DATA HIDING TECHNIQUES IN STEGANOGRAPHY USING ... ... 1.1 Steganography domain 2 1.2 Embedding methods for spatial domain 5 1.3 The model of steganography and steganalysis 6 2.1 Classification

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DATA HIDING TECHNIQUES IN STEGANOGRAPHY USING FIBONACCI

SEQUENCE AND KNIGHT TOUR ALGORITHM

MOHAMMED ABDULLAH KHALAF

UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MALAYSIA

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DATA HIDING TECHNIQUES IN STEGANOGRAPHY USING FIBONACCI

SEQUENCE AND KNIGHT TOUR ALGORITHM

MOHAMMED ABDULLAH KHALAF

A project report submitted in partial fulfilment of the

requirements for the award of the degree of

Master of Engineering ( Computer & Microelectronics System )

Faculty of Electrical Engineering

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

JUNE 2016

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To my virtuous supervisor who taught me in a truthful, fair, and honorable way

To my colleagues in the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

To all those who contributed to the success of this research

I dedicate this research to you

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Initially, all praise is to Allah, the most kind and the merciful for helping me

to accomplish this study. Special appreciation goes to my parents, friends, studying

colleagues and supervisors for standing beside me in the good and bad times spent to

complete this research. The great effort goes to Dr. Nasrul Humaimi Mahmood for

support me to complete this research praying to Allah Almighty to grant him all that

is good.

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ABSTRACT

The foremost priority in the information and communication technology era,

is achieving an efficient and accurate steganography system for hiding information.

The developed system of hiding the secret message must capable of not giving any

clue to the adversaries about the hidden data. In this regard, enhancing the security

and capacity by maintaining the Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) of the

steganography system is the main issue to be addressed. This study proposed an

improved for embedding secret message into an image. This newly developed

method is demonstrated to increase the security and capacity to resolve the existing

problems. A binary text image is used to represent the secret message instead of

normal text. Three stages implementations are used to select the pixel before random

embedding to select block of (64 × 64) pixels, follows by the Knight Tour algorithm

to select sub-block of (8 × 8) pixels, and finally by the random pixels selection. For

secret embedding, Fibonacci sequence is implemented to decomposition pixel from 8

bitplane to 12 bitplane. The proposed method is distributed over the entire image to

maintain high level of security against any kind of attack. Gray images from the

standard dataset (USC-SIPI) including Lena, Peppers, Baboon, and Cameraman are

implemented for benchmarking. The results show good PSNR value with high

capacity and these findings verified the worthiness of the proposed method. High

complexities of pixels distribution and replacement of bits will ensure better security

and robust imperceptibility compared to the existing systems in the literature.

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ABSTRAK

Keutamaan pertama di dalam maklumat dan komunikasi dalam era teknologi,

adalah mencapai sistem steganografi yang cekap dan tepat untuk menyembunyikan

maklumat. Sistem yang dibangunkan menyembunyi mesej rahsia, mestilah mampu

tidak memberi apa-apa petunjuk kepada musuh mengenai data tersembunyi. Dalam

hal ini, meningkatkan keselamatan dan kapasiti dengan mengekalkan Nisbah Puncak

Isyarat-Hingar (PSNR) sistem steganografi adalah isu utama yang perlu ditangani.

Kajian ini mencadangkan lebih baik untuk menerapkan mesej rahsia ke dalam imej.

Kaedah yang baru dibangunkan menunjukkan kebolehan untuk meningkatkan

keselamatan dan keupayaan untuk menyelesaikan masalah yang sedia ada. Satu imej

teks binari digunakan untuk mewakili mesej rahsia dan bukannya teks normal. Tiga

peringkat pelaksanaan digunakan untuk memilih piksel sebelum membenam secara

rawak untuk memilih blok (64 × 64) piksel, diikuti oleh algoritma Knight Tour untuk

memilih sub-blok (8 × 8) piksel, dan akhirnya dengan pemilihan piksel secara rawak.

