PIXEL REPLACEMENT TECHNIQUE

USING
STEGANOGRAPHY
-A HIGH LEVEL SECURITY THROUGH OBSCURITY-
BY
P.VINCENT PAUL & A.M.VIGNESH,
BE, Third year, Paavai college of engineering,
Affiliated to Anna university-Coimbatore
Namakkal -18.

Presented by:

P.VINCENT PAUL, (III-BE), E.mail:vincentpvp89@gmail.com, Contact: 9443217887.

A.M.VIGNESH, (III-BE), E.mail:vignesham.ece@gmail.com, Contact: 9585278358.

Elecronics and Communication Engineering

Paavai College OF Engineering
Namakkal

PIXEL REPLACEMENT TECHNIQUE

 USING
STEGANOGRAPHY
-A HIGH LEVEL SECURITY THROUGH OBSCURITY-
BY
P.VINCENT PAUL & A.M.VIGNESH
BE, Third year, Paavai college of engineering,
Affiliated to Anna university-coimbatore
Namakkal -18.

CONTENTS: So, to deceive the hackers, people have started

to follow a technique called ‘Steganography’. It
1. ABSTRACT is not an entirely new technique and has been in
2. STEGANOGRAPHY DEFINITION the practice from ancient times. In this method,
3. HISTORY OF STEGANOGRAPHY the data is hidden behind unsuspecting objects
4. STEGANOGRAPHY TYPES like images, audio, video etc. so that people
4.1 Physical Steganography cannot even recognize that there is a second
4.2 Digital Steganography message behind the object. Images are
4.3 Blog Steganography commonly used in this technique.
4.4 Printed Steganography
In this paper, we have proposed a technique for
5. STEGANOGRAPHY TECHNIQUES hiding data secretly behind images. The existing
5.1 EMBEDDING A FILE techniques for image Steganography have some
5.2 STGANALYSIS serious drawbacks and we have tried to
overcome those with ours. Here, the pixels in
6. DRAWBACKS OF CURRENT the images are replaced with the new ones,
TECHNIQUE which are almost identical to the old ones, in a
manner that can be used to retrieve back the
7. PIXEL REPLACEMENT TECHNIQUE hidden data.
7.1 THE ALGORITHM
2. STEGANOGRAPHY:
8. IMPLEMENTATION
9. ADVANTAGES Steganography is a term used to describe files
10. FUTURE STEGANOGRAPHY that have other types of files secretly embedded
11. CONCLUSION inside. Usually, when we talk about
Steganography, we mean the embedding of a
1. ABSTRACT: text file, or a secret message, inside an image.
Not only is the message itself hidden, but the
As we know, the field of cryptography has got fact that a message exists is hidden. It is in this
more attention nowadays. More and more way that steganography is a method of
complex techniques for encrypting the concealing the fact that communication is taking
information are proposed every now and then. place in addition to actually concealing a file.
But, as usual, when a small step is made to
improve the security, more work is done in the “The goal of Steganography is to hide messages
opposite direction by the hackers to break it. inside other harmless messages in a way that
Thus they are able to attack most of these does not allow any enemy even to detect that
algorithms and that too, successfully. there is a second secret message present.”
The advantage of steganography over
cryptography is that messages do not attract
attention to themselves. Plainly visible
encrypted messages. No matter how
unbreakable and will 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.
3. HISTORY:
The first recorded uses of steganography can be
traced back to 440 BC when Herodotus
mentions two examples of steganography in The
Histories of Herodotus. Demaratus sent a
warning about a forthcoming attack to Greece
by writing it directly on the wooden backing of
a wax tablet before applying its beeswax
surface. Wax tablets were in common use then
as reusable writing surfaces, sometimes used for
shorthand. Another ancient example is that of
Histiaeus, who shaved the head of his most
trusted slave and tattooed a message on it. After
his hair had grown the message was hidden. The
purpose was to instigate a revolt against the
Persian.
But now in digital era the term
steganography is used in computer
communications. And provides high
vulnerablity to attacks.
4. STEGANOGRAPHIC TYPES:
4.1 PHYSICAL STEGANOGRAPHY:
Hidden messages on paper written in secret
inks, under other messages or on the blank parts
of other messages.
Messages written in morse code on knitting yarn
and then knitted into a piece of clothing worn by
a courier.
Messages written on the back of postage stamps.
4.2 DIGITAL STEGANOGRAPHY:
Modern steganography entered the world in
1985 with the advent of the personal computer
applied to classical steganography problems.
Development following that was slow, but has
since taken off, going by the number of 'stego'
programs available: Over 725 digital
steganography applications have been identified
by the Steganography Analysis and Research
Center.
Content-Aware Steganography hides
information in the semantics a human user
assigns to a datagram. These systems offer
security against a non-human adversary/warden.
4.3 BLOG-STEGANOGRAPHY:
Messages are fractionalized and the (encrypted)
pieces are added as comments of orphaned web-
logs (or pin boards on social network
platforms). In this case the selection of blogs is
the symmetric key that sender and recipient are
using; the carrier of the hidden message is the
whole blogosphere.
4.4 PRINTED STEGANOGRAPHY:
Digital steganography output may be in the
form of printed documents. A message, the
plaintext, may be first encrypted by traditional
means, producing a ciphertext. Then, an
innocuous covertext is modified in some way to
as to contain the ciphertext, resulting in the
stegotext. For example, the letter size, spacing,
typeface, or other characteristics of a covertext
can be manipulated to carry the hidden message.
Only a recipient who knows the technique used
can recover the message and then decrypt it.
Francis Bacon developed Bacon's cipher as such
a technique.
5. STEGANOGRAPHIC
TECHNIQUES IN COMPUTERS:
How Steganography is done in terms of
computers? There are several ways, some of
which become very complicated to understand.
The steganographic techniques in computers
involve
• Embedding a file
• Steganalysis

