AN EFFICIENT DATA SECURITY SYSTEM USING RNS

AND DATA HIDING TECHNIQUE

A RESEARCH PROPOSAL
BY

DAMILOLA DAVID POPOOLA

17/27/MCS014

SUBMITTED TO:
DR. R.M ISIAKA
PG CO-ORDINATOR

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 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

Any data that can be seen and understood easily without the need for further understanding is

called plain text. The means of changing the representation of such data with the purpose of

hiding its substance is referred to as encryption. Encrypting a plaintext leads to an unreadable

and difficult to understand representation called cipher text. Encryption is utilized to guarantee

that data escapes anybody for whom it isn't planned, even the individuals who can see the

encrypted data. The process of reverting cipher text to its original plaintext is called decryption.

Cryptography is the science of using the mathematics to encrypt and decrypt data.

Cryptography enables you to store sensitive information or transmit it across the insecure

networks (like the internet) such that it cannot be read by anyone except the intend recipient.

A cryptographic algorithm, or cipher, is a mathematical function used in the encryption and

decryption process. A cryptographic algorithm works in combination with a key a word,

number, or phrase to encrypt the plaintext. The security of encrypted data is entirely dependent

on two things; the strength of the cryptographic algorithm and the secrecy of the key.

Furthermore, in network security, cryptography has a long history of providing a way to store

sensitive information or transmit it across insecure networks (i.e. the Internet) so that it cannot

be read by anyone except the intended recipient, where the cryptosystem is a set of algorithms

combined with keys to convert the original message (Plain-text) to encrypted message (Cipher-

text) and convert it back in the intended recipient side to the original message. In computer

systems, the process consists of complex mathematical formulas that dictate the rules of

conversion process from plain text to cipher text and vice versa combined with the key.

However, some of encryption and decryption algorithms use the same key (i.e. sender, and

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receiver). And in other encryption and decryption algorithms they use different keys but these

keys must be related.

Steganography is the art and science of invisible communication. This is accomplished through

hiding information in other information, thus hiding the existence of the communicated

information. 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 differs from

cryptography in the sense that where cryptography focuses on keeping the contents of a

message secret, steganography focuses on keeping the existence of a message secret.

Steganography and cryptography are both ways to protect information from unwanted parties

but neither technology alone is perfect and can be compromised. Once the presence of hidden

information is revealed or even suspected, the purpose of steganography is partly defeated. The

strength of steganography can thus be amplified by combining it with cryptography.

The major issue to design any encryption and decryption algorithm is to improve the security

level. Therefore, this paper aims to propose an enhanced approach to improve the security level

and increase the performance by minimizing a significant amount of delay time to maintain the

security.

1.2 Statement of Problem

Although various approaches have been implemented towards the course of ensuring data

security, which has proved to be effective and a bit efficient. It is to be noted that all information

sent across from the sender to the receiver passes through a communication line which is

monitored by the server administrator. With the disparity that occurs between a plain text and

cipher text, the cipher text can be noticed easily by the administrator, making it accessible by

the administrator. This therefore calls for a huge task of proffering a means through which

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cipher text can be sent across to the receiver without the knowledge of the administrator and

also if by any means such data is noticed and accessed by the administrator, the time taken to

decrypt it will be long enough for the data to be decrypted by the supposed recipient. Since

cryptography was created as a technique for securing the secrecy of communication and many

different methods have been developed to encrypt and decrypt data in order to keep the message

secret, which unfortunately has sometimes not been enough to keep the contents of a message

secret. Thus, it may also be necessary to keep the existence of the message secret.

1.3 Aim and Objectives

The aim of this research is to implement an efficient information security system using residue

number system and data hiding technique.

The objectives are;

i. To change the representation of a text to numbers.

ii. To implement forward conversion for second level encryption.

iii. To implement reverse conversion for first level decryption.

iv. To implement an image compression algorithm.

v. To implement hide the existence of the text in an image.

vi. To evaluate the performance of the proposed system.

1.4 Scope of the Study

This research work is limited to the use of Residue Number System for the encryption and

decryption process, and lossless compression approach for the image compression.

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1.5 Significance of the study

This scheme will allow encrypted data to be sent securely over a network without the

knowledge of an intruder. It will further increase the understanding of how residue number

system can be applied in cryptography

1.5 Proposed Methodology

The method to be adopted in the proposed work involves both data encryption and data hiding.

Firstly, the data transformed to a numeric equivalent, thereafter, the process of encrypting and

decrypting the data will be done using Residue Number System, with respect to the moduli set

{2n-1, 2n, 2n +1}. Thereafter the encrypted data is hidden inside a given image, with the image

being compressed before and after the data hiding.

Start

Insert Plain
Text

Convert Plain Text to

Numbers

Encrypt Plain Text

Stop

Figure 1: Encryption Process

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 Start

Insert Encrypted
data

Decrypt Data

Stop

Figure 2: Decryption

Start

Insert Image

Compress Image

Stop

Figure 3: Image Compression

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 Start

Insert Compressed
Image

Insert Encrypted
Data

Hide Data in the

Image

Image containing
hidden data

Stop

Figure 4: Steganography

Furthermore, for the purpose of reducing the size of the image, the lossless compression

approach will be used, which is a better option than the lossy compression since it never

removes any information from the original image, by representing the data in mathematical

formulas. The original image’s integrity is maintained and the decompressed image output is

bit-by-bit identical to the original image input.

