cover image, the pixel values of the stego-image are modified by the genetic
algorithm to keep their statistic characters. Thus, the existence of the secret message is hard
to be detected by the RS analysis [2].

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CHAPTER 4

PROPOSED SYSTEM

4.1 PROPOSED SYSTEM

The proposed work is basically a framework designed in MATLAB with two modules e.g.
Steganography using Genetic Algorithm and Visual Cryptography. The proposed system
model of the Steganography using Genetic Algorithm and Visual Cryptography is shown in
the Figure 1. An input image is accepted as cover image which is used to hide the secret
message. An input image is accepted as cover image for the input message in plain text
format. After embedding the secret message in LSB (least significant bit) of the cover image,
the pixel values of the stego-image are modified by the genetic algorithm to keep their
statistic characters. The experimental results should prove the proposed algorithms
effectiveness in resistance to steganalysis with better visual quality. The user can select their
targeted information in terms of plain text for embedding the secret message in LSB of the
cover image. The implications of the visual cryptography will enable the pixels value of the
stego-image to keep their statistic character. LSB steganography has low computation
complexity and high embedding capacity, in which a secret binary sequence is used to
replace the least significant bits of the host medium. This is also one of the strong algorithms
which keeps the information proof from any intruder channel [5].

Figure 4.1.1 The Proposed System Model

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4.2 THE WORKING PHASES OF PROPOSED SYSTEM

The proposed system is divided into following important six phases:

SENDERS SIDE:

Encryption Phase: The data to be encrypted is first inputted by the user. The encrypted text
is called cipher text. The encryption algorithm used is DES, which is comparatively
considered more secure than RSA encryption.

Figure 4.2.1 Encryption Phase

Encoding Phase: The encrypted cipher is then encoded into the least significant bits
of an appropriate image..

Figure 4.2.2 Encoding Phase

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Pixel Modification Phase: Genetic algorithm is used to modify the pixel locations
for enhancing security and reliability

Figure 4.2.3 Pixel Modification Phase

RECEIVERS SIDE:

Overlapping Phase: The two shares of the same image are needed to retrieve the
original information as the cipher data is distributed in both the images, it is
impossible for anyone to get the data by

Figure 4.2.4 Overlapping Phase

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Decoding Phase: In the decoding phase, the cipher data is decoded from the stego

image. The cipher data can be retrieved by the inverse process of encoding process
that was employed at the sender side.

Figure 4.2.5 Decoding Phase

Decryption Phase: In the decryption phase, the cipher data is converted into the
original data. The DES algorithm is used in the inverse manner using the same
encryption key (secret key) as used during encryption of the original data.

Figure 4.2.6 Decryption Phase

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4.3 ABOUT ENCRYPTION MODULE

The original data to be encrypted is given as input by the user.

The encryption algorithm used is DES (Data Encryption Standard).

DES is a private key encryption scheme, that is, only the sender and receiver know
the secret key.

DES uses a 56-bit secret key to encrypt data.

DES is based on a cipher known as The Feistily block cipher.

To accomplish encryption, most secret key algorithms use two main techniques
known as substitution and permutation.

Substitution is simply a mapping of one value to another whereas permutation is a

reordering of the bit positions for each of the inputs.

The two inputs for DES algorithm are: plain text to be encrypted and the secret key.

DES is therefore a symmetric, 64 bit block cipher as it uses the same key for both
encryption and decryption and only operates on 64 bit blocks of data at a time (be
they plaintext or cipher text).

The key size used is 56 bits, however a 64 bit (or eight-byte) key is actually input

Once a plain-text message is received to be encrypted, it is arranged into 64 bit blocks

required for input. If the number of bits in the message is not evenly divisible by 64,
then the last block will be padded.

Multiple permutations and substitutions are incorporate throughout in order to

increase the difficulty of performing a cryptanalysis on the cipher.

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Figure 4.3.1 DES Encryption in Proposed Model

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ALGORITHM DESCRIPTION

The proposed project work consists of mainly two algorithms which are:

Steganography using Genetic Algorithm

Visual Cryptography with Threshold.

The application initiates with Steganography module where the cover image will be
encrypted to generate Stego image. The steganographic image generated in this module will
act as an input for visual cryptographic module [5].
Algorithm: Steganography
Input: Cover Image
Output: Stego Image

Step 1: Read the cover image.

Step 2: Find out the pixel values of cover image.
Step 3: Read the secret data character wise.
Step 4: Convert each character into its equivalent ASCII code.
Step 5: ASCII code is converted into binary values.
Step 6: Enter the secret key.
Step 7: Secret data is converted into cipher data.
Step 8: The stream of 8-bits (cipher data) are embedded into LSB of each pixel of the
Cover image.
Step 9: To apply Genetic Algorithm in the stego image the pixel location should be modified.
Algorithm: Visual Cryptography
Input: Stego-Image
Output: Encrypted Shares

Step 1: Read Stego-Image generated.

Step 2: The stego image is breaked into three layers namely split-1, split-2, and split-3
These three files are contain in the hidden data and to get the hidden data
Step 3: The re-assembled picture and the extracted data will be gained again.

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IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS

6.1 IMPLEMNTATION & RESULTS

The project work is designed on 64 bit Windows OS with Core i3 Processor with 4 GB RAM
and 1.80GHz using Matlab Platform. The original image is in PNG format of 5.28 KB
whereas 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES HELD AT LONDON as a plaintext message shown in
Figure 6.1.1 [5].

Figure 6.1.1 Original Image

The original message is embedded into the image by using LSB insertion method. The
resultant image is called as stego image shown in Figure 6.1.2. Then apply genetic algorithm
to modify the pixel location and detection of message is complex.

Figure 6.1.2 Stego- Image

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Then apply visual cryptography scheme stego image is splitted into two shares based on
threshold. The shares of the stego image are shown in Figure 6.1.3.

Figure 6.1.3 Shares of Stego Image

It is almost impossible for anyone who will attempt to decrypt the encrypted data within that
image to reveal if the secret shares which they possess are set of all encrypted shares or
certain secret shares are missing.

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PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

The performance of the proposed system is experimented by performing steganalysis and

conducting benchmarking test for analysing parameters like Mean Squared Error (MSE) and
Peak Signal to Noise Ratio [5].
o Cover image : rice.png
o Size : 256*256
o Mean Square Error (MSE) : 0.0678
o Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) : 59.8188db

After applying Genetic Algorithm the measured performance is shown in below

o Mean Square Error (MSE) : 0.794
o Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) : 39.4011db

After applying genetic algorithm all the pixel location are altered. Due to the change the
pixel location MSE and PSNR values are increased.

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CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

CONCLUSION
The proposed system has discussed implementation of securely using steganography using
genetic algorithm along with visual cryptography. It can be concluded that when normal
image security using steganographic and visual cryptographic technique is applied, it makes
the task of the investigators unfeasible to decrypt the encoded secret message. The security
features of the steganographic are highly optimized using genetic algorithm. The proposed
system is highly resilient against RS attack and optimally used for gray scale output in visual
secret shares making it highly compatible for real-time applications.

FUTURE WORK
The future work could be towards the enhancing visual cryptography scheme for gray scale
image in various platforms.

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REFERENCES

1. Mrs. Kavitha, Kavita Kadam, Ashwini Koshti, Priya Dunghav, Steganography Using
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Recent Steganography Researches, World Applied Programming, Vol (2), No (3),
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3. Shailender Gupta, Ankur Goyal and Bharat Bhushan , Information Hiding Using
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10. www.wikipedia.com

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