Steganography Data Hiding Using LSB Algorithm

MSc Information Security and Computer Forensics

0919879 Nani Koduri Page 1

INFORMATION SECURITY THROUGH IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY

USING

LEAST SIGNIFICANT BIT ALGORITHM

By

NANI KODURI

Master of Science

in

Information Security and Computer Forensics

University of East London

MSc Information Security and Computer Forensics

0919879 Nani Koduri Page 2

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

I am extremely satisfied in successfully completing the dissertation for my

course MSc Information Security and Computer Forensics. I take this opportunity to

thank all my faculties and mentors who took a huge part in my progress. I would

especially like to thank Dr. David Preston who helped in completing the dissertation

with valuable suggestions and feedback ensuring my direction is correct in my first

research project. The UEL library and the Journal Access systems were extremely

helpful in providing me with the necessary knowledge to actively engage in the

project. I would like to thank my friends for helping me with their expertise in

Microsoft .NET technologies for building the steganographic application. Above all, I

am grateful to my parents for helping me to pursue this course.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT

CHAPTER 1

1. INTRODUCTION....7

1.1. PROBLEM STATEMENT......9

1.2. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY...9

1.3. RESEARCH METHOD.....9

1.4. SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS...10

1.5. THESIS OF THE PROJECT...11

CHAPTER 2

2. LITERATURE REVIEW..12

2.1. INFORMATION SECURITY...12

2.1.1. SECURITY ATTACKS..14

2.2. CRYPTOGRAPHY..17

2.2.1. SYMMETRIC ENCRYPTION ..19

2.2.2. ASYMMETRIC ENCRYPTION...21

2.3. STEGANOGRAPHY...22

2.3.1. LSB ALGORITHM..24

2.3.2. JSTEG ALGORITHM.26

2.3.3. F5 ALGORITHM.26

2.4. DIGITAL WATERMARKING...27

CHAPTER 3

3. DESIGN.29

3.1. ENCRYPTION PHASE...30

3.2. TRANSMISSION PHASE...31

3.3. DECRYPTION PHASE...32

3.4. DATA FLOW DIAGRAMS...32

3.4.1. CONSTRUCTING DATA FLOW DIAGRAM..34

3.4.2. DATA FLOW DIAGRAM LEVEL 0..34

3.4.3. DATA FLOW DIAGRAM LEVEL 1..35

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3.4.4. DATA FLOW DIAGRAM LEVEL 2.....36

3.5. ACTIVITY DIAGRAM.....36

CHAPTER 4

4. EXECUTION38

4.1. HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS.38

4.1.1. MICROSOFT .NET38

4.1.2. CLR..39

4.1.3. WINDOWS FORMS...39

4.1.4. VISUAL C#...............................................................................40

4.2. FEATURES OF PROPOSED METHOD..41

4.3. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS...41

4.4. STEGANOGRAPHY MODULE IMPLEMENTATION.43

4.4.1. ENCRYPTION MODULE..43

4.4.2. DATA TRANSMISSION MODULE..44

4.4.3. DECRYPTION MODULE..45

4.5. SCREENSHOT EXPLANATION46

CHAPTER 5

5. TESTING.51

5.1. AIM OF TESTING..52

5.2. ARTEFACTS OF TESTING.52

5.3. UNIT TESTING..53

5.3.1. LIMITATIONS OF UNIT TESTING...54

5.4. VALIDATION TESTING....54

5.5. OUTPUT TESTING54

5.6. INTEGRATION TESTING.54

5.6.1. TOP-DOWN APPROACH..55

5.6.2. BOTTOM-UP APPROACH55

5.6.3. UMBRELLA APPROACH..55

5.7. USER ACCEPTACE TESTING...56

5.8. BLACK BOX AND WHITE BOX TESTING56

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CHAPTER 6

6. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION..57

CHAPTER 7

7. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK59

8. REFERENCES.60

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ABSTRACT:

The rapid development of data transfer through internet made it easier to

send the data accurate and faster to the destination. There are many transmission

media to transfer the data to destination like e-mails; at the same time it is may be

easier to modify and misuse the valuable information through hacking. So, in order to

transfer the data securely to the destination without any modifications, there are

many approaches like cryptography and steganography. This paper deals with the

image steganography as well as with the different security issues, general overview

of cryptography, steganography and digital watermarking approaches and about the

different steganographic algorithms like Least Significant Bit (LSB) algorithm, JSteg,

F5 algorithms. It also compares those algorithms in means of speed, accuracy and

security.

This paper gives a brief idea about the new image steganographic approach

that make use of Least Significant Bit (LSB) algorithm for embedding the data into

the bit map image (.bmp) which is implemented through the Microsoft .NET

framework.

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CHAPTER 1

1. INTRODUCTION

In the current trends of the world, the technologies have advanced so much

that most of the individuals prefer using the internet as the primary medium to

transfer data from one end to another across the world. There are many possible

ways to transmit data using the internet: via e-mails, chats, etc. The data transition is

made very simple, fast and accurate using the internet. However, one of the main

problems with sending data over the internet is the security threat it poses i.e. the

personal or confidential data can be stolen or hacked in many ways. Therefore it

becomes very important to take data security into consideration, as it is one of the

most essential factors that need attention during the process of data transferring.

Data security basically means protection of data from unauthorised users or hackers

and providing high security to prevent data modification. This area of data security

has gained more attention over the recent period of time due to the massive increase

in data transfer rate over the internet.

In order to improve the security features in data transfers over the internet, many

techniques have been developed like: Cryptography, Steganography and digital

watermarking. While Cryptography is a method to conceal information by encrypting

it to cipher texts and transmitting it to the intended receiver using an unknown key,

Steganography provides further security by hiding the cipher text into a seemingly

invisible image or other formats.

According to Johnson et al., (2001), Steganography is the art of hiding and

transmitting data through apparently innocuous carriers to conceal the existence of

data. The level of visibility is decreased using many hiding techniques in Image

Modelling like LSB Manipulation, Masking and filtering. These techniques are

performed by different steganographic algorithms like F5, LSB, JSteg etc. and the

act of detecting the information hidden through these algorithms is called

Steganalysis. Cryptography is the art of science used to achieve security by

encoding the data to transform them into non readable formats so that unauthorized

users cannot gain access to it.

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The encoded text is known as Cipher text and this technique is known as

encryption and this process is reversed with authorised access using the decryption

technique, in which the encoded data is decoded into readable format (Kahate,

2008).

Steganography and Cryptography are closely related constructs. The hidden or

embedded image, audio or a video files act as carriers to send the private messages

to the destination without any security breach. Steganography techniques can be

implemented on various file formats such as audio (.mp3, .wmv., etc.), video

(.mpeg, .dat, etc.) and images (.jpeg, .bmp, etc.). However, the images are the

most preferred file format for this technique. At present, there are a lot of algorithms

that help in executing the steganography software. These tools are (Krenn, 2004).

Digital watermarking is described as one of the possibilities to close the gap

between copyright issues and digital distribution of data. It is mainly based on

Steganographic techniques and enables useful safety mechanisms (Jeffrey, 2008).

It acts as a very good medium for copyright issues as it embeds a symbol or a logo

in the form of a watermark, which cannot be altered manually.

One critical factor to be kept in mind when using steganography is to prevent any

further alterations to the originality of the image after embedding the data. Whenever

the image with the secret data is transmitted over the internet unauthorised parties

may want to hack the data hidden over the image. So, if the originality of the image

has been changed then it will be easier to hack the information by unauthorised

persons. In order to improve the security, the Digital watermarks are predominantly

inserted as transformed digital signal into the source data using key based

embedding algorithm and pseudo noise pattern.

This te