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1.6 Literature Review

A scheme was proposed by (Al-Hazaimeh, 2013), he introduced a new approach with the aim

of maintaining the security on the communication channels by making it difficult for attacker

to predicate a pattern as well as speed of the encryption / decryption scheme, due to the fact

that most of the proposed algorithms encountered some problems such as lack of robustness

and significant amount of time added to packet delay to maintain the security on the

communication channel between the terminals.

The implemented algorithm for the encryption and decryption consists of combination of

public key infrastructure for hybrid system and RC6 algorithm for confusion and diffusion

operations. The RC6 algorithm play the roles of generating a private position based on the

secrete value from public key infrastructure. Plain-text 1024- bits size divided to 2 blocks. One

of these blocks used as key after performed confusion and diffusion operations using RC6

algorithm. The last step is Insert the key inside the Cipher data based on the private position.

The result obtained shows that the average time required to encrypt the data is 0.2972729 ms

in 512-bits key length using the proposed approach, and to encrypt the data using AES is

0.8918188 ms in 512-bits key length.

An image encryption scheme was proposed by (Shashikala Channalli, 2009) which is very

similar to image steganography and video steganography. The scheme adopted Private marking

system using symmetric key steganography technique and LSB technique for hiding the secret

information.

The main goal of this method is to hide information on the output image of the instrument (such

as image displayed by an electronic advertising billboard).

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Following are the steps involved in embedding the secret information within a cover media.

a) Send the normal data that has to be displayed to the display board.

b) Using a suitable Steganography algorithm hide the secret data within the normal data before

sending it to the display board.

Description of the algorithm for embedding the secret message: Algorithm for embedding the

secret message is as follows:

a) Read the image from the source.

b) Divide the image into [R x C] smaller blocks .Where R & C are the first & second bytes of

the key respectively

c) Each smaller block is a combination of many pixels of different values.

d) The LSBs of the pixel are changed depending on the pattern bits and the secret message bits.

e) The pattern bits are considered in sequence form its MSB.

f) If the pattern bit is 0, then the first LSB of the pixel is changed [i.e if data bit is 1 and pixel

bit is 0, then pixel bit is changed to1 or else it is retained as it is.]

g) If the pattern bit is 1, then the second LSB of the pixel is changed accordingly.

h) A single bit of the secret message is distributed throughout the block. This is done to have

enough information so that correct information can be retrieved after decoding

i) Similarly the other bits are inserted in the remaining blocks.

j) If the length of the secret message is large, then it can be divided and stored in two or three

frames.

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k) To extract the information, operations contrary to the ones carried out in embedding are

performed.

A cloud-based scheme was proposed by (P. Sathyabama Gayathri, 2014), which supports

outsourcing of dynamic data, where the owner is capable of not only archiving and accessing

the data stored by the CSP, but also updating and scaling this data on the remote servers. The

proposed scheme enables the authorized users to ensure that they are receiving the most recent

version of the outsourced data. Moreover, in case of dispute regarding data integrity/newness,

a TTPA is able to determine the dishonest party. The data owner enforces access control for

the outsourced data by combining three cryptographic techniques: broadcast encryption, lazy

revocation, and key rotation. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme is a

robust model in terms of security.

Cloud storage model considered in this work has four main components as depicted.

i. A data owner can be an organization, which generates sensitive data that is to be outsourced

to the cloud and made available for only authorized users.

ii. A Trusted Third Party Auditor (TTPA) who is trusted by all other components and has the

capability to detect the dishonest party.

iii. A CSP who manages cloud services and provides paid storage service on its infrastructure

to the data owner, where he outsources the file and makes them available for authorized users.

iv. Authorized users – a set of owner’s clients who have the right to access the outsourced file.

An AES based algorithm was proposed by (Debajyoti Mukhopadhyay, 2014), which is a

framework which encrypts a file before it is uploaded on to the cloud. AES (Advanced

Encryption Standard) is one of the most secure encryption algorithms and not many attacks are

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successful on data which is encrypted using AES. This proposal solves the problem of most, if

not all, of the threats that data stored in the cloud faces. Our framework also suggests the use

of login id and password to ensure authentic and authorized access to a user’s data. Thus, if

used securely, cloud computing provides a user with amazing benefits and overcomes its only

disadvantage of security threat.

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References

Al-Hazaimeh, O. M. (2013). A new approach for complex encrypting and decrypting data.

International Journal of Computer Networks & Communications (IJCNC) Vol.5, No.2, , 95-

103.

Debajyoti Mukhopadhyay, G. S. (2014). Enhanced Security for Cloud Storage using File

Encryption. International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and

Technology, 55-98.

P. Sathyabama Gayathri, J. A. (2014). Enhancing Security of Dynamic Data for Storage

Services In Cloud Computing. International Conference on Innovations in Engineering and

Technology, 2137-2143.

Shashikala Channalli, A. J. (2009). Steganography An Art of Hiding Data. Shashikala

Channalli et al /International Journal on Computer Science and Engineering Vol.1(3), 137-141.

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