A NOVEL APPROACHES TOWARDS STEGANOGRAPHY

International Journal of Technical Research and Applications e-ISSN: 2320-8163,
www.ijtra.com Volume 2, Issue 4 (July-Aug 2014), PP. 72-75
72 | P a g e
A NOVEL APPROACHES TOWARDS
STEGANOGRAPHY
Geeta D. Rote1
, Dr. A. M. Patil2
1
Research Scholar
2
HOD of Electronics and Telecommunication
J.T.M College of Engineering, Faizpur
Abstract— For increase network security of messages sent on
internet the steganography is mostly preferred. To transmit data
secretly steganography is used in open system environment. In
this paper discussed the reviews of image steganography and the
general framework of image steganography using different
method. Steganography is nothing but art of hide information
behind the other information without leaving remarkable track
on original message.
Keywords— Cryptography, Steganography, Watermarking,
LSB, DCT, etc
I. HISTORY OF STEGANOGRAPHY
Steganography is nothing but the concealed
communication. This technique is used for data hiding under
the cover information, hidden information recover by particular
key without any awareness of original information [1].
While Cryptography also used for data hiding. This is
started before 4000 years ago by Egyptian people. But it
allows only the privacy, in contrast steganography provides
secrecy, [2] Privacy you need when you use your credit cards
on internet that means you don’t want your credit card number
revealed to the public that time you used cryptography. That
means hacker can see you have sent a message because that
code may be unbreakable. But in contrast steganography
having true secrecy, you do not want anyone to know you are
sending a message at all. Actual message can hide behind the
cover message without any suspicion. During the 1980’s,
Margaret Thatcher wants to find out that from where cabinet
documents leaks from press. So she had the word processors
programmed to predetermine their uniqueness in the word
spacing, so that unfaithful ministers could be traced [3].
In 1983, steganography is termed as a prisoner’s problem,
where two prisoners A and B want to escape from jail. They
wants to communicate each other but one warden was observe
there communication. So they embed there secrete message
with the covert text, warden can see the cover message but
cannot even predict that some message hidden behind it [4] [5].
In steganography information can be hidden in carriers such
as images, audio files, text files, and video and data
transmissions. When message is hidden in the carrier a stego
carrier is formed for example a stego-image. Hopefully it will
be perceived to be as close as possible to the original carrier or
cover image by the human senses. Images are the most
widespread carrier medium. They are used for steganography
in the following way. The message may firstly be encrypted.
The sender embeds the secret message to be sent into a graphic
file. This results in the production of what is called stego-
image. Additional secret data may be needed in the hiding
process e.g. a stego-key etc. This stego-image is then
transmitted to the recipient. The recipient extractor extracts the
message from the carrier image. The message can only be
extracted if there is a shared secret between the sender and the
recipient. This could be the algorithm for extraction or a special
parameter such as stego-key. A Steganalyst or attacker may be
tried to intercept the stego image [6].
In steganography our secure data is embed with the cover
image. Data embedding is really invisible due to the human
vision system and it cannot understand original host signal and
host signal with hidden data. Such a blind tests are used to
evaluate the perceptual simplicity of data embedding process
[7].
1) Types Of Steganography
There are four different types of steganography those are
text, audio, video and Image steganography. In text
steganography line shift coding, word shift coding and feature
coding as well as syntactic/ semantic methods are used for data
hiding. This type of data hiding is done by changing the
formatting or look of the file, by modifying spacing between
the lines, modifying words or the sizes of the letters but this
type of modifications can be easily visible to eye or sometimes
it changes the meaning of sentences because of that text files
have a small amount of redundant data
Audio steganography is also most difficult technique to
encode the secret message because of the human auditory
system. Audio steganography, the hiding of messages in audio
“noise” (and in frequencies which humans can’t hear), is
another area of information hiding that relies on using an
existing source as a space in which to hide information. Audio
steganography can be problematic, however, since musicians,
audiophiles, and sound engineers have been reported to be able
to detect the extra high-frequency information encoded in
messages. In addition to store information in non-audible
frequencies or by distorting the audible signal to include
additional noise [8, 6].
As per [9] Image steganography is relatively easy and
protected way for transmitted information over the internet.
This type of steganography is mostly used to hide secret
message in digital images because of the limited power of
human vision. LSB encoding is the most popular technique
used for digital images. In LSB we can store 3 bits of data in
each pixel for 24 pixels that means this type of steganography
can hide large amount of data as compare to others, secondly it
cannot differ in cover image as well as stego image so hackers
cannot predict that some data is hidden behind that image. If
hacker do not having any special extracting method or secrete
key then he or she cannot extract the hidden message. Rather
than when we apply image compression and image processing
on the stego image that time also the message recovery rate is
higher.
For flexibility, robustness and higher security in image
steganography combines with cryptography. In cryptography
data is hide in unreadable format, but it increase the curiosity of
the hacker to get that message. And if we hide that unreadable
data by using steganography no one can recognize the hidden

73 | P a g e
data, so we can increase the security by combining these two
methods [10].
II. GENERAL FRAMEWORK
Figure 1 shows the block diagram of steganography
mechanism.
1. Encrypt: The secret data is encrypt behind the original
message.
2. Embed: Embedding the information along with Least
Significant Bit method along with stego key which is
mandatory for sender and receiver. By using stego key
it forms stego object
Figure 1 Block diagram of Steganography by [11].
3. Extract: At the receiver side that stego object is
separates by stego key. The same stego key is required
to extract the secret data.
4. Decrypt: At last the original message and hidden data
is separate at the receiver side and receiver gets the
secret data.
A. Steganography Techniques:
Watermarking and steganography are similar techniques
which used for data hiding. In watermarking technique
information hides in data object but that is not easily modify or
it will corrupt the quality of image. Steganography is the
technique, where modification in cover message may corrupt
the hidden information. [12]
In watermarking data hide into multimedia data by any
unnoticeable modification in data. In steganography normal
carrier is used to hide data without enlightening its presence.
[13]
In Data Insertion technique unique signature is created of
stego image by using different steganography tools. By using
camouflage tool steganography algorithm is easy to detect.
Compare with jpegx tool, it adds particular fixed signature
before adds with secrete message. [14]
Least Significant Bit technique secrete message is hide
behind the cover message after that remaining data is replaces
by all 0’s or all 1’s. At the time of detection first consider the
LSB’s of data and then search for block of 0’s or 1’s. In LSB
technique data is hidden behind the cover image, it creates one
stego image for communication. Images may be 24 bit or 8 bit
image; if image is 24 bit then it is capable to hide 3 bits of data
per pixels. For 8 bit image it can hide one bit per pixel. So by
changing these bits of information do not affect the cover
image and so it cannot easily attract attention of hackers.
Discrete Cosine Transform technique data embed in spatial
domain and it’s difficult to detect the hidden data. DCT uses
basically two different methods, large number of coefficients
customized slightly to contain data of payload another is
customized small number of insignificant coefficients by data
of payload. [4]
Transformation technique is used for embedding the data in
large amount, but in this technique generates more noise in
stego image, compare with this LSB is used to reduce noise. In
wavelet transformation technique data stored in small memory
space because of that data can be easy to transfer. In
transformation techniques, spatial domain to frequency domain
conversion also possible by using DCT, Fast Fourier
transforms or wavelets etc [15]
Decompositions in data hiding are performing by DCT,
DFT, hadamard and sub band transform. DFT is better as
compare to other decomposition. [16]
In steganography video and image data can also hide
behind video. Video is nothing but series of high motion
images [17]. That conceal data is distribute over wide range of
frequencies of cover data. Discrete cosine or discrete wavelet
transform coefficient is used for conceal data. In DCT
technique two bits of conceal data can hide behind cover data.
J. J. Chae and B. S. Manjunath [18] presents a technique
that conceal image and cover video convert using the 8 × 8
DCT. Conceal coefficients quantized and then encoded using
multidimensional lattices and then inserted into cover DCT
coefficients.
As per [19] LSB is implemented by using spatial domains
in which secrete data bits are replaced by least significant bits
of the cover image to form a stego image. As well as in DCT &
DWT algorithms are implemented by frequency domain in
which frequency domain convert to spatial domain of stego
image & hidden data bits embed into frequency components of
cover image
In Spread Spectrum image steganography is another
technique of hiding information within noise signal. If kept at
level, it’s not observable to human vision and susceptible to
computer analysis except the cover image. [20]
III. RELATED WORK
Steganography is the technique to conceal the data in secure
manner, that means hide a data behind the other data. Original
information hides at the back of cover information.
Steganography is nearly similar to cryptography difference
is that in cryptography is convert the original information in
non-readable format and no one can understand the
information. And the steganography is the technique which no
one can understand that any information is hiding behind the
existing data. That means the data is unobtainable to
unauthorized users the person intended to get message even
knows a secret message exist. In steganography we can hide
information like text, image, audio and video [2, 8, 21, 22].
In steganography technique for hiding information can be
used many formats such as .bmp, .doc, .gif, .jpeg, .mp3, .txt .au
and .wav. Information concealing is not capable in text as well
as audio as compare to images. In day to day life images are
more secure data type for hide the information. When we use
the computers that images are made up of number of pixels, by
combination of that pixels form a complete image. In this
digital world for use with steganography 8-bit and 24-bit per
pixel image files are representative 8-bit image can represents
only 256 colors those are the grey-scale colors, this colors have
minor changes because of that hidden data cannot predict
easily. Similar to 24- bit images have number of colors which
can hide data easily and cannot obtainable to human vision
system, advantage of 24-bit images can hide much larger data
as compare to 8-bit digital image. Disadvantage of 24-bit
digital image is larger is required as compare to 8-bit digital

74 | P a g e
images when we used it at internet [6, 23]. Grayscale images
are the best cover images. When uncompressed scans of
photographs or images achieve a high number of colors are
optional and highly secure for data hiding [24] [40]
According to Hsiang-Kuang Pan, Yu-Yuan Chen, and Yu-
Chee Tseng [25] binary images which consist only two colors
black and white also conceal the data more securely as well as
more efficiently. Much data can conceal behind binary images
without affect quality of cover image.
