STEGANOGRAPHY

Synopsis of the Seminar to be submitted for the Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Award of the degree of

BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY In Computer Science Engineering

SUBMITTED BY: Deepak Kumar Gupta (04211502709)

BHARATI VIDYAPEETHS COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING A-4, PASCHIM VIHAR, ROHTAK ROAD, NEW DELHI- 110063 (2009-2013)

INDEX

ABSTRACT LITERATURE REVIEW CURRENT RESEARCH PAPER REFERENCES

ABSTRACT
Steganography is the science of hiding information in media based data. We present random umbers logic based steganographic methods and layout management schemes for hiding data/image into image(s). These methods and schemes can be customized according to the requirements of the users and the characteristics of data/images. These methods are secure enough to meet the Steganography is the science of hiding information in media based data. We present random numbers logic based teganographic methods and layout management schemes for hiding data/image into image(s). These methods and schemes can be customized according to the requirements of the users and the characteristics of data/images. These methods are secure enough to meet the requirements of the users and user can play significant role in selection and development of these methods. Methods can be chosen randomly and implemented dynamically based on inputs, user choices as well as outputs. Experimental results are given to demonstrate the performance of the proposed methods.

LITERATURE REVIEW
In order to understand the methods for steganography and steganalysis that will be discussed later on in the project, it is rst necessary to build up a clear picture of both elds. This chapter will discuss the main principles of steganography and steganalysis by rstly discussing where we currently stand in both elds , and then introducing the necessary ackground knowledge that is required to properly understand the methods introduced in this project. The JPEG compression process is also discussed as it is essential that we understand the signicance of embedding the message data within this domain at a later stage. Finally, we introduce some evaluative metrics so that we can easily relate to the success and failure of the steganalysis techniques in future chapters. Past Work Given time, it has been possible to break every steganographic system that has ever been published. As a result of this, new techniques are developed to improve upon the aws of the predecessor. It is very much the same case in steganalysis where the algorithms are often tweaked or combined in order to attack the latest steganography algorithm.The two elds therefore operate in a cat and mouse style strategy with steganography aiming to be ahead of the eld such that covert communications may exist. There is then a call for steganalysis to catch up such that covert communications are minimized as much as possible. One of the most basic steganographic techniques is achieved by manipulating the pixel values of the cover image in sequence such that they then turn into code that can be used to reconstruct the message when extracting. The most popular method for developing this concept left a pattern in the beginning of the images that steganalysts bought to light. This led to the development of a series of techniques that could detect the existence of steganography within any stegogramme that followed this embedding strategy, and so steganographers set about developing a new system that would render the attacks useless. This led to the development of randomised embedding in pixel values, and once again steganlalysts found a method for detecting steganography for all images created using this strategy. The chase has continued for hundreds of known steganographic methods, and we are now at the point where a steganography algorithm has been developed that is immune to all the known blind steganalysis methods, it is called YASS (Yet Another Steganographic Scheme). YASS embeds data into seemingly random locations of a cover image in such a way that no current method is able to spot any artefacts that enable a way in to cracking the algorithm Steganography Nomenclature There are many steganographic algorithms that have been developed to allow covert communication, and each of them will be designed to make steganalysis a dicult task by nding where the redundancies are within a cover Work, and then modifying the redundant data such that it holds a secret message. Steganography can be split into two main categories: 1. Statistics-aware steganography 2. Model-based steganography

Each of these categories aims to preserve the qualities of the original cover Work, with the logic that it will be hard to detect steganography in suspect Work that is identical to an innocent Work. Statistics-aware steganography considers the statistical techniques that steganalysts are known to use to detect steganography. With these techniques in mind, the steganographic system is developed in such a way that none of these attacks will prove successful. In other words, the stegogramme that is produced after embedding a secret message will be statistically sound. Ingemar Cox illustrates this by example when he suggests that an image can be "completely described" by its histogram (a graphical chart of pixel frequencies). If this is the case, histograms can be used to evaluate whether any unusual trends take place. A steganographic system that preserves the same histogram as the cover Work would therefore be a prime example of a statistics-aware steganographic implementation. Model-based steganography considers the preservation of a chosen model of the cover Works, rather than its statistics .This framework measures the components of a cover Work that do not change after embedding, against the components that change as a result of embedding. The resulting task is to develop a steganographic system that ensures the values that change are as minimal as possible. It is also possible that a steganographic system may be developed such that the values that change as a result of embedding look like natural processing. This would be implemented in the hope that the steganalyst puts the modications down to processing rather than deliberate manipulation. In practice however, it is a fairly trivial task for a steganalyst to determine the likelihood that the modications are innocent, and therefore they can easily calculate whether steganography exists or not. In order to understand more about how a steganographic algorithm is created, