STEGANOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION:
The desire to send a message as safely and as securely as possible has been the point of discussion since time immemorial. Information is the wealth of any organization. This makes security-issues top priority to an organization dealing with confidential data. Whatever is the method we choose for the security purpose, the burning concern is the degree of security. Steganography is the art of covered or hidden writing. The word steganography is derived from the Greek words steganos which means covered and graphie which means writing. Thus steganography literally means covered writing.Steganography has been used throughout history for secret communications. Steganography, in general, relies on the imperfection of the human auditory and visual systems. Steganography brings science to the art of hiding information. The purpose of steganography is to convey a message inside of conduit of misrepresentation such that the existence of message is both hidden and difficult to recover when discovered. The steganography uses the illusion of normality to mask the existence of covert activity. The illusion is manifested through the use of myriad of forms including written documents photographs, paintings, music, sounds, physical items, and even the human body.Two parts of system are required to accomplish the objective, successful masking of the message and keeping the key to its location and /or deciphering a secret. Steganography in the modern day sense of the word usually refers to information or a file that has been concealed inside a digital picture, video or an audio file. What steganography essentially does is exploit human perception; human senses or not trained to look for files that have information hidden inside of them. Generally, in steganography the actual information is not maintained in its original format and there by it is converted into an alternative multimedia files which in turn is being hidden within another object. This apparent message is send through the network to the recipient where the actual message is separated from it.

Steganography is often confused with cryptology because the two are similar in the way that they both are used to protect important information. The difference between the two is that Steganography involves hiding information so it appears that no information is hidden at all. If a person or persons views the object that the information is hidden inside of he or she will have no idea that there is any hidden information, therefore the person will not attempt to decrypt the information. In the modern age so many steganographic techniques have been designed which works with the above concerned objects. More often in todays security advancement, we sometimes come across certain cases in which a combination of Cryptography and Steganography is used to achieve data privacy over secrecy. Various software tools are also available in steganography. Steganography is used to have a level of privacy while doing data communication with others. We have already discussed several methods related with that. But only the concealment of data may not give the best result always. So, some extra level of security along with the privacy has to be incorporated. Steganography, especially combined with cryptography, is a powerful tool which enables people to communicate without possible eavesdroppers even knowing there is a form of communication in the first place. The methods used in the science of steganography have advanced a lot over the past centuries, especially with the rise of the computer era. Although the techniques are still not used very often, the possibilities are endless. Again the concept of Dual Steganography i.e., first application of steganography in between the embedding object and the cover object and then again apply the same method with the help of other object, can be developed to obtain a new definition of security. Concept of object self encryption technique before the application of steganography to hide that inside a cover can also be developed to achieve a level of security. 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[3]. In modern approach, depending on the nature of cover object, steganography can be divided into three types they are

Image Steganography Audio Steganography Video Steganography

1.1

TYPES OF STEGANOGRAPHY:
IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY: To hide information, straight message insertion may encode every bit of information

1.1.1

in the image or selectively embed the message in noisy areas that draw less attention those areas where there is a great deal of natural color variation. The message may also be scattered randomly throughout the image. A number of ways exist to hide information in digital media. Common approaches include Least significant bit insertion Masking and filtering Redundant Pattern Encoding Encrypt and Scatter Algorithms and transformations Each of these techniques can be applied, with varying degrees of success.

1.1.1.1

Least significant bit insertion:

Least significant bit (LSB) insertion is a common and simple approach to embed information in an image file. In this method the LSB of a byte is replaced within Ms bit. This technique works well for image, audio and video steganography. To the human eye, the resulting image will look identical to the cover object.

Fig1.1: Block diagram for Image Steganography For example, if we consider image steganography then the letter A can be hidden in three pixels (assuming no compression). The original raster data for 3 pixels (9 bytes) may be (00100111 11101001 11001000) (00100111 11001000 11101001) (11001000 00100111 11101001) The binary value for A is 10000001. Inserting the binary value for A in the three pixels would resulting (00100111 11101000 11001000) (00100110 11001000 11101000) (11001000 00100111 11101001) The underlined bits are the only three actually changed in the 8 bytes used. On average, LSB requires that only half the bits in an image be changed. You can hide data in the least and second least significant bits and still the human eye would not be able to discern it. The resultant image for the above data insertion and the original cover image are given below.