In image steganography if we take the image or video
(nothing but the frames of images) after image processing it
can be images, this image nothing but set of pixels which
represent the light intensities. [26]
Image compression technique is used to reduce the size of
existing images by removing excess image data. There are two
types of image compressions; lossy compression and loseless
compression. Lossy compression reduces the size of digital
image and it mostly used in 24-bit digital image. It’s not
exactly similar to original images it removes the redundant data
and has approximation to real image. Lossy compression
technique is used in JPEG format. Lossless compression
technique recommend that, keeps original data as it is. Because
of that lossless compression technique is mostly prefer.
Lossless compression technique is mostly used for GIF and
BMP formats [27, 6].
In image steganography Least Significant Bit (LSB)
method is used for hiding messages. LSB technique depends on
the fact that digital images nothing but the set of color and
intensities. In LSB insertion is move toward to embedding data
in a cover image by place the data at LSB of each picture of
cover image. By using LSB method doesn’t change the quality
of image to human observation. [28, 29, 30]
BMP format data is capable to conceal large amount of
information. But BMP is preferred when focus is on amount of
data is to be transmitted instead of secrecy, similar to this data
type PNG format used for image steganography. GIF format is
used in LSB when embedding a reasonable amount of data in
grayscale image. [31].
Multimedia files are mostly use to embed large amount of
information such as video bmp and audio wav files. MPEG,
JPEG, MP3 also use for steganography. [32]
In LSB algorithms having two embedding systems those
are sequential and scattered. In sequential embedding that bits
of message changes one by one of the image. Where as in
scattered embedding there is no sequence to control the
embedding sequence. In LSB 3 bits from each pixel can be
hiding of each byte of 24 bit image [11].
As per the [33] image smoothness is define by statistical
distribution of difference between current pixel value and
neighborhood average pixel value. Spatial LSB steganography
is proposed message embedding with LSB plane flipping for
image smoothness.
In LSB steganography having some demerits that for
extraction of secrete data requires exact binary sequence
because of noisy transmission, cropping, color conversion may
lost the hidden data. [34, 35]
BPCS (Bit Plane Complexity Segmentation) steganography
also used for embed as much data as in cover message in
bitmap format [36].
IV. STEGANOGRAPHY APPLICATIONS
There are many applications for digital steganography of
image, including copyright protection, feature tagging, and
secret communication. Copyright notice or watermark can
embedded inside an image to identify it as intellectual property.
If someone attempts to use this image without permission, we
can prove by extracting the watermark.
In feature tagging, captions, annotations, time stamps, and
other descriptive elements can be embedded inside an image.
Copying the stego image also copies of the embedded features
and only parties who possess the decoding stego-key will be
able to extract and view the features.
As proposed in paper [10] that combination of cryptography
and steganography used for better security as biometric images
and password in voter system. Fingerprint images taken as
biometric image for steganography and password for voter
account.
Mohammad Shirali-Shahreza [17] proposed that in mobile
banking system data can hide by using the steganography for
increase the security purpose. Secret data hide in a picture and
then address of this image is given to user. When user enter
correct password then only secret message can be visible to
authorized user.
Data confidentiality issues can occur from increase sources
such as healthcare records, criminal justice investigations and
proceedings, financial institutions and transactions, residence
and geographic records [21].
Typical uses of steganography are of surveillance, industrial
or military. Steganalyst may be company scanning outgoing
mails to avoid leaking of proprietary information, or an
intelligence gatherer hoping to detect communication between
adversaries [26].
On the other hand, secret communication does not advertise
a covert communication by using steganography. Therefore, it
can avoid scrutiny of the sender, message and recipient. This is
effective only if the hidden communication is not detected by
the others people. In open systems environment steganography
used in convert channels, embedded data, and digital
watermarking [37].
Steganography technique is possible for the hiding of
biometric information for the security purposes. Iris feature can
be taken as conceal information. Biometric image of iris is
taken by camera and then convert into binary code which is
unique for different people. At the time of extraction this code
is evaluate with database information. [38]
V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE
In this review paper shows the steganography technique for
information hiding in secure manner, that information may be
the text, audio or images but in image steganography we can
hide more data as compare to the text or audio steganography.
Least Significant Bit embedding method is quite simple for
image steganography.
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