5.1 EMBEDDING A FILE:
LEAST SIGNIFICANT BIT
STEGANOGRAPHY:
One simple method is LSB, or Least
Significant Bit Steganography. An image is
nothing more than strings and strings of bytes,
each byte representing a different color. The last
few bits in a color byte, however, do not hold as
much significance as the first few. This is to say
that two bytes that only differ in the last few bits
can represent two colors that are virtually
indistinguishable to the human eye. For
example, 00100110 and 00100111 can be two
different shades of red, but since it is only the
last bit that differs between the two, it is
impossible to see the color difference. LSB
Steganography, then, alters these last bits by
hiding a message within them.
REAL PIXEL EMBEDDED PIXEL
COLOR COLOR
LSB
REPLACED PIXELS (NOT VISIBLE
COMMONLY)
DISCRETE COSINE TRANSFORM
STEGANOGRAPHY:
Another method of steganography
involves using the DCT (Discrete Cosine
Transform) coefficients in JPEG files. DCT
coefficients are more frequently thought of as
being used for JPEG compression, but they
come into play in steganography as well. In a
JPEG file, the image is made up of these
coefficients, and when a file is
steganographically embedded into a JPEG
image, the relation of these coefficients is
altered. Instead of actual bits being changed like
in LSB steganography, it is the relation of the
coefficients to one another that is altered,
holding a secret message.
5.2 STEGANALYSIS:
Stegananalysis means the way a
stegonagraphic image is detected. Remember, it
is not just the message within the image that is
being searched; it is the fact that a hidden file
exists within the image that is most important to
find. Stegananalysis can sometimes (but, very
rarely) be done using visual detection. Visual
detection simply means using ones eye to
literally look at the image to see if any visible
changes have occurred. Since the original image
is almost never known, however, it proves
difficult to compare an image with an embedded
file with what it looked like beforehand. This
task of simple visual detection is easier,
however, if there is not a gradual change of
color in the image.
Statistical analysis is what is frequently used in
steganography detection. This is done using
advanced statistics techniques. Basically what is
done is the color pairs in an image are
measured, meaning it is observed how close
each color in the image to its adjacent color.
These two colors, which do not differ greatly,
are known as a close color pair. In a
steganographic image, the occurrence of each
individual color approaches the occurrence of its
color pair. This is to say that the individual
colors become less different when a file is
embedded into the image. The occurrences of
these colors are measured using statistics.
RQP (RAW QUICK PAIRS) METHOD:
One specific technique is the RQP
(Raw Quick Pairs) Method. In this method, the
ratios between the close color pairs and all color
pairs are measured in an image. Then, a
message is deliberately embedded in the image
and the same measurements are taken again. If
there is a large difference between the two
measurements, then it is unlikely a message has
been embedded in the original.
Observe the following two images [FIGURE 2].
The one on the left is the original image, and the
one on the right is the same image with a text
file embedded in it. The change is easy to detect
visually, since the color changes in the original
image are not gradual. When there is a
noticeable contrast between the colors, it
becomes easier to detect an embedded file.
A.ORGINAL IMAGE
B.EMBEDDED IMAGE
FIGURE-2
6. DRAWBACKS IN THE CURRENT
TECHNIQUES:
 Extremely liable to attacks like Image
Manipulation techniques where the
pixels will be scanned for a possible
relation which will be used to trace out
the actual characters.
 Only 24 bit messages are suitable and 8
bit images are to be used at great risk.
 Extreme Care needs to be taken in the
selection of the cover image, so that
changes to the data will not be visible in
the stego-image.
 Commonly known images, such as
famous paintings must be avoided.
7. THE PIXEL REPLACEMENT
TECHNIQUE:
Because of the drawbacks in the currently
followed techniques, we propose a new
technique for hiding data in images. Here, we
replace the existing pixels in the image with the
new ones in such a way that no difference is
visible between the steganographed and the
original image.
7.1 THE ALGORITHM:
Encoding:
The Algorithm used for encoding in
this technique can be described with the
following steps.
1. Get the Image, Message to be hidden and the
Password.
2. Encrypt the message and the password.
3. Move some rows below the first row in the
image and fix a reference position near the left
edge for odd characters and near the right for
even characters.
4. For each character in the original data do find
a position corresponding to that character search
the surrounding pixels and find a pixel value
closer to all of them replace the current pixel
and the reference pixel with this value move to
the next row.
5. Set a pixel value as a threshold.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for the Password from
the bottom of the image.
Decoding:
The Algorithm for retrieving the
original message from the steganographed
image follows this sequence.
1. Get the Image and the Password.
2. Move to the bottom row in the image where
password hiding starts.
3. Find the value of the reference pixel.
4. Search the entire row for the same pixel
value.
5. Find the position of that pixel and decode the
character.
6. Repeat steps 3 thro 5 till the threshold is
reached.
7. Concatenate all the characters found so far
(Actual Password).
8. If the found password does not match the
given password return as error.
9. Move to the top row in which the first
character of original data was stored.
10. Repeat the sequence followed in steps 3 to 7
to get the original message.
11. Display the result.
8. IMPLEMENTATION:
With the algorithm described in
brief, let us describe the pixel replacement
technique in detail. First, we shall see how the
original message and the password are hidden
into the image and then we’ll discuss how to
retrieve message for the authorized person who
knows the correct password.
STEP 1: Encrypting the Message & Password:
First, the original message and the
password are got from the user. Then, they are
encrypted using any of the encryption
algorithms like RSA, DES etc. This encryption
step is an additional safety feature added to the
technique to ensure maximum safety. Then, this
encrypted message is fed as the input to the next
step.
Original message: “GOD IS GREAT”
Encryption type : RSA or DES
After encryption : “TAERG SI DOG”
Image:

[Image splited into pixels]

STEP 2: Choosing a position to hide the

character:
The actual process of Steganography
starts here. The Image is scanned from the top
row – wise. First few rows are omitted and a
suitable row is reached. The message is
split into individual characters. The following
process is repeated for all the characters in the
message. A position for hiding the character is
chosen according to some relation with that
character. The relation can be something like the
ASCII value of the character, the order of
occurrence of that character in the Alphabetical
or Reverse order if it is an alphabet etc.
For example, the position of the
character ‘G’ can be chosen as:
ASCII Value of ‘G’ = 71,
So, position = 71 – 50 = 19.
(Only e.g. any value instead of 50 can be used) Pixels where data is stored

STEP 3: Finding a Suitable Color:

Once a position is chosen, the values
of all the pixels surrounding the pixel in that
position are found. Since this position is usually
not near the edge of the image, there will be 8
pixels surrounding it. A pixel value, i.e., a color,
is chosen so that it does not differ much from
those of the 8 pixels. This is the most difficult
step in the whole process. The value will differ
only by a small value. Such a small change in
the color will be indiscernible to the users.
 STEP 5: Setting a Threshold:
The final step in hiding the message
is to set a threshold pixel in a fixed position to
indicate the end of the encrypted message. This
is essential for decoding the message from the
image. Otherwise, we cannot find the end of the
message.