Fig. 1.2: The cover image

Fig.1.3: The stego-image (after A is inserted)

1.1.1.2

Masking and filtering:

Masking and filtering techniques are mostly used on 24 bit and grey scale images. They hide info in a way similar to watermarks on actual paper and are sometimes used as digital watermarks. Masking images entails changing the luminance of the masked area. The smaller the luminance change, the less of a chance that it can be detected. Observe that the luminance in Figure 2 is at 15% in the mask region if it was decreased then it would be nearly invisible. Masking is more robust than LSB insertion with respect to compression, cropping, and some image processing. Masking techniques embed information integral to the cover image than just hiding it in the noise level. This makes it more suitable than LSB with, for instance, lossy JPEG images.

1.1.1.3

REDUNDANT PATTERN ENCODING:

Patchwork and other similar tools do redundant pattern encoding, which is a sort of spread spectrum technique. It works by scattering the message throughout the picture. This makes the image more resistant to cropping and rotation. Smaller secret images work better to increase the redundancy embedded in the cover image, and thus make it easier to recover if the stego-image is manipulated.
1.1.1.4

ENCRYPT AND SCATTER:

The Encrypt and Scatter technique tries to emulate white noise. It is mostly used in image steganography. White Noise Storm is one such program that employs spread spectrum and frequency hopping. It does this by scattering the message throughout an image on eight channels within a random number that is generated by the previous window size and data channel. The channels then swap rotate, and interlace amongst each other. Each channel represents one bit and as a result there are many unaffected bits in each channel. This technique is a lot harder to extract a message out of than an LSB scheme because to decode you must first detect that a hidden image exists and extract the bit pattern from the file. While that is true for any stego-image you will also need the algorithm and stego key to decode the bit pattern, both of which are not required to recover a message from LSB. Some people prefer this method due to the considerable amount of extra effort that someone without the algorithm and stego-key would have to go through to extract the message. Even though White Noise Storm provides extra security against message extraction it is just as susceptible as straight LSB to image degradation due to image processing.
1.1.1.5

ALGORITHMS AND TRANSFORMATIONS:

LSB modification technique for images does hold good if any kind of compression is done on the resultant stego-image e.g. JPEG, GIF etc [20].JPEG images use the discrete cosine transform to achieve compression. DCT is a lossy compression transform because the cosine values cannot be calculated exactly, and repeated calculations using limited precision numbers introduce rounding errors into the final result. Variances between original data values and restored data values depend on the method used to calculate DCT.

1.1.2 AUDIO STEGANOGRAPHY: In a computer-based audio steganography system, secret messages are embedded in digital sound. The secret message is embedded by slightly altering the binary sequence of a sound file. Existing audiosteganography software can embed messages in WAV,AU, and even MP3 sound files .Embedding secret messages in digital sound is usually a more difficult process than embedding messages in other media, such as digital images.

Fig 1.4: Block diagram for Audio steganography

In order to conceal secret messages successfully, a variety of methods for embedding information in digital audio have been introduced. These methods range from rathersimple algorithms that insert information in the form of signal noise to more powerful methods that exploit sophisticated signal processing techniques to hide information. The list of methods that are commonly used for audio steganography are listed and discussed below.

LSB coding Parity coding Phase coding Spread spectrum Echo hiding

1.1.2.1 LSB coding: Using the least-significant bit is possible; as modifications will usually not create audible changes to the sounds. Another method involves taking advantage of human limitations. It is possible to encode messages using frequencies that are inaudibleto the human ear. Using any frequencies above 20.000Hz, messages can be hidden inside sound files and will not be detected by human checks.

Fig.1.5: The signal level comparisons between a WAVcarrier file before (above) and after (below) the LSBcoding are done.

1.1.2.2 PARITY CODING: Instead of breaking a signal down into individual samples, the parity coding method breaks a signal down into separate regions of samples and encodes each bit from the secret message in a sample regions parity bit. If the parity bit of a selected region does not matches the secret bit to be encoded, the process flips the LSB of one of the samples in the region.

Thus, the sender has more of a choice in encoding the secret bit, and the signal can be changed in a more unobtrusive fashion.

1.1.2.3 PHASE CODING:

Phase coding addresses the disadvantages of the noise inducing methods of audio steganography. Phase coding relies on the fact that the phase components of sound are not as perceptible to the human ear as noise is. Rather than introducing perturbations, the technique encodes the message bits as phase shifts in the phase spectrum of a digital signal, achieving an inaudible encoding in terms of signal-to-perceived noise ratio.

Fig.1.6: The signals before and after Phase coding procedure

1.1.2.4 SPREAD SPECTRUM:

In the context of audio steganography, the basic in the context of audio steganography, the basic spread spectrum (SS) method attempts to spread secret information across the audio signals frequency spectrum as much as possible. This is analogous to system using an implementation of the LSB coding that randomly spreads the message bits over the entire sound file.

However, unlike LSB coding, the SS method spreads the secret message over the sound files frequency spectrum, using a code that is independent of the actual signal. As a result, the final signal occupies a bandwidth in excess of what is actually required for transmission

Fig 1.7: Spread Spectrum

1.5 ECHO HIDING: In echo hiding, information is embedded in a sound file by introducing an echo into the discrete signal. Like the spread spectrum method, it too provides advantages in that it allows for a high data transmission rate and provides superior robustness when compared to the noise inducing methods. If only one echo was produced from the original signal, only one

bit of information could be encoded. Therefore, the original signal is broken down into blocks before the encoding process begins. Once the encoding process is completed, the blocks are concatenated back together to create the final signal.

Fig 1.8: An example of echo hiding

Also, a message can be encoded using musical tones with a substitution scheme. For example, a Firststone will represent a 0 and a C tone represents a 1. Abnormal musical piece can now be composed around the secret message or an existing piece can be selected together with an encoding scheme that will represent a message. 1.1.3 VIDEO STEGANOGRAPHY: Video Steganography is a technique to hide any kind of files in any extension into a carrying Video file. This project is the application developed to embed any kind of data (File) in another file, which is called carrier file. The carrier file must be a video file. It is concerned with embedding information in an innocuous cover media in a secure and robust manner. This system makes the Files more secure by using the concepts Steganography and Cryptography. An input content signal, e.g., representing video, is encoded to hide plural-bit auxiliary data therein. The process generates an intermediate signal that is a function of (a) the plural-bit auxiliary data, and (b) data related to human perception attributes of the content signal. This intermediate signal is then summed with the content signal to effect encoding.

The plural-bit auxiliary data can include copy control data, i.e., data that can be sensed by a consumer electronic device and used to disable a copying operation. The intermediate signal may include a pseudo-random key signal so as to obscure the encoding and require knowledge of a corresponding key at the decoder to extract the auxiliary data from the encoded content. In some embodiments, calibration data is encoded in the content signal with the auxiliary data. This calibration data desirably has known properties (e.g., spectral attributes, data content, etc.) facilitating its identification in the encoded content signal. The encoding is desirably robust against various forms of content degradation, e.g., lossy compression/decompression, scaling, resampling, conversion from digital to analog and back again, etc., so that the auxiliary data can be detected from the content notwithstanding such corruption. Video files are generally consists of images and sounds, so most of the relevant techniques for hiding data into images and audio are also applicable to video media. In the case of Video steganography sender sends the secret message to the recipient using a video sequence as cover media. Optional secret key K can also be used during embedding the secret message to the cover media to produce stego-video. After that the stego-video is communicated over public channel to the receiver. At the receiving end, receiver uses the secret key along with the extracting algorithm to extract the secret message from the stegoobject. The original cover video consists of frames represented by Ck (m,n) where1 k N. N is the total number of frame and m,n are the row and column indices of the pixels, respectively. The binary secret message denoted by Mk(m, n) is embedded into the cover video media by modulating it into a signal. Mk (m, n) is defined over the same domain as the host Ck(m,n).The stego-video signal is represented by the equation Sk(m, n) = Ck(m, n)+ak (m, n) Mk(m, n) , k = 1, 2, 3 . . .N where ak (m, n) is a scaling factor. For simplicity ak (m, n) can be considered to be constant over all the pixels and frames. So the equation becomes: Sk(m, n) = Ck(m, n)+a (m, n) Mk(m, n) , k = 1, 2, 3 . . .N Video files are generally a collection of images and sounds, so most of the presented techniques on images and audio can be applied to video files too. The great advantages of video are the large amount of data that can be hidden inside and the fact that it is a moving

