International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology (IJMET)

Volume 10, Issue 01, January 2019, pp. 203–211, Article ID: IJMET_10_01_020
Available online at http://www.iaeme.com/ijmet/issues.asp?JType=IJMET&VType=10&IType=1
ISSN Print: 0976-6340 and ISSN Online: 0976-6359

© IAEME Publication Scopus Indexed

VIDEO STEGANOGRAPHY USING LSB

ALGORITHM FOR SECURITY APPLICATION
R. BanuPriya
Assistant Professor, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
K.Ramakrishnan College of Technology
Trichy, Tamilnadu, India

J. Deepa
Assistant Professor, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
K.Ramakrishnan College of Technology
Trichy, Tamilnadu, India

S. Suganthi
Professor, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering,
K.Ramakrishnan College of Technology,
Trichy, Tamilnadu, India

ABSTRACT
The project proposes the enhancement of security system for secret data
communication through video file using adaptive data hiding with cryptographic
technique. A given input video file is converted into frame sequences and then
Encrypted the video using Chaos Encryption algorithm. And one of frame will be
selected to conceal the secret data for secured data communication. The proposed
technique also uses RC7 Encryption for encrypting a secret text data into cipher text
to avoid data hacking issues. After data encryption, the data hider will conceal the
secret encrypted data into the selected frame using adaptive LSB embedding
algorithm. Although encryption achieves certain security effects, they make the secret
messages unreadable and unnatural or meaningless. These unnatural messages
usually attract some unintended observers’ attention. The data hiding technique uses
the adaptive LSB replacement algorithm for concealing the secret message bits into
the image. In the data extraction module, the secret data will be extracted by using
relevant key for choosing the pixel coefficients and it will be decrypted to get original
data using encryption key. Finally the performance of this proposal in data encryption
and hiding will be analysed based on image and data recovery.
Key words: Steganography; Chaos Algorithm; RC7 Algorithm; LSB Algorithm.
Cite this Article: R. BanuPriya, J. Deepa, S. Suganthi, Video Steganography Using
LSB Algorithm for Security Application, International Journal of Mechanical
Engineering and Technology 10(1), 2019, pp. 203–211.
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 R. BanuPriya, J. Deepa, S. Suganthi

1. INTRODUCTION
The word Steganography is derived from Greek means “Hidden Writing” [1] and dates back
to 440 B.C. [2]. Some earlier examples as reported in [3] include: shaving scalp of a most
trusted slave to etch a secret message and waiting for the hair to grow after which he was sent
to allies who retrieves it by his head; engraving messages on wooden Tablet and then
covering it wax. The receiver retrieves it by melting the coated wax. A comprehensive insight
on unconventional steganographic schemes has well been elucidated in [4]. Steganography is
an ancient art [5] that with technological revolution has now been evolved into a science [6]
to avert detection of hidden data [7] delivered terminology for steganography while Simmon
[8] gave the first model for steganography by discussing the scenario of Alice and Bob held in
separate prison cells had to communicate through Warden Wendy. Types of steganographic
system are discussed in [9] as pure (with no Stego key), private key and public key
respectively whereas three techniques for steganography including insertion, substitution and
cover generation have been discussed in [10,11]. Cryptography, having Greek origin and with
same inception period as that of steganography, means “Secret Writing” [12] the essence of
which is to inarticulate secret information in contrast to steganography whose sole
perseverance is to conceal the fact that such information does really exist. Nowadays security
of private information is a major issue over the internet. Because in today‟s digitized world,
the whole communication is done through internet and transferring private data from one end
to another using various applications such as e-mails, chats, etc. but there is main issue that is
how to protect our confidential information from hackers or cyber criminals over internet. To
solve such problems and to maintain the security of data, we should follow a algorithm which
should not only encrypt the data into another form but also hides its presence and video
steganography helps to provide such a secure environment over internet. To protect the
private information from being misused by the attackers [12, 13] and to overcome the
alteration of information, a novel data hiding approach is used. Steganography is one of the
best information hiding technique, which hides the presence of secret message behind a
multimedia [14, 15] file without changing the perceptual quality of media file and provide
secure communication between two parties. On the basis of Digital media, steganography is
categorized as; text, image, audio, video and protocol based steganography. Here we are
dealing with video steganography. Video steganography is a process of hiding the secret
information behind video bit streams. The main goal of video steganography is to hide
presence of secret message from human visual system. Various companies [16, 17] and
organizations are following this concept to secure their confidential information and databases
from intruders. Video files can hide large amount of hidden data behind their bit streams than
images. So, that why they are more preferable than image steganography.

