Steganography

STEGANOGRAPHY

A PROJECT REPORT

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THEAWARD OF THE DEGREE OF

BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY

in

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

TO

Gautam Buddh Technical University

SUBMITTED BY

Rakhi Rani(0806813040)Shikha Yadav(0806813047)

Sachin Choudhary(0806813043)Mridu Kakran(0806813030)

DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGYMEERUT INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY,

BYPASS ROAD, MEERUT-250005, INDIAMAY, 2012

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that this thesis report titled, “STEGANOGRAPHY”, submitted by Rakhi

Rani, Shikha Yadav, Sachin Choudhary, Mridul Kakran in partial fulfillment of the require-

ment for the award of Bachelor of Technology (Information Technology) degree, Gautam Buddh

Technical University, Lucknow, India is a record of student’s own study carried under my super-

vision and guidance.

The pre-thesis report has not been submitted to any other university or institution for the

award of any degree.

Guide

Prof. Ramendra Singh

designation:-Lecturer

department:-IT

MIET, Meerut

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First of all, I would like to thank God for everything. I also would like to thank all the people

who helped me during this work.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisorsfor their invaluable sugges-

tions and guidance, constant encouragement and patience during the course of this work.

I would like to thank to the Director, MIET for providing a rich intellectual environment,

and facilities indispensable for the writing of this pre-thesis. Special thanks to Prof. Abhilash

Sharma for his constant encouragement and support throughout the course work.

I would also like to acknowledge the support of Meerut Institute of Engineering & Technol-

ogy (MIET), Meerut. U.P., throughout my studies and the support of all the MIET staff. Part

of this pre thesis work was done on the Workstations in the laboratory established under grant

MODROBS by AICTE through letter no. 8024/RID/BOR/MOD-863/2009-10.

Lastly, and most importantly, I wish to thank my parents. Without their love and support,

nothing would have been possible.

....................

Rakhi Rani(0806813040)

Shikha Yadav(0806813047)

Sachin Choudhary(0806813043)

Mridul Kakran(0806813030)

ABSTRACT

The Internet as a whole does not use secure links, thus information in transit may be vul-

nerable to interception as well. The importance of reducing a chance of the information being

detected during the transmission is being an issue now days. Some solution to be discussed is

how to pass information in a manner that the very existence of the message is unknown in order

to repel attention of the potential attacker. Besides hiding data for confidentiality, this approach

of information hiding can be extended to copyright protection for digital media.

In this research, we clarify what steganography is, the definition, the importance as well as the

technique used in implementing steganography. We focus on the Least Significant Bit (LSB)

technique in hiding messages in an image.

The system enhanced the LSB technique by randomly dispersing the bits of the message in

the image and thus making it harder for unauthorized people to extract the original message.

List of Figures

4.1 Data Flow Diagram Level-0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

4.2 Flow of Data within project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

4.3 Use Case Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

iv

Contents

1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 What is Steganography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.2 Needs And Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.3 Steganography Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.4 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.5 Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.6 Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2 LITERATURE SURVEY 6

2.1 Approaches of Image Steganography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2.2 Brief History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.2.1 LSB Steganography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.3 Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.3.1 Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.3.2 Planing Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.3.3 Gantt Chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

2.3.4 PERT chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

3 PROBLEM STATEMENT AND METHODOLOGY 12

3.1 Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

3.2 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

3.2.1 Symmetric Encryption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

3.2.2 Asymmetric Key Encryption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

v

3.2.3 DES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

4 SYSTEM DESIGN 15

4.1 Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4.2 Project Development Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4.2.1 Data Flow Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4.2.2 Flow Chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

4.2.3 Use Case Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

5 PERFORMANCE AND WORK DONE 21

5.1 Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

5.1.1 Evaluation Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

5.1.2 Work Done . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

6 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK 24

6.1 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

6.1.1 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

6.1.2 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

References 26

vi

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 What is Steganography

Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one, apart

from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message, a form of security

through obscurity.

The word steganography is of Greek origin and means "concealed writing" from the Greek words

steganos meaning "covered or protected", and graphei meaning "writing".

The first recorded use of the term was in 1499 by Johannes Trithemius in his Steganographia, a

treatise on cryptography and steganography disguised as a book on magic. Generally, messages

will appear to be something else: images, articles, shopping lists, or some other covertext and,

classically, the hidden message may be in invisible ink between the visible lines of a private

letter.

