Image steganography is the art of hiding data into images. Secret data such as messages, audio, images can be hidden inside the cover image. This is mainly achieved by hiding the data into the LSB(Least Significant Bit) of the image pixels. To improve the security of steganography, this paper studied data encryption with AES(Advanced Encryption Standard) and LSB based data hiding technique with advanced user-defined encrypted data distribution in pixels other than the common linear computational method of storing data in a linear form. This data distribution file will contain the location of the data(in form of pixel numbers) to be encrypted/decrypted which is further encrypted with AES thus providing double encryption for data and its location stored over pixels. Steganography has many applications such as medical, military, copyright information, etc.
The aim of the steganography methods is to communicate securely in a completely undetectable manner. LSB Matching and LSB Matching Revisited steganography methods are two general and esiest methods to achieve this aim. Being secured against first order steganalysis methods is the most important feature of these methods. On the other hand, these methods don't consider inter pixel dependency. Therefore, recently, several steganalysis methods are proposed that by using co-occurrence matrix detect stego images that are hidden by these steganography methods. Therefore, if incremental and decrementa…
Hiding and securing the secret digital information and data that are transmitted over the internet is of widespread and most challenging interest. This paper presents a new idea of robust steganography using bitwise-XOR operation between stego-key-image-pixel LSB (Least Significant Bit) value and secret message-character ASCII-binary value (or, secret image-pixel value). The stego-key-image is shared in dual-layer using odd-even position of each pixel to make the system robust. Due to image sharing, the detection can only be done with all the image shares.
Steganalysis tools play an important part in saving time and providing new angles of attack for forensic analysts. StegExpose is a solution designed for use in the real world, and is able to analyse images for LSB steganography in bulk using proven attacks in a time efficient manner. When steganalytic methods are combined intelligently, they are able generate even more accurate results. This is the prime focus of StegExpose.
The Least Significant Bit (LSB) substitution is an old and simple data hiding method that could almost effortlessly be implemented in spatial or transform domain over any digital media. This method can be attacked by several steganalysis methods, because it detectably changes statistical and perceptual characteristics of the cover signal. A typical method for steganalysis of the LSB substitution is the histogram attack that attempts to diagnose anomalies in the cover image's histogram. A well-known method to stand the histogram attack is the LSB+ steganography that intentionally embeds some ex…
In order to improve the data hiding in all types of multimedia data formats such as image and audio and to make hidden message imperceptible, a novel method for steganography is introduced in this paper. It is based on Least Significant Bit (LSB) manipulation and inclusion of redundant noise as secret key in the message. This method is applied to data hiding in images. For data hiding in audio, Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) both are used. All the results displayed prove to be time-efficient and effective. Also the algorithm is tested for various numbers o…
Steganalysis means analysis of stego images. Like cryptanalysis, steganalysis is used to detect messages often encrypted using secret key from stego images produced by steganography techniques. Recently lots of new and improved steganography techniques are developed and proposed by researchers which require robust steganalysis techniques to detect the stego images having minimum false alarm rate. This paper discusses about the different Steganalysis techniques and help to understand how, where and when this techniques can be used based on different situations.
Similarity measure, also called information measure, is a concept used to distinguish different objects. It has been studied from different contexts by employing mathematical, psychological, and fuzzy approaches. Image steganography is the art of hiding secret data into an image in such a way that it cannot be detected by an intruder. In image steganography, hiding secret data in the plain or non-edge regions of the image is significant due to the high similarity and redundancy of the pixels in their neighborhood. However, the similarity measure of the neighboring pixels, i.e., their proximity…
LSB steganography is a one of the most widely used methods for implementing covert data channels in image file exchanges [1][2]. The low computational complexity and implementation simplicity of the algorithm are significant factors for its popularity with the primary reason being low image distortion. Many attempts have been made to increase the embedding capacity of LSB algorithms by expanding into the second or third binary layers of the image while maintaining a low probability of detection with minimal distortive effects [2][3][4]. In this paper, we introduce an advanced technique for cov…
In today's world the art of sending & displaying the hidden information especially in public places, has received more attention and faced many challenges. Therefore, different methods have been proposed so far for hiding information in different cover media. In this paper a method for hiding of information on the billboard display is presented. It is well known that encryption provides secure channels for communicating entities. However, due to lack of covertness on these channels, an eavesdropper can identify encrypted streams through statistical tests and capture them for further cryptanaly…
For as long as humans have participated in the act of communication, concealing information in those communicative mediums has manifested into an art of its own. Crytographic messages, through written language or images, are a means of concealment, usually reserved for highly sensitive or compromising information. Specifically, the field of Cryptography is the construction and analysis of protocols that prevent third parties from understanding private messages. Steganography is related to Cryptography in that the goal is to obscure information using some method or algorithm, but the most impor…
As the volume of medicinal information stored electronically increase, so do the need to enhance how it is secured. The inaccessibility to patient record at the ideal time can prompt death toll and also well degrade the level of health care services rendered by the medicinal professionals. Criminal assaults in social insurance have expanded by 125% since 2010 and are now the leading cause of medical data breaches. This study therefore presents the combination of 3DES and LSB to improve security measure applied on medical data. Java programming language was used to develop a simulation program …