STEP 4: Replacing the pixels:

Now, with the color to be replaced
being found, it’s time to replace the pixels with
the new color. A position near to the left side of
the row is fixed as the reference position for the
odd numbered character i.e., the 1st, 3rd, 5th
character and so on. Similarly, for the even
STEP 6: Hiding the Password:
numbered characters, a position close to the
The same steps of choosing the color,
right side of the row is selected as the reference
replacing the pixels and setting a threshold are
position. These reference positions are the same
repeated for hiding the password but the only
for all the characters. When the reference
difference is that the image is scanned row –
position is chosen, the pixel in that position is
wise from the last row instead of from the first
replaced with the new color. Then, the pixel in
row.
the already found position for the character (in
our e.g., this is 19) is also replaced with the new
color.

STEP 7: Retrieving the Message:

 The process of retrieving the original
message from the steganographed image is
similar to that of the hiding process except in
the reverse order. First, the password is got from
the user. The image is scanned from the last row
and the row in which the password hiding
started is reached. The reference pixel value is
found and the position of that color in that row
is noted. Then, again the relation used
previously for finding the position is used to get
the original character. This can be explained as:
If the position is 19, then
19 + 50 = 71,
The character of ASCII value 70 is ‘G’.
Similarly, the other characters are found till the
threshold is reached and all of them are
concatenated to get the original password. Now,
the given password and the original are checked
and if they match, then further processes are
done, otherwise, an error message is displayed.
If the password matches, then the image is
scanned from the top and the starting row from
where the data hiding started is reached. The
same steps of finding the reference pixel and the
position of the other pixel are repeated again till
the threshold. Then, all the characters are joined
and the original message is displayed.
9. ADVANTAGES OF PIXEL
REPLACEMENT TECHNIQUE:
 Cost of cracking the hidden message is
extremely high.
 The data cannot be easily decoded
without the key using Image
Manipulation techniques.
 Any type of image, 8 or 24 bits can be
used.
 There is no increase in the size of the
image due to data in it.
 There are no constraints on the choice of
the image.
10. FUTURE OF
STEGANOGRAPHY:
Steganography is still a fairly new
idea. There are constant advancements in the
computer field, suggesting advancements in the
field of steganography as well. It is likely that
there will soon be more efficient and more
advanced techniques for steganalysis. A hopeful
advancement is the improved sensitivity to
small messages. Knowing how difficult it is to
detect the presence of a fairly large text file
within an image, imagine how difficult it is to
detect even one or two sentences embedded in
an image! It is like finding a microscopic needle
in the ultimate haystack. What is scary is that
such a small file of only one or two sentences
may be all that is needed to commence a
terrorist attack. In the future, it is hoped that the
technique of steganalysis will advance such that
it will become much easier to detect even small
messages within an image.
11. CONCLUSION:
To overcome the drawbacks in the existing
cryptography and Steganography
Techniques, we have proposed a new technique
for hiding data in images. This technique is less
prone to attacks and since the data is strongly
encrypted and the cost of retrieving it by
unauthorized persons is extremely high. Since
the pixels are replaced with almost identical
pixels, it is difficult even to identify that there is
a second message hidden. So, we hope that this
technique will be used widely in the future.

REFERENCES
[1]. “Steganography” by Markus Kahn,
Steganography Mailing List.
[2]. “Network and Internetwork Security” by
William Stallings, Addison-
Wesley.
[3]. “Steganography” by Dorian A. Flowers
Xavier, University of Louisiana
[4]. http://www.thur.de/ulf/stegano
[5]. http://www.cs.uct.ac.za
[6]. http://www.jjtc.com/stegdoc
[7]. “Privacy on the net - steganography”,
Michael Berkowitz.
[8].http://www.tamos.com/privacy/steganoen.ht
m.