Steganography

Supriya mathur

Abstract
Steganography is the technique of hiding confidential information

within

any

media.

Steganography

is

often

confused

with

cryptography because the two are similar in the way that they both are used to protect confidential information. The difference between the two is in the appearance in the processed output; the output of steganography operation is not apparently visible but in cryptography the output is scrambled so that it can draw attention. Steganlysis is process to detect of presence of steganography. In

this article we have tried to elucidate the different approaches

towards implementation of steganography using' multimedia file (text, static image, audio and video) and Network IP datagram as cover. Also some methods of steganalysis will be discussed.

What is Steganography?
Greek Words: STEGANOS Covered GRAPHIE Writing

Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one apart from the intended recipient knows of the existence of the message. This can be achieve by concealing the existence of information within seemingly harmless carriers or cover Carrier: text, image, video, audio, etc.

Stegosaurus: a covered lizard

(but not a type of cryptography)

Why we need

Steganography ?

'The goal of steganography is to hide messages inside other harmless messages in a way that does not allow any enemy to even detect that there is a second secret message present. Now a days, various modes of communication like LAN, WAN and INTERNET are widely used for communicating information from one place to another around the globe. Such communication networks are open which any one can access easily. They are regularly monitored and an intercepted.

History of Steganography
Steganography ancient origins can be traced back to 440 BC, from the Histories of Herodotus Demeratus sent a warning about a forthcoming attack to Greece by writing it on a wooden panel and covering it in wax. 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 Persians.

World War II
Invincible inks
Null ciphers (unencrypted messages):
Apparently neutral's protest is thoroughly discounted and ignored. Isman hard hit. Blockade issue affects pretext for embargo on by products, ejecting suets and vegetable oils.

Sent by a German Spy in WWII, by taking the second letter in each word the following message emerges:
Pershing sails from NY June 1.

Microdot Technology Shrinking messages down to the size of a dot became a popular method. Since the microdot could be placed at the end of a sentence or above a j or an i.

Steganography, Cryptography, and Watermarking

There are two major branches of information hiding, Steganography and Watermarking

Watermarking:

Communication in watermarking is the host signal, with the embedded data providing copyright protection. The existence of a watermark is often declared openly. Any attempt to remove or invalidate the embedded content renders the host useless.

Cryptography:

Doesnt conceal the communication. Scrambles the data to prevent eavesdroppers understanding the content. Cryptography involves various methods and implementations. May be considered complementary and orthogonal (unrelated).

Once the presence of hidden information is revealed or even suspected, the purpose of steganography is defeated.

Modern Steganography Techniques

Masking and Filtering: Is where information is hidden inside of a image using digital watermarks that include information such as copyright, ownership, or licenses. The purpose is different from traditional steganography since it is adding an attribute to the cover image thus extending the amount of information presented. Algorithms and Transformations: This technique hides data in mathematical functions that are often used in compression algorithms. The idea of this method is to hide the secret message in the data bits in the least significant coefficients. Least Significant Bit Insertion: The most common and popular method of modern day steganography is to make use of the LSB of a pictures pixel information. Thus the overall image distortion is kept to a minimum while the message is spaced out over the pixels in the images. This technique works best when the image file is larger then the message file and if the image is grayscale.

Basics of Modern Steganography

fE: steganographic function "embedding" fE-1: steganographic function "extracting" cover: cover data in which emb will be hidden emb: message to be hidden key: parameter of fE stego: cover data with the hidden message

Important Requirement for Steganographic System

Security of the hidden communication size of the payload

Robustness against malicious and unintentional attacks

THANK YOU
SUPRIYA MATHUR