International Journal of Computer Science Engineering

and Information Technology Research (IJCSEITR)

ISSN 2249-6831
Vol. 3, Issue 2, Jun 2013, 1-10
© TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.

NEW IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY METHOD BY MATCHING SECRET

MESSAGE WITH PIXELS OF COVER IMAGE (SMM)

ABDELMGEID AMIN ALI1 & AL – HUSSIEN SEDDIK SAAD2

1
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, Al – Minia University, Egypt
2
Assistant Lecturer, High Institute for Engineering and Technology (H.I.E.T), Al – Minia, Egypt

ABSTRACT

Steganography has been widely used, including in recent historical times and the present day. It can be defined as
the study of invisible communication that usually deals with the ways of hiding the existence of the communicated
message. Using steganography, information can be hidden in different embedding mediums, known as carriers. These
carriers can be images, audio files, video files, or text files, but digital images are the most popular because of their
frequency on the Internet. The larger the cover message is (in data content terms—number of bits) relative to the hidden
message, the easier it is to hide the latter. For this reason, digital pictures (which contain large amounts of data) are used to
hide messages on the Internet and on other communication media. The use of digital images for steganography makes use
of the weaknesses in the human visual system (HVS). In this paper, a novel image steganography method based on Secret
Message Matching (SMM) has been proposed.

KEYWORDS: Steganography, Peak Signal-to-Noise Rate (PSNR), Mean Square Error (MSE)

INTRODUCTIONS

For many years Information Hiding has captured the imagination of researchers. steganography techniques are
used to address digital rights management, protect information, and conceal secrets. Information hiding techniques provide
an interesting challenge for digital forensic investigations. Information can easily traverse through firewalls undetected.
Since the rise of the internet, the most important factor of information technology and communication has been the security
of information [1]. In fact, to protect secret message from being stolen during transmission, there are two ways. One way is
encryption, which refers to the process of encoding secret information in such a way that only the right person with a right
key can decode and recover the original information successfully [2]. Another way is steganography which hides the secret
message within other innocuous looking cover files (i.e. images, text, audio or video files) so that it cannot be observed.
The larger the cover message is (in data content terms—number of bits) relative to the hidden message, the easier it is to
hide the latter. For this reason, digital pictures (which contain large amounts of data) are used to hide messages on the
Internet and on other communication media.

The advantage of steganography over cryptography alone is that messages do not attract attention to themselves,
to messengers, or to recipients [3]. Steganography can be divided into four different categories based upon the type of
cover media chosen [4]. The most frequently used carriers are digital images which is our point of research, but here we are
not dealing with RGB images but with ARGB images that will be discussed in later sections.

STEGANOGRAPHY BACKGROUND

The term steganography originates from the Greek root words "steganos'' and "graphein'' which literally means
"covered writing''. Its ancient origins can be traced back to 440 BC. Histories the Greek historian Herodotus writes of a
2 Abdelmgeid Amin Ali & Al – Hussien Seddik Saad

nobleman, Histaeus, who needed to communicate with his son-in-law in Greece. He shaved the head of one of his most
trusted slaves and tattooed the message onto the slave’s scalp. When the slave’s hair grew back the slave was dispatched
with the hidden message [5]. Steganography is defined as the art of passing information through original files in a manner
that the existence of the message is unknown [6]. These techniques allow one party to communicate information to another
without a third party even knowing that the communication is occurring [7].

Actually, there has been a rapid growth of interest in the subject of steganography over the last ten years and
that’s for two main reasons. Firstly, the publishing and broadcasting industries have become interested in techniques for
hiding encrypted copyright marks and serial numbers in digital films, audio recordings, books. Secondly, 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 [8].

Basic Model of Steganography

The basic model of steganography uses a cover object (any object that can be used to hold secret information
inside), the secret message (the secret information that is to be sent) and a steganography algorithm/technique (the
procedure to hide secret message inside cover object). The outcome of the process is the stego object which is the object
that has the secret message hidden inside. This stego object is sent to the receiver where receiver will get the secret data out
from the stego image by applying decoding algorithm/technique [9].

Types of Steganography

The basic types of Steganography are, linguistic and technical steganography. Linguistic steganography takes
advantage of the properties of natural language, such as the linguistic structure to hide messages. While technical
steganography is the method of steganography where a tool, device, or method is used to conceal the message and it can be
classified into: image, audio, video and text steganography [7].

Image Steganography

As stated previously, images are considered as the most popular file formats used in steganography [10]. The use
of digital images for steganography makes use of the weaknesses in the human visual system (HVS), which has a low
sensitivity in random pattern changes and luminance. Because of this weakness the secret Message can be inserted into the
cover image without being detected.