The advantage of steganography, over cryptography alone, is that messages do not attract at-

tention to themselves. Plainly visible encrypted messagesno matter how unbreakablewill arouse

suspicion, and may in themselves be incriminating in countries where encryption is illegal

Therefore, whereas cryptography protects the contents of a message, steganography can be said

to protect both messages and communicating parties.

Steganography includes the concealment of information within computer files. In digital

1

steganography, electronic communications may include steganographic coding inside of a trans-

port layer, such as a document file, image file, program or protocol. Media files are ideal for

steganographic transmission because of their large size. As a simple example, a sender might

start with an innocuous image file and adjust the color of every 100th pixel to correspond to a

letter in the alphabet, a change so subtle that someone not specifically looking for it is unlikely

to notice it.

1.2 Needs And Application

The advantage of steganography, over cryptography alone, is that messages do not attract atten-

tion to themselves. Plainly visible encrypted messagesno matter how unbreakablewill arouse

suspicion, and may in themselves be incriminating in countries where encryption is illegal.

Therefore, whereas cryptography protects the contents of a message, steganography can be said

to protect both messages and communicating parties.

Steganography includes the concealment of information within computer files. In digital steganog-

raphy, electronic communications may include steganographic coding inside of a transport layer,

such as a document file, image file, program or protocol. Media files are ideal for steganographic

transmission because of their large size. As a simple example, a sender might start with an in-

nocuous image file and adjust the color of every 100th pixel to correspond to a letter in the

alphabet, a change so subtle that someone not specifically looking for it is unlikely to notice it.

Steganography is applicable to, but not limited to, the following areas.

• Confidential communication and secret data storing

• Protection of data alteration

• Access control system for digital content distribution

• Media Database systems

2

1.3 Steganography Concepts

The modern formulation of steganography is often given in terms of the prisoner’s problem

where Alice and Bob are two inmates who wish to communicate in order to hatch an escape

plan. However, all communication between them is examined by the warden, Wendy, who will

put them in solitary contnement at the slightest suspicion of covert communication. Specifically,

in the general model for steganography, we have Alice wishing to send a secret message m to

Bob. In order to do so, she "embeds" m into a cover-object c, and obtains a stego-object s. The

stego-object s is then sent through the public channel. Thus we have the following defnitions:

Cover-object: refers to the object used as the carrier to embed messages into. Many different

objects have been employed to embed messages into for example images, audio, and video as

well as structures, and html pages to name a few.

Stego-object: refers to the object which is carrying a hidden message. so given a cover object,

and a messages the goal of the steganographer is to produce a stego object which would carry

the message.

In a pure steganography framework, the technique for embedding the message is unknown

to Wendy and shared as a secret between Alice and Bob. However, it is generally considered

that the algorithm in use is not secret but only the key used by the algorithm is kept as a secret

between the two parties, this assumption is also known as Kerchoff’s principle in the field of

cryptography. The secret key for ex: ,can be a password used to seed a pseudo random num-

ber generater to select pixel locations in an image cover object for embedding the secret message.

An algorithm is used to disperse the hidden message throughout the file

• Common hiding techniques

• Appended to a file

• Modification of LSB (Least Significant Bit)

3

1.4 Motivation

The primary reason for selecting steganography among the list ofpossible project topics was due

to the unfamiliarity of the word that twigged an interest in the subject.Another motivation for

researching the topic was after reading an online article in the USA Today titled "Terror groups

hide behind Web encryption" that claims terrorists and, in particular, Osama bin Laden and the

al-Qaida network, may be using steganography to communicate with each other in planning

terrorist attacks. It is thought that images with hidden messages are placed on bulletin boards or

dead drops for other terrorists to pick up and retrieve hidden messages. Thus far, this supposition

has yet to be proven.

1.5 Objective

The goal of steganography is hide the fact that communication is taking place. So, a fundamen-

tal 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 mes-

sage. This approach of information hiding technique has recently became important in a number

of application area.

This project has following objectives:

• .To product security tool based on steganography techniques.

• .To explore techniques of hiding data using encryption module of this

• To extract techniques of getting secret data using decryption module.

• Providing Security.

1.6 Scope

The scope of the project is as follow:-

4

• Implementation of steganographic tools for hiding information includes text and image

files.