stream of images and sounds. Therefore, any small but otherwise noticeable distortions might go by unobserved by humans because of the continuous flow of information.

1.2 ADVANTAGES OF STENOGRAPHY:

It does not attract attention: Encrypting a message gives away that there is something of value and this will attract unwanted attention. Packet sniffing barrier: Encrypted PGP email messages start with a line identifying them as an encrypted PGP message, making it easy for a packet sniffer on an ISP to flag encrypted PGP emails by just scanning for the word PGP or GnuPG; this can not be used against steganography. Makes Internet surveillance difficult: If someones Internet activities are being monitored visiting Flickr and uploading personal family photos with hidden messages will not trigger any alarm but sending encrypted messages and visiting a political discussion forum will. Difficult to prove it exists: In some countries like the United Kingdom you can be required by the police to provide the password to your encrypted files, refusing to do so carries a prison sentence, if the data has been hidden inside a photograph the police would first have to show beyond reasonable doubt that there is definitely something hidden inside the fit. Other advantages include: 1. It provides a better security for the sharing of data in local area network. 2. Important files carrying confidential information can be stored in the server in an encrypted form. 3. Using public key or private key can encrypt files. 4. No intruder can get any useful information from the original file during transmit. 5. It provides a better-secured data storage and transmission both at the system level and network level.

1.2.1 ADVANTAGES OF AUDIO STEGANOGRAPHY: Audio based Steganography has the potential to conceal more information:

Audio files are generally larger than images Our hearing can be easily fooled Slight changes in amplitude can store vast amounts of information The methods discussed provide users with a large amount of choice

The flexibility of audio Steganography is makes it very potentially powerful : and makes the technology more accessible to everyone. A party that wishes to communicate can rank the importance of factors such as data transmission rate, bandwidth, robustness, and noise audibility and then select the method that best fits their specifications. For example, two individuals who just want to send the occasional secret message back and forth might use the LSB coding method that is easily implemented. On the other hand, a large corporation wishing to protect its intellectual property from "digital pirates" may consider a more sophisticated method such as phase coding, SS, or echo hiding. Another aspect of audio Steganography that makes it so attractive is its ability to combine with existing cryptography technologies. Users no longer have to rely on one method alone. Not only can

information be encrypted, it can be hidden altogether. Many sources and types makes statistical analysis more difficult : Security : Many attacks that are malicious against image Steganography Greater amounts of information can be embedded without audible degradation

algorithms (e.g. geometrical distortions, spatial scaling, etc.) cannot be implemented against audio Steganography schemes. Consequently, embedding information into audio seems more secure due to less steganalysis techniques for attacking to audio.

Audio Steganography in particular addresses key issues brought about

by the MP3 format, P2P software, and the need for a secure broadcasting scheme that can maintain the secrecy of the transmitted information, evenwhen passing through insecure channels.

1.3 DISADVANTAGES:
Embedding additional information into audio sequences is a more tedious task than that of images, due to dynamic supremacy of the HAS over human visual system. Robustness: Copyright marks hidden in audio samples using substitution could be easily manipulated or destroyed if a miscreant comes to know that information is hidden this way. Commercialized audio Steganography have disadvantages that the existence of hidden messages can be easily recognized visually and only certain sized data can be hidden. Compressing an audio file with lossy compression will result in loss of the hidden message as it will change the whole structure of a file. Also, several lossy compression schemes use the limits of the human ear to their advantage by removing all frequencies that cannot be heard. This will also remove any frequencies that are used by a Steganography system which hides information in that part of the spectrum.