Obviously, the less information embedded into the cover image, the smaller the probability of introducing
detectable artifacts by the embedding process. Another important factor is the choice of the cover image, the selection is at
the discretion of the person who sends the message. Images with a low number of colors, computer art, and images with
unique semantic content (such as fonts) should be avoided as cover images.

Some steganographic experts recommend uncompressed scans of photographs or images obtained with a digital
camera containing a high number of colors and consider them safe for steganography [11]. Finally, there are two kinds of
image steganography techniques, spatial domain and frequency domain techniques [2].

Performance Measurements

The challenge of using steganography in cover images is to hide as much data as possible with the least noticeable
difference in the stego-image. A tractable objective measures for this property are the Mean Squared Error (MSE) and the
Peak-Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) between the cover image and the stego image.
 New Image Steganography Method by Matching Secret Message with Pixels of Cover Image (SMM) 3

Mean Square Error (MSE): It is the measure used to quantify the difference between the initial and the distorted or
noisy image. Mean Square Error is computed using the following formula:

Where X and Y are the image coordinates, M and N are the dimensions of the image, Sxy is the generated stego-
image and Cxy is the cover image. From (MSE) we can find Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) which measures the quality
of the image by comparing the original image with the stego-image. (PSNR) is used to evaluate the quality of the stego-
image after embedding the secret message in the cover. It is computed using the following formula:

Where, C max holds the maximum value in the image that is 255 [12]. Finally, Other associated measures are the
steganographic capacity, which is the maximum information that can safely embedded in a work without having
statistically detectable objects [10]. An important note is that, for all the cover images, PSNR is more than 37 dB, this
means that the proposed steganography algorithm provides very good imperceptibility performance and the stego images
can't be detected [7].

ARGB IMAGES

Images are nothing but set of pixels, each pixel can be considered as a box holding the colors' codes in a known
sequence. RGB images or 24-bit per pixel (Bit Depth) standards images (i.e. BMP, GIF, JPG and PNG) which ( R ) stands
for Red, ( G ) for Green and ( B ) for Blue, was uniquely used as a base of pixels and to reproduce and present a broad
array of colors while alpha has been added later to represent the transparency of the color [13].

8 - bit 8 - bit 8 - bit

Figure 1: 24-Bit RGB

Channel

Depending on the color mode used, a color image automatically has either three or four channels. If you are using
the RGB color mode, the image has three channels; red, green and blue [14].

24-Bit Images (3 channels)

The 24-bit images contain 24-bits per pixel, which is actually 3 bytes. These images are classified as True Color
[15].

32-Bit Images (4 channels)

If a 24-bit image has an alpha channel added to it; this will require an additional 8-bits per pixel and increase the
image to 32-bit. An alpha channel contains transparency information about an image and if saved with this channel, then it
will remain as 32-bit. There are only a few graphical file formats which support alpha channels, for example TIFF, PSD,
PNG and BMP [15].
4 Abdelmgeid Amin Ali & Al – Hussien Seddik Saad

Alpha Channel

The alpha channel is an additional channel that can be added to an image and It contains transparency information
about the image. By adding the alpha channel to an image you control the transparency of the red channel, green channel
and the blue channel. It varies from 0 to 255 fully transparent. There are two types of alpha channels, pre-multiplied alpha
and straight alpha [14].

Pre-multiplied alpha, In this case the colors of the foreground are blended with the colors of the background. At
the same time the alpha blends from opaque to transparent. In straight alpha the foreground and background colors stay the
same, and only the alpha channel is blended [14]. File types such as TIFF, TGA, PNG, PSD and GIF all support alpha but
really only PNG and GIF are used for applications, and the web[14]. In this paper we are dealing with 24-bit PNG images
with alpha channel (32-bit).

24-bit PNG refers to true color or RGB (red/green/blue) images. Each pixel in such images is 24 bits (3 bytes),
these images thus can contain up to 16.8 million colors. Also note that a 24-bit RGB image may contain an 8-bit alpha
channel, for a total of 32 bits per pixel. However, when tools occasionally mention PNG32, they are invariably referring to
(24-bit RGB + alpha) which called ARGB [16]. So, Instead of storing three bytes for every pixel (red, green and blue),
now four are stored: alpha, red, green and blue, or ARGB [17].