Turutan Fibonacci digunakan untuk penguraian piksel dari 8 bitplan ke 12 bitplan

untuk membenam maklumat secara rahsia. Kaedah yang dicadangkan diaplikasikan

ke seluruh imej untuk mengekalkan tahap keselamatan yang tinggi terhadap sebarang

serangan. Imej kelabu dari set data piawai (USC-SIPI) termasuk Lena, Peppers,

Baboon dan Jurukamera dilaksanakan sebagai penanda aras. Keputusan

menunjukkan nilai PSNR baik dengan kapasiti tinggi dan penemuan ini

mengesahkan kebenaran tentang kaedah yang dicadangkan. Kerumitan tinggi taburan

piksel dan penggantian bit akan memastikan keselamatan yang lebih baik dan lebih

teguh berbanding dengan sistem yang sedia ada.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER TITLE PAGE

DECLARATION ii

DEDICATION iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iv

ABSTRACT v

ABSTRAK vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS vii

LIST OF TABLES xi

LIST OF FIGURES xii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xix

LIST OF SYMBOLS xx

1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Introduction 1

1.2 Problem Background 3

1.2.1 Security Issues in Steganography 3

1.2.2 Embedding method Issues in

Steganography

4

1.2.4 Capacity 5

1.3 Steganography Model 6

1.4 Problem Statements 7

1.5 Objective of the Study 8

1.6 Scope of the Study 9

1.7 Significant of the Study 9

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1.8 Thesis Overview 10

2 LITERATURE REVIEW 11

2.1 Introduction 11

2.2 History of information hiding 12

2.3 Steganography 14

2.3.1 Steganography Definition 14

2.3.1.1 Steganography

Classification

15

2.3.1.2 Structure of Steganography 16

2.3.1.4 Steganography applications 17

2.3.1.5 Steganography techniques 18

2.3.2 Image Preparation 19

2.3.2.1 Fibonacci decomposition 19

2.3.2.2 Knight Tour 22

2.3.3 Embedding Methods 30

2.3.3.1 LSB Substitution Method 31

2.3.3.2 Pixel Value Differencing

(PVD)

32

2.3.3.3 Histogram Based Method 34

2.3.3.4 Spread Spectrum Method 34

2.3.3.5 DCT Domain

Steganography

35

2.3.4 Attacks on Steganography 36

2.3.4.1 Human Visual System

(HVS) attack

38

2.3.4.2 Chi-square (X2) Attack 40

2.4 Summary 46

3 METHODOLOGY 47

3.1 Introduction 47

3.2 Research Framework 48

3.2.1 Data preparation 50

3.2.2 Cover image and Fibonacci 51

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3.2.3 Pixels Decomposition using Fibonacci 54

3.3 Secret message preparation 56

3.4 Random Stage (RND) in Proposed Method 57

3.5 Knight Tour (KT) in Proposed method 62

3.6 Pixel Selection in Proposed method 68

3.7 Imperceptibility Evaluation 60

3.8 Chi-square (χ2) Attack Implementation 69

3.9 Embedding Process 70

3.10 Extracting Process 73

3.11 Summary 76

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 77

4.1 Introduction 77

4.2 Implementation Results 78

4.2.1 Imperceptibility 78

4.2.1.1 PSNR Results 79

4.2.2 Visual Attack 83

4.3 Summary 89

5 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK 90

5.1 Thesis Summary 90

5.2 Work Summary 90

5.2.1 Pre-processing Stage 91

5.2.2 Pixel Selection Stage 91

5.2.3 Embedding and Evaluation 92

5.3 Contributions of The Study 92

5.4 Future Work 93

REFERENCES 94

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LIST OF TABLES

TABLE NO. TITLE PAGE

2.1 Summary of reviewed literatures (2012-2016) 44

3.1 Table 3.1 Impact of each Fibonacci bitplane into

whole image 51

3.2 Impact of each Binary bitplane into the whole

image 52

3.3 The decimal and binary representation for lower

case letters and whitespace 56

4.1 PSNR of Lena 512x512 pixel cover image after

embedding variable size payloads 80

4.2 PSNR of Peppers 512x512 pixel cover image after

embedding variable size payloads 80

4.3 PSNR of Cameraman 512x512 pixel cover image

after embedding variable size payloads 80

4.4 PSNR of Baboon 512x512 pixel cover image after

embedding variable size payloads 81

4.5 PSNR of Lake 512x512 pixel cover image after

embedding variable size payloads

81

4.6 PSNR of Pirate 512x512 pixel cover image

embedding variable size payloads 81

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LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE NO. TITLE PAGE

1.1 Steganography domain 2

1.2 Embedding methods for spatial domain 5

1.3 The model of steganography and steganalysis 6

2.1 Classification of steganography 15

2.2 Classification of security system (Atawneh, S., et

al., 2013) 16

2.3 Image steganog