1.4 PROBLEM STATEMENT: The former consists of linguistic or language forms of hidden writing. The later, such as invisible ink, try of hide messages physically. One disadvantage of linguistic steganography is that users must equip themselves to have a good knowledge of linguistry. In recent years, everything is trending toward digitization. And with the development of the internet technology, digital media can be transmitted conveniently over the network. Therefore, messages can be secretly carried by digital media by using the steganography techniques, and then be transmitted through the internet rapidly Steganography is the art of hiding the fact that communication is taking place, by hiding information in other information. Many different carrier file formats can be used, but digital images are the most popular because of their frequency on the internet. For hiding secret

information in images, there exists a large variety of steganography techniques some are more complex than others and all of them have respective strong and weak points.So we prepare this application, to make the information hiding more simple and user friendly.

1.5 OBJECTIVE:
The goal of steganography is covert communication. So, a fundamental requirement of this steganography system is that the hider message carried by stego-media should not be sensible to human beings. The other goal of steganography is to avoid drawing suspicion to the existence of a hidden message. This approach of information hiding technique has recently became important in a number of application area Steganography has following objectives: To product security tool based on steganography techniques. To explore techniques of hiding data using encryption module of this project To extract techniques of getting secret data using decryption module.

Steganography sometimes is used when encryption is not permitted. Or, more commonly, steganography is used to supplement encryption. An encrypted file may still hide information using steganography, so even if the encrypted file is deciphered, the hidden message is not seen.

1.6 OVERVIEW:
The word steganography comes from the Greek Seganos, which mean covered or secret and graphy mean writing or drawing. Therefore, steganography mean, literally, covered writing. It is the art and science of hiding information such its presence cannot be detected and a communication is happening. A secrete information is encoding in a manner such that the very existence of the information is concealed. Paired with existing communication methods, steganography can be used to carry out hidden exchanges.

The main goal of this projects it to communicate securely in a completely undetectable manner and to avoid drawing suspicion to the transmission of a hider data. There has been a rapid growth of interest in steganography for two reasons: The publishing and broadcasting industries have become interested in techniques for hiding encrypted copyright marks and serial numbers in digital films, audio recordings, books and multimedia products moves by various governments to restrict the availability of encryption services have motivated people to study methods by which private messages can be embedded in seemingly innocuous cover messages. The basic model of steganography consists of Carrier, Message and password. Carrier is also known as cover-object, which the message is embedded and serves to hide the presence of the message. Basically, the model for steganography is shown on following figure:

Coverobject, C Message, M Stego-key, K Stego Object, Z

F(X,M,K )

Fig 1.9: Block Diagram of Steganography

Message is the data that the sender wishes to remain it confidential. It can be plain text, ciphertext, other image, or anything that can be embedded in a bit stream such as a copyright mark, a covert communication, or a serial number. Password is known as stegokey, which ensures that only recipient who know the corresponding decoding key will be able to extract the message from a cover-object. The with the secretly embedded message is then called the Stego-object.

Recovering message from a stego-object requires the cover-object itselt and a corresponding decoding key if a stego-key was used during the encoding process. The original image may or may not be required in most applications to extract the message.

There are several suitable carriers below to be the cover-object: Network protocols such as TCP, IP and UDP Audio that using digital audio formats such as wav, midi, avi, mpeg, mpi and voc File and Disk that can hides and append files by using the slack space Text such as null characters, just alike morse code including html and java Images file such as bmp, gif and jpg, where they can be both color and grayscale. In general, the information hiding process extracts redundant bits from cover-object. The process consists of two steps:

Identification of redundant bits in a cover-object. Redundant bits are those bits that can be modified without corrupting the quality or destroying the integrity of the cover-object.

Embedding process then selects the subset of the redundant bits to be replaced with data from a secret message. The stego-object is created by replacing the selected redundant bits with message bits.