8 - bit 8 - bit 8 - bit 8 - bit

Figure 2: 32-Bit ARGB

RELATED WORK

In [8] authors proposed a new encoding technique that is called Mobile Phone Keypad encoding (MPK) for secret
message that represent each character in the secret message by two digits only not three digits as ASCII encoding, and they
constructed a full characters' table that contains small letters (a ... z), capital letters (A ... Z), digits (0 ... 9) and special
character (@, -, +, ... ). This new MPK encoding technique saved one third of the required space for embedding. Which in
turn enhanced the Maximum Hiding Capacity (MHC) of the cover image, as a result of this the PSNR values have been
enhanced.

LITERATURE SURVEY

The most of today’s steganographic systems use images as cover object because people often transmit digital
images over email and other communication media. Several methods exist to utilize the concept of steganography as well
as plenty algorithms have been proposed in this regard. To gather knowledge in this particular research field, we have
concentrated on some techniques and methods which are described below .

In [18], three different steganographic methods have been presented. The first method is four neighbors method;
this method takes into consideration the upper, lower, left and right neighbors of a pixel, which can hide a large number of
secret bits in digital images and can maintain a very good PSNR. The second method, diagonal neighbors method; this
method determines the smooth and edged areas in the cover image based on a pixels relationship with its diagonal
neighbors; it can hide more bits than four neighbors' method. However this is accomplished by sacrificing the PSNR. The
third method that has been proposed was eight neighbors method; this method makes use all the eight neighbors of a pixel
 New Image Steganography Method by Matching Secret Message with Pixels of Cover Image (SMM) 5

in a 3 x 3 region. This method results in a stego image with imperceptible quality. Where a large number of pixels remain
unchanged, but hiding a considerable amount of secret data.

In [19], a High Capacity Image Steganography method in the frequency domain has been proposed using wavelet
Transform and Genetic Algorithm, which embeds data in Discrete Wavelet Transform coefficients in 4 x 4 blocks on the
cover image. The embedding algorithm firstly divides the cover image into 4 x 4 blocks, Finds the frequency domain
representation of blocks by 2D Discrete Wavelet Transform, Generate 16 genes containing the pixels numbers of each 4 x
4 blocks as the mapping function, Embeds the message bits in k-LSBs DWT coefficients each pixel according to mapping
function. In the experimental results the K used was equal to 3 and the maximum hiding capacity achieved was 1,048,576
bits.

In [20] a hybrid steganography (HDLS) method has been proposed which is an integration of both spatial and
transform domains. The cover image as well as the payload is divided into two cells each. The RGB components of cover
image cell I are separated and then transformed individually from spatial to transform domain using DCT/DWT/FFT and
embedded, the components of cell II retained in spatial domain itself. The MSB pixels of payload cell I and cell II are
embedded into corresponding cell I and cell II of cover image. The four MSB bits of each pixel in the payload cell I and
cell II are embedded in the second and fourth LSB positions of cover image cell I and cell II respectively to increase the
security of the payload and generate stego image in transform domain. The stego image in the transform domain after
embedding payload into the cover image is converted into spatial domain by changing cell I from transform domain into
spatial domain. The final stego image in spatial domain is obtained by combining cell I and cell II. The experimental
results showed that the PSNR of this technique is high compared to existing techniques.

PROPOSED METHOD

In this section, we will present our proposed method which works on the spatial domain of the cover image as in
the following algorithm:-

Algorithm: Message Embedding Using Secret Message Matching (SMM) Method

Input: Cover Image C; Secret Message M.

Output: StegoImage S.

Steps

1) Construct Alpha matrix; same width (W) and height (H) of the cover image C.

2) Make all the pixels of Alpha equal to 255 // fully transparent

3) Split the image into three channels Red (R), Green (G), Blue (B).

4) Convert R, G and B into vectors; R = {r1, r2, ...., rWxH}, G = {g1, g2, ...., gWxH}, B = {b1, b2, ...., bWxH}

5) Divide the three vectors into blocks each of which contains 3 pixels (ri, gi, bi) ; 1 <= i <= WxH

6) Construct a search space by taking 2nd and 3rd digits from each pixel; SSi = {ri(2), ri(3), gi(2), gi(3), bi(2), bi(3)}

7) Convert A into a vector; A = {a1, a2, ...., aWxH}

8) Encode secret message M using MPK Encoding; MPKDigits = { md1, md2, ...... , mdn}

9) i =1, k=1 // k is the search space counter

6 Abdelmgeid Amin Ali & Al – Hussien Seddik Saad

10) If (mdi Match SSk)

Pos = index

LSB(Alphak, Pos)

i = i+1

k = k+1

Else

k = k+1

Goto 10

End if

11) Repeat step 10 until the whole MPKDigits have been matched and their indices are embedded.

12) Convert A, R, G and B back into channels.

13) Merge the four channels A, R, G and B respectively to construct the ARGB StegoImage S.