2. PROBLEM STATEMENT
We have studied that there is lots of limitations in previous algorithms which are not good
enough for video steganography process. In previous research works, the symmetric key
based encryption algorithms (like XOR Transformation, permutation operation, DES, 3DES
and AES) are used which can be easily decrypted by the attackers to understand the code of
original hidden message instead of Asymmetric algorithms. As, sequential encoding is a good
encryption method for securing the embedding process of video steganography but still it has
some limitations as by using sequential encoding, intruders can identify the presence of
hidden message by sequentially analyzing the video frames. So this technique is not much
secure for steganography process. To preserve the security of secret information, RSA
encryption algorithm and key based random frame selection algorithms are followed in our
proposed work. For embedding process, 1LSB technique is used to embed data in video

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 Video Steganography Using LSB Algorithm for Security Application

frames. But simple LSB technique is not resist to attacks and produces the poor value of peak
signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and high value of mean square errors (MSE) which are both the
image quality parameters, so to avoid this problem we will use an improved version of this
technique. Hiding in LSB bits change the resolution of pixels which may be easily visible to
human eye during detection mechanisms [18] and also they are very easy to attack by
attackers. But proposed technique can embed large amount of data than previous one and
shows the better result for video quality parameter. To maintain the quality of video, identical
match based substitution algorithms are applied in our proposed work. Our algorithm
provides better solution for social problems such as manipulation of data and frame dropping.
As we are hiding same secret message in all selected random frames. For example, if any
unauthorized person such as hacker or cyber criminals tries to drop the some steganographed
frames then we can still recovered the secret information from other left stegano frames. So it
helps to resist attacks on video clip.

3. SYSTEM PARAMETERS
There are few terms which need to be understood in the context of steganography. These
elements form the building blocks of a steganography system. Figure 1 shows a typical model
of steganography.
Definitions:
(1) Hidden message - This is the secret data which needs to be communicated over a public
channel. It can be a text, image, audio or video.
(2) Cover Media - The carrier into which the secret information is hidden. The message
should be

Figure 1. Steganography Model

embedded in the redundant regions of the cover media. It should be done in such a way
that there are no major alterations in the statistical properties of the cover.
(3) Embedding Algorithm - It is defined as the technique with which the message is
embedded into the cover media. The aim of the algorithm is to not only embed the
information efficiently but also not affect the quality of the cover media.
For example, for the visual quality of an image.
(4) Stego Media - It is the synthesized image obtained bythe combination of the payload and
cover media after the application of the algorithm. The stego media should be statistically
similar to the cover media.

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 R. BanuPriya, J. Deepa, S. Suganthi

(5) Adversary - The attacker or hacker who is interested in and intends to extract the hidden
information from the stegomedia in the communication channel.
(6) Perceptibility - It describes the ability to detect the presence of hidden information in a
stego media. For example, the visual perception in an image. It is dependent on the nature and
complexity of embedding algorithm.
(7) Robustness - It defines how immune the payload is in the event of attacks like
modification and destruction on the stego media. A robust algorithm makes it difficult for an
attacker even to detect the hidden message.
(8) Security - It the level of secrecy in the process. Factors like confidentiality, authenticity
and data integrity of the hidden message are taken into account. The ability of the receiver to
verify error-free delivery of message corresponds to a high level of security.

4. PROPOSEDMETHODOLOGY
In this section, the proposed method will present. The proposed method is divided into two
algorithms; the embedding algorithm, and the extraction algorithm.
Data Protection system for secret data transmission based on, Security enhancement
system through
 Video Encryption based on encryption
 Data encryption based on RC7
 Data embedding technique based on adaptive least significant bit replacement algorithm.

A. Encryption System
The encryption system is illustrated in the Figure 2.The embedding algorithm will plan to
hide the byte of the secret message in three pixels only based on randomization in the cover
frame. It takes the cover image and the secret message characters as an input and converts
each byte from the secret message to its binary format using the RC7 encoding format.

Figure 2. Encryption System

B. Decryption System
Stego video is a video in which encrypted data is hidden.chaos decryption converts noisy
video into orginal video.This orginal video is seperatated into frames.RC7 decryption is used
to retrive the original data from encrypted data.The decryption system is illustrated in the
Figure 3.

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 Video Steganography Using LSB Algorithm for Security Application

Figure 3. Decryption System

Rc7 Algorithm
As e-mail, chat and other forms of electronic communication become increasingly necessary
by the day, it becomes all the more important to simultaneously protect and maintain the
security of all the data involved in these operations. To achieve this, cryptography comes into
the picture. Cryptography is achieved by using various algorithms which are based on either
substitution of plain text with some cipher text, or by using certain transcription techniques, or
a combination of both. Based on the type of key being used, the algorithms could be classified
into Symmetric key algorithms (e.g., AES, DES, RC5, Blowfish, etc.,) and Asymmetric key
algorithms (e.g., RSA, MD5, SHA, etc.,).
Symmetric key algorithms are those in which encryption and decryption are performed
using the same key. Asymmetric key algorithms are the ones in which encryption and
decryption are performed using different keys.
The RC algorithms are a set of symmetric-key encryption algorithms invented by Ron
Rivest. The "RC" may stand for either Rivest's Cipher or, more informally, Ron's code. There
have been six RC algorithms so far. We have proposed an improvised version of the RC-6
algorithm, namely RC-7 in our paper.
RC4 is a stream cipher designed in 1987 by Ron Rivest for RSA data Security (now RSA
Security). It is a variable key-size stream cipher with byte-oriented operations. This algorithm
is used for random permutation. RC4 is used in the Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer
Security (SSL/TLS) standards that have been defined for communication between Web
browsers and servers.
In 1995, Ronald L. Rivest described the RC5 algorithm , keeping in mind a number of
objectives such as RC5 being a symmetric block cipher, fast, suitable for hardware and
software implementation, adaptable to processors of different word-lengths, iterative in
structure (with variable no. of rounds) and with variable-length cryptographic key . RC5 was
a parameterized algorithm which was intended to be easy to implement.
Further, in 1998, Ronald L. Rivest, M. J. B. Robshaw, R. Sidney and Y. L. Yin gave the
RC6 algorithm, which was a new block cipher submitted to NIST for consideration as the new
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). The design of RC6 began with a consideration of RC5
as a potential candidate for an AES submission. Modifications were then made to meet the
AES requirements, to increase security, and to improve performance .The inner loop however,
is based around the same „half-round‟ found in RC5. Like RC5, RC6 is also parameterized.
RC5 & RC6 Block Ciphers
RC6 operates on units of 4 w-bit words using the 6 operations as follows:

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 R. BanuPriya, J. Deepa, S. Suganthi

- b: integer subtraction modulo 2^w

-or of w-bit words
multiplication modulo 2^w
-bit word 'a' to the left by the given amount by the least significant low
bits of b
-bit word a to the right by the amount given by the least significant
low bits of b.
The two main features in RC6 compared to RC5 are:
A. Inclusion of Integer Multiplication: -
It is used to increase the diffusion achieved per round so that fewer rounds were needed and
the speed of cipher increased.
B. Use of 4-bit Register: -
The reason for using 4-bit working registers instead of 2-bit is technical. RC6 is a secure,
compact and simple block cipher. It offers considerable flexibility and good performance. Its
simplicity allows analysts to quickly refine and improve estimates of its security.
RC7 Block Cipher
RC7 Algorithm – Design is illustrated in the Figure 4. To improve the encryption efficiency
of the already existing RC6 algorithm, RC7 has been proposed which takes relatively less
time to encrypt data and is comparatively more flexible. Instead of four working registers,
RC7 makes use of six such registers which makes it a better alternative to RC6 algorithm.

Figure 4. RC7 Algorithm -- Design

Input: Plaintext stored in six w-bit input registers “A, B, C, D, E, and F”
Number of rounds “r”
W-bit round keys “S [0 . . . 2r + 1]”

Output: Cipher text stored in A, B, C, D, E, F

Procedure:
B = B + S [0]
D = D + S [1]

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 Video Steganography Using LSB Algorithm for Security Application

F = F + S [2]
for i = 1 to r do
{
t = (B × (2B + 1)) <<<lg w
u = (D × (2D + 1)) <<<lg w
v = (F × (2F + 1)) <<<lg w
A = ((A ⊕ t) <<<u) + S [2i+1]
C = ((C ⊕ u) <<<t) + S [2i+ 2]
E = ((E ⊕ v) <<<t) + S [2i+ 3]
(A, B, C, D, E, F) = (B, C, D, E, F, A)}
A = A + S [2r - 1]
C = C + S [2r]
E = E + S [2r + 1]
LSB Algorithm
The Least Significant Bit embedding technique is a technique which is used to hide the data
behind the cover image such that it cannot be seen by human eye. The images used as cover
images are generally in 8-bit, 24-bit format .Select the message that is to be hidden behind the
cover image. Embed the required number of bits in order to hide the MSB (Most Significant
Bit) of the message behind the LSB (Least Significant Bit) of the cover image. Since the MSB
contains the most important information of the image and the LSB contains the least
important information of the image, it does not cause much difference in the image and thus
we can obtain the stego image which looks similar to the original image. LSB Algorithm –
Design is illustrated in the Figure 5.

Figure 5. LSB Algorithm

Chaos Algorithm
Encryption and decryption using chaotic key sequence generated by sequence of logistic map
and sequence of states of linear feedback shift register. Chaos algorithm consists of two steps.
First step is the creation of an encryption key and another one is encryption of video file itself
using aforementioned key. First stage is conversion of video into black and white by grey
scale conversion method. Suppose we were to encrypt an 8-bit greyscale image (MxN pixels),
the random number will produce till the end of image by using logistic map function.
The logistic map function will produce pseudo random sequences .The expression for
generation of pseudo random sequence is given as
Xn+1 = r Xn(1-Xn)

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 R. BanuPriya, J. Deepa, S. Suganthi

5. OUTPUT
The project presented that encryption of compressed video bit streams and hiding privacy
information to protect videos during transmission or cloud storage.

(a) Performance Graph

(b)

Figure.6. Simulated results (a) & (b)

Chaos algorithm was used here to encrypt/decrypt video before/after data
embedding/extraction. In order to adapt to different application scenarios, data extraction was
done either in the encrypted domain or in the decrypted domain to recover original data
without any loss. Finally the simulated results prove that (Figure 6) the utilized methods give
the better bitrates and high structure with more compatibility.

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