• Three different approaches being explore which are least significant bit, masking and

filtering algorithms and transformation

5

Chapter 2

LITERATURE SURVEY

2.1 Approaches of Image Steganography

Information hiding generally relates with watermarking and steganography. Three aspect of

information hiding must be meeting to satisfy the information hiding prospectus. The three as-

pects are: security, robust and capacity (Provos. Honeyman , 2003). Security is a way which

the steganography medium is fully unsuspicious to eavesdroppers. Robust can be defined as the

amount of modification that the steganography medium can withstand before the hidden mes-

sage revealed. Amount of cover medium must meet the size of hidden data so as not to arouse

eavesdropper’s suspicion.

There are two major reasons why people want to hide information (Ismail, 2003). The

first reason is to protect their intellectual property rights. This kind of steganography is called

watermarking. Watermarking has its own rules of thumb which it should beimpossible to remove

watermark without degrading it. Its primary goal is to achieve the highest level of robustness.

By implementing digital watermarking, intellectual property rights can be protected and it could

be used to enforce copyright laws (Bret, 2002).

Another reason of using steganography is to hide information, especially when a user intends

to send the information through the open system, unnoticed by any unintended party. It conveys

information, especially confidential information, in a covert manner. In this way, only the in-

6

tended parties recognize the existence of their communication. Steganography is taken world

attention after spread rumors about Osama Laden and its Al-Qaeda organization communicating

with each other using steganography technique.

2.2 Brief History

Another story is about a soldier needed to send a secret message to Sparta. The soldier, Demer-

atus needed to warn about Xerxes’s intension to invade Greece. The secret message was written

on wax-covered tablets (Joshua, 2001). Demeratus wrote the secret message on the underlying

wood after removing the wax, and then covered it back with wax. The tablets seem like blank

tablets and the secret information was sent without being detected. (Provos Honeyman, 2001).

Romans used natural substances like fruit juic es and milks as their invisible inks. The ink will

then be heated to reveal its contents nowadays,invisible inks are still being used (Syahren, 2004).

Steganography word is originated form two Greek words. Steganos means secret graphy means

writing (Syahren,2004). The combination of this two Greek words hold steganographic system

environment, hidden message. The purpose of steganography is to hide secret information into

cover medium (Provos Honeyman, 2001). Around 440 BC, a Greek Histrian, Herodotus wrote

in his chronicles, History, about two incidents related to steganography (Syahren, 2004). The

first stated that King Darius of Susa wrote a secret message on one of his prisoner’s shaved head.

Then after prisoner’s hair grew back, he was sent to Aristogoras in Miletus, the King son-in-law,

carrying the secret message undetected (Syahren, 2004).

2.2.1 LSB Steganography

As mentioned before, many types of timetabling problems exist. But all these problems have

several properties in common. One of these similarities is that certain entities have to be sched-

uled. For example, the high school timetabling problem has several entities such as classes or

students, teachers, subjects, lessons and rooms. All these entities have properties. For example

classes are linked to the subject the students of this class are taught.

7

Usually, these entities are differentiated into resources and events (or sometimes called meet-

ings). In addition, constraints have to be considered. In the employee timetabling case, for in-

stance, we find those entities, too. There are employees with different qualifications and monthly

target hours or there are shifts to be assigned to employees. As already mentioned, some of these

entities are linked with others. There exist links from the shifts to the employees assigned to

these shifts or from the classes to their teachers. Some of these links are fixed, such as the links

from the shifts to the employees with the qualifications required to work on these shifts, and

cannot be changed. Others have to be assigned during a planning process, e.g. linking a lesson

to a suitable room. A planning algorithm has to construct a timetable, so we have to define what

a timetable consists of. A timetable can be interpreted as an arbitrary sequence of events. To

every event a certain number of time intervals are assigned, each having a starting and an ending

point.

2.3 Planning

2.3.1 Purpose

The purpose of Software Project Planning is to establish reasonable plans for performing the

software engineering and for managing the software project. Software Project Planning involves

developing estimates for the work to be performed, establishing the necessary commitments,

and defining the plan to perform the work.

2.3.2 Planing Phase

The software planning begins with a statement of the work to be performed and other constraints

and goals that define and bound the software project (those established by the practices of the

Requirements Management key process area). The software planning process includes steps to

estimate the size of the software work products and the resources needed, produce a schedule,

identify and assess software risks, Iterating through these steps may be necessary to establish

the plan for the software project (i.e., the software development plan).