The proposed method will work as shown in the algorithm, by adding an Alpha channel to the image whose
pixels are 255 which means fully transparent channel, then searching for the MPKDigits of the character and if found, the
index will be embedded in the corresponding Alpha pixel by using Least Significant Bit (LSB) Method else, new search
space will be encountered. The new proposed method converts the whole cover image into a search space for the whole
secret message. So, instead of embedding the secret character itself which can varies from (0 to 127); in case of secret text
or (0to 255); in case of secret image, the secret character index which varies from 1 to 6 will be embedded; which are the
indices of the search space. This means that the secret characters varies from (001)2 to (110)2 not from (00000000)2 to
(11111111)2 which means smaller number of modified pixels and higher PSNR values plus higher Maximum Hiding
Capacity (MHC). Now, after we have discussed the proposed method in details, we will evaluate the performance of our
new proposed method by taking the same messages and the same cover images that have been used earlier in other
methods in order to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed method.

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

In this section, the proposed method has been tested by taking different messages with different lengths and
hiding them in some cover images. The results that are obtained from these experiments are recorded and can be
summarized in the following tables.

Table 1: Comparison between PSNRs of Methods (Jpeg – Jsteg [21], SLDIP [2],
MSLDIP [2] Nd Our Proposed Method)

Message Capacity 6,656 Bytes

Cover Images / PSNR (dB)
Methods Jpeg - Proposed
SLDIP MSLDIP
(256 x 256) Jsteg Method
Lena 39.10 44.9886 48.7596 48.823719
Baboon 30.38 44.9953 48.6638 48.684503
Boat 37.08 44.7794 48.6661 48.894425
 New Image Steganography Method by Matching Secret Message with Pixels of Cover Image (SMM) 7

Table 2: Comparison between PSNRs of Method (LSB - 3 [22] and Our Proposed Method)

Message Capacity 8,192 Bytes

Cover images / PSNR (dB)
Methods Proposed
LSB-3
(256 x 256) Method
Boat 42.4163 47.965710
Bird 42.4062 48.255879
Flinstone 42.2932 47.942566

Table 3: Comparison between PSNRs of Method (Jpeg – Jsteg (Huffman) [23] and Our Proposed Method)

Cover Images / Message PSNR (dB)

Methods Capacity Jpeg – Jsteg Proposed
(256 x 256) (Bytes) (Huffman) Method
Lena 4,382 37.77 50.717675
Baboon 6,026 36.49 49.117879
Peppers 4,403 37.77 50.763116

Table 4: Comparison between PSNRs of Methods (Four Neighbors [18], Diagonal Neighbors [18],
Eight Neighbors [18] and Our Proposed Method)

Cover Images / Message PSNR (dB)

Methods Capacity Neighbors' Proposed
(512 x 512) (Bits) Methods Method
Lena 392,208 41.1468 46.327363
Lena 395,680 40.6504 46.288939
Lena 196,968 196968 49.356405
Baboon 435,223 36.5154 45.688027
Baboon 443,165 35.0725 44.623746
Baboon 220,575 220575 48.607775

As shown in tables 1, 2, 3 and 4, after hiding different secret messages in different cover images Lena, baboon,
Peppers, Boat, Bird and Flinstone using 8 different methods (SLDIP [2], MSLDIP [2], Jpeg – Jsteg [21], LSB-3 [22], Jpeg
– Jsteg (Huffman) [23], four neighbors [18], diagonal neighbors [18] and eight neighbors [18]) and our proposed method,
we found that, the new proposed method has higher PSNR values than these methods which means that the resultant stego
- image quality will be higher than these methods which in turn make the two images more identical.

CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, a new image steganography technique was proposed. The proposed method hides the secret message
based on searching spaces and ARGB images, so instead of hiding the secret character, only the index will be hidden
which means least number of pixels' modification. The proposed method was compared with eight methods; SLDIP,
MSLDIP,

Jpeg – Jsteg, LSB-3, Jpeg – Jsteg (Huffman), four neighbors, diagonal neighbors and finally eight neighbors and
the results showed that our proposed method has a very high PSNR which means the cover image and the stego image will
look identical and the stego image won't attract attention.

This paper conclude that the proposed method is more efficient, simple, appropriate and accurate than other
methods, it search about the secret character then start hiding its index instead of it, hence the change in the image
resolution is quite low, as well as it makes the secret message more secure.
8 Abdelmgeid Amin Ali & Al – Hussien Seddik Saad

FUTURE WORK

As a future work, we will try to enhance the embedding capacity by modifying the proposed method's algorithm
to make it able to use each pixel in the cover image without degrading the stego image quality (PSNR).

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