Steganography involves hiding a secret message or image inside another cover image. Changes are made in the cover image without affecting visual quality of the image. In contrast to cryptography, Steganography provides complete secrecy of the communication. Security of very sensitive data can be enhanced by combining cryptography and steganography. A new technique that uses the concept of Steganography to obtain the position values from an image is suggested. This paper proposes a new method where no change is made to the cover image, only the pixel position LSB (Least Significant Bit) values …
Information security is concerned with maintaining the secrecy, reliability and accessibility of data. The main objective of information security is to protect information and information system from unauthorized access, revelation, disruption, alteration, annihilation and use. This paper uses spatial domain LSB substitution method for information embedding and modified forms of Arnold transform are applied twice in two different phases to ensure security. The system is tested and validated against a series of standard images and the results show that the method is highly secure and provides h…
With the growth of communication over computer networks, how to maintain the confidentiality and security of transmitted information have become some of the important issues. In order to transfer data securely to the destination without unwanted disclosure or damage, nature inspired hide and seek tricks such as, cryptography and Steganography are heavily in use. Just like the Chameleon and many other bio-species those change their body color and hide themselves in the background in order to protect them from external attacks, Cryptography and Steganography are techniques those are used to encr…
Steganography is the science of hiding digital information in such a way that no one can suspect its existence. Unlike cryptography which may arouse suspicions, steganography is a stealthy method that enables data communication in total secrecy. Steganography has many requirements, the foremost one is irrecoverability which refers to how hard it is for someone apart from the original communicating parties to detect and recover the hidden data out of the secret communication. A good strategy to guaranteeirrecoverability is to cover the secret data not usinga trivial method based on a predictabl…
Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one apart from the sender and the receiver would realize that a secret communicating is taking place. Unlike cryptography which only scrambles secret data keeping them overt, steganography covers secret data into medium files such as image files and transmits them in total secrecy avoiding drawing eavesdroppers suspicions. However, considering that the public channel is monitored by eavesdroppers, it is vulnerable to stego-attacks which refer to randomly trying to break the medium file and recover the secret …
Image steganography is art of hiding information onto the cover image. In this proposal a transformed domain based gray scale image authentication/data hiding technique using Z transform (ZT) termed as FDSZT, has been proposed. ZTransform is applied on 2x2 masks of the source image in row major order to transform original sub image (cover image) block to its corresponding frequency domain. One bit of the hidden image is embedded in each mask of the source image onto the fourth LSB of transformed coefficient based on median value of the mask. A delicate handle has also been performed as post em…
In this paper we propose a new data hiding technique. The new technique uses steganography and cryptography on images with a size of 256x256 pixels and an 8-bit grayscale format. There are design restrictions such as a fixed-size cover image, and reconstruction without error of the hidden image. The steganography technique uses a Haar-DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transform) with hard thresholding and LSB (Less Significant Bit) technique on the cover image. The algorithms used for compressing and ciphering the secret image are lossless JPG and AES, respectively. The proposed technique is used to gener…
The growing potential of modern communications needs the use of secure means to protect information from unauthorized access and use during transmission. In general, encryption a message using cryptography techniques and then hidden a message with a steganography methods provides an additional layer of protection. Furthermore, using these combination reduces the chance of finding the hidden message. This paper proposed a system which combines schemes of cryptography with steganography for hiding secret messages and to add more complexity for steganography. The proposed system secret message en…
This paper proposes an improved steganography approach for hiding text messages in lossless RGB images. The objective of this work is to increase the security level and to improve the storage capacity with compression techniques. The security level is increased by randomly distributing the text message over the entire image instead of clustering within specific image portions. Storage capacity is increased by utilizing all the color channels for storing information and providing the source text message compression. The degradation of the images can be minimized by changing only one least signi…
Steganography is an information hiding technique in which secret data are secured by covering them into a computer carrier file without damaging the file or changing its size. The difference between steganography and cryptography is that steganography is a stealthy method of communication that only the communicating parties are aware of; while, cryptography is an overt method of communication that anyone is aware of, despite its payload is scribbled. Typically, an irrecoverable steganography algorithm is the algorithm that makes it hard for malicious third parties to discover how it works and …
LSB method is one of the well-known steganography methods which hides the message bits into the least significant bit of pixel values. This method changes the statistical information of images, which causes to have an unsecured channel. To increase the security of this method against the steganalysis methods, in this paper an adaptive method for hiding data into images will be proposed. So, the amount of data and the method which is used for hiding data in each area of image will be different. Experimental results show that the security of the proposed method is higher than general LSB method …
The security of patient information is important during the transfer of medical data. A hybrid spatial domain watermarking algorithm that includes encryption, integrity protection and steganography is proposed to strengthen the information originality based on the authentication. The proposed algorithm checks whether the information of patients has been deliberately changed or not. The created code is distributed at every pixel of the medical image and not only in the regions of noninterest pixels, while the image details are still preserved. To enhance the security of the watermarking code, "…
Information Security is a major concern in today's modern era. Almost all the communicating bodies want the security, confidentiality and integrity of their personal data. But this security goal cannot be achieved easily when we are using an open network like Internet. Steganography provides one of the best solutions to this problem. This paper represents a new Cyclic Steganographic T echnique (CST) based on Least Significant Bit (LSB) for true color (RGB) images. The proposed method hides the secret data in the LSBs of cover image pixels in a randomized cyclic manner. The proposed technique i…