8

2.3.3 Gantt Chart

A Gantt chart can be developed for the entire project. It depicts a part of a software project

schedule that emphasizes the concept scooping task for a new software project. All project tasks

(for concept scooping) are listed in the left hand column. The horizontal bars show the time

needed to complete an activity.

A Gantt chart is a graphical representation of the duration of tasks against the progression of

time. It is a useful tool for planning and scheduling projects. It is helpful when monitoring a

project’s progress.

A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. Gantt charts illustrate

the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project. Terminal

elements and summary elements comprise the work breakdown structure of the project. Some

Gantt charts also show the dependency relationships between activities.

Although a Gantt chart is useful and valuable for small projects that fit on a single sheet or

screen, they can become quite unwieldy for projects with more than about 30 activities. Larger

Gantt charts may not be suitable for most computer displays. A related criticism is that Gantt

charts communicate relatively little information per unit area of display. That is, projects are

often considerably more complex than can be communicated effectively with a Gantt chart.

Gantt charts only represent part of the triple constraints of projects, because they focus primarily

on schedule management. Moreover, Gantt charts do not represent the size of a project or the

relative size of work elements, therefore the magnitude of a behind-schedule condition is miss

communicated. If two projects are the same number of days behind schedule, the larger project

has a larger impact on resource utilization, yet the Gantt does not represent this difference.

9

year project/final report/Steganography Report/Gantt Chart.png

2.3.4 PERT chart

Complex projects require a series of activities, some of which must be performed sequentially

and others that can be performed in parallel with other activities. This collection of series and

parallel tasks can be modeled as a network.

The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is a network model that allows for

randomness in activity completion times. PERT was developed in the late 1950’s for the U.S.

10

Navy’s Polaris project having thousands of contractors. It has the potential to reduce both the

time and cost required to complete a project.

PERT is a method to analyze the tasks involved in completing a given project, especially the

time needed to complete each task, and identifying the minimum time needed to complete total

project.

• A PERT event: is a point that marks the start or completion of one or more tasks. It

consumes no time and uses no resources. It marks the completion of one or more tasks,

and is not "reached" until all of the activities leading to that event have been completed.

• A predecessor event: an event (or events) that immediately precedes some other event

without any other events intervening. It may be the consequence of more than one activity.

• A successor event: an event (or events) that immediately follows some other event without

any other events intervening. It may be the consequence of more than one activity.

• A PERT activity: is the actual performance of a task. It consumes time, it requires re-

sources (such as labor, materials, space, machinery) and it can be understood as represent-

ing the time, effort, and resources required to move from one event to another. A PERT

activity cannot be completed until the event preceding it has occurred.

• Optimistic time (O): the minimum possible time required to accomplish a task, assuming

everything proceeds better than is normally expected

• Pessimistic time (P): the maximum possible time required to accomplish a task, assuming

everything goes wrong (but excluding major catastrophes).

• Most likely time (M): the best estimate of the time required to accomplish a task, assuming

everything proceeds as normal.

• Expected time (TE): the best estimate of the time required to accomplish a task, assuming

everything proceeds as normal (the implication being that the expected time is the average

time the task would require if the task were repeated on a number of occasions over an

extended period of time).

11

Steps in the PERT Planning Process

• Identify the specific activities and milestones.

• Determine the proper sequence of the activities.

• Construct a network diagram.

• Estimate the time required for each activity.

• Determine the critical path.

Update the PERT chart as the project progresses.

12

year project/final report/Steganography Report/PERT Chart.png

13

Chapter 3

PROBLEM STATEMENT AND

METHODOLOGY

In this chapter we first explain the problem statement. Then we are discussing the methodology

for solving the problem.

3.1 Problem Statement

The Internet as a whole does not use secure links, thus information in transit may be vulnerable

to interception as well. The importance of reducing a chance of the information being detected

during the transmission is being an issue now days. Some solution to be discussed is how to

pass information in a manner that the very existence of the message is unknown in order to repel

attention of the potential attacker.

3.2 Methodology

Two methodologies can be adopted-

3.2.1 Symmetric Encryption

It is a technique in which a single key is used for encryption decryption.In this we encrypt

plain text with the help of symmetric key to form cipher text send to the destination where it is

decrypted using the same symmetric key.

14

year project/final report/Steganography Report/Symmetric key Encryption.png

3.2.2 Asymmetric Key Encryption

In asymmetric encryption, also known as public key encryption or public key cryptography:

• the key used to encrypt messages is different to the key used to decrypt those messages;

• the key used for encryption is called the public key, and can be distributed freely;

• the key used for decryption is called the private key, and must be kept a secret among

parties that are allowed to decrypt messages encrypted with the public key;

• the public and private keys form a key pair: they are generated togther and generally

have some mathematical relationship between one another, so that to decrypt a message

encrypted with a given public key, the decrypting party must know the private key that

forms the "other half of the pair";

15

year project/final report/Steganography Report/Asymmetric key Encryption.png

3.2.3 DES

This algorithm is used for encryption and decryption of the hidden data. The public key can be

known to everyone and is used for encrypting messages. Messages encrypted with the public

key can only be decrypted using the private key. It secure from brute-force-attack.

16

Chapter 4

SYSTEM DESIGN

4.1 Purpose

The purpose of design document is to build the project in a manner specified and developed the

project in such a way that it is able to satisfy the user requirement and develop according the

requirement of user.

4.2 Project Development Approach

The development of this project has been performed in a systematic manner, adopting the sys-

tems Approach. UML diagrams have been used that provide a better insight to the user require-

ments.

4.2.1 Data Flow Diagram

DFD is a graphical representation technique for showing functions as well as data flow within

the system. It is used for modeling requirements.

17

Figure 4.1: Data Flow Diagram Level-0

18

4.2.2 Flow Chart

A flowchart is a type of diagram that represents an algorithm or process, showing the steps as

boxes of various kinds, and their order by connecting these with arrows. This diagrammatic

representation can give a step-by-step solution to a given problem. Process operations are repre-

sented in these boxes, and arrows connecting them represent flow of control. Data flows are not

typically represented in a flowchart, in contrast with data flow diagrams; rather, they are implied

by the sequencing of operations.

19

Figure 4.2: Flow of Data within project

20

4.2.3 Use Case Diagram

Use case diagrams model the functionality of system using actors and use cases. Use case

diagram visually represents what happens when an actor interacts with a system. This approach

uses a combination of text and pictures in order to improve the understanding of requirements.

The use case describes what of a system and not how. They only give functional view of the

system.

Terms used:

Actor: Actor is an external agent that lies outside the system model but interacts with it

in some or the other way. An actor may be a person, machine or an information system that

is external to the system model. An actor is represented by a stick figure and is not a part of

the system itself. Customers, users, external devices interacting with the system are treated as

actors.

Use cases: It is initiated by the user with a particular goal in mind, and completes success-

fully when that goal is satisfied. it describes the sequence of interactions between actors and the

system necessary to deliver the services that satisfies the goal. It also includes possible variants

of this sequence. The system is represented by the rectangular box that contains oval shaped use

cases. The actors are represented by the sticks as shown in figure above. The use case can be

described as: Figure 4.4 shows the Use Case Diagram.

21

Figure 4.3: Use Case Diagram

22

Chapter 5

PERFORMANCE AND WORK

DONE

5.1 Performance

In order to reasonably evaluate the performance of various kinds of steganographic and stegan-

alytic methods, it is necessary to de ne some criteria acceptable to the majority. Moreover, the

evaluation criteria may also lead us to the right direction to improve the techniques.

5.1.1 Evaluation Criteria

.

Criteria for Steganography . Three common requirements, security, capacity, and imper-

ceptibility, may be used to rate the performance of steganographic techniques.

Security Steganography may su er from many active or passive attacks, correspond-ingly

in the prisoner’s problem when Wendy acts as an active or passive warden. If the existence of

the secret message can only be estimated with a probability not higher than random guessing in

the presence of some steganalytic systems, steganography may be considered secure under such

steganalytic systems. Otherwise we may claim it to be insecure.

23

Capacity. To be useful in conveying secret message, the hiding capacity provided by

steganography should be as high as possible, which may be given in absolute measurement

(such as the size of secret message), or in relative value (called data embedding rate, such as bits

per pixel, bits per non-zero discrete cosine transform coe cient, or the ratio of the secret message

to the cover medium, etc.).

Imperceptibility. Stego images should not have severe visual artifacts. Under the same

level of security and capacity, the higher the delity of the stego image, the better. If the resultant

stego image appears innocuous enough, one can believe this requirement to be satis ed well for

the warden not having the original cover image to compare

Criteria for Steganalysis. The main goal of steganalysis is to identify whether or not a sus-

pected medium is embedded with secret data, in other words, to determine the testing medium

belong to the cover class or the stego class. If a certain steganalytic method is used to stegana-

lyze a suspicious medium, there are four possible resultant situations.

True positive (TP), meaning that a stego medium is correctly classi ed as stego. False neg-

ative (FN), meaning that a stego medium is wrongly classi ed as cover. True negative (TN),

meaning that a cover medium is correctly classi ed as cover. False positive (FP), meaning that a

cover medium is wrongly classi ed as stego.

improving Steganographic Security

Increasing the embeding efficiency

Reducing the embeding distortion

24

5.1.2 Work Done

Following tasks have been completed till now:-

• Watermarking and data hiding techniques for binary document images can be classified

according to one of the following embedding methods: text line, word, or character shift-

ing, boundary modifications, fixed partitioning of the image into blocks, modification of

character features, modification of run-length patterns, or modifications of half-tone im-

ages. In the rest of this section we describe representative techniques for each of these

methods.

• Quantitative methods should also be developed to evaluate the quality of marked images.

The steganographic capability of different techniques needs to be investigated and tech-

niques that can be used in covert communication applications need to be developed.

• The larger the cover message is (in data content termsnumber of bits) relative to the hidden

message, the easier it is to hide the latter.

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Chapter 6

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE

WORK

6.1 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

6.1.1 Conclusion

The proposed approach in this project uses a new steganographic approach called image steganog-

raphy. The application creates a stego image in which the personal data is embedded and is pro-

tected with a password which is highly secured. The main intention of the project is to develop a

steganographic application that provides good security. The proposed approach provides higher

security and can protect the message from stego attacks. The image resolution doesn’t change

much and is negligible when we embed the message into the image and the image is protected

with the personal password. So, it is not possible to damage the data by unauthorized personnel.

We used the Least Significant Bit algorithm in this project for developing the application which

is faster and reliable and compression ratio is moderate compared to other algorithms. the com-

pression depends on the document size as well as the carrier image size.

Steganography has its place in security. It is not intended to replace cryptography but supple-

ment it. Hiding a message with steganography methods reduces the chance of a message being

26

detected. However, if that message is also encrypted, if discovered, it must also be cracked (yet

another layer of protection).

6.1.2 Future Work

The future work on this project is to improve the compression ratio of the image to the text. The

security using Least Significant Bit Algorithm is good but we can improve the level to a certain

extent by varying the carriers as well as using different keys for encryption and decryption. The

scope of the project is to limit unauthorized access and provide better security during message

transmission.

This work of mine is one of the most candid extracts from the witch of ’JAVA’. I am very op-

timistic about the future prospects of this project. Electronic Data Interchange will be a problem

of lifetime for IT field so this project is just a small module of that big area of Steganography,

as the time passes and according to the need generate new algorithms will be developed and so

future of the Steganography is safe.

As far as I can see Steganography is the future of this kind of a project, so the scope of the

project will never going to end.

27

References

[1] , First edn.Ali-al, H. Mohammad, A. 2010. Digital Audio Watermarking Based on the Dis-

creteWavelets Transform and Singular Value Decomposition,European Journal Of Scientific

Research

[2] vol 39(1), pp 231-239.Amirthanjan,R. Akila,RDeepikachowdavarapu, P., 2010. A Compar-

ative Analysisof Image Steganography,International Journal of Computer Application , 2(3),

pp.2-10.

[3] Audio watermarking: Features, applications and algorithms,

[4] W. Bender, D. Gruhl, N. Morimoto, and A. Lu. Techniques for data hiding. In IBM Systems

Journal, Vol. 35, Nos. 3-4, pages 313-336, February 1996.

[5] 1.M.Kuhn. Steganography mailing list. WWW: http://www.jjtc.com/Steganography/steglist.htm,

1995. Private Site, Hamburg, Germany

2. N.F. Johnson. Steganography. WWW: http://www.jjtc.com/stegdoc/. George Mason

University

3. C. Kurak and J. McHugh.

4. W. Bender, D. Gruhl, N. Morimoto, and A. Lu. Techniques for data hiding.

In IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 35, Nos. 3-4, pages 313-336, February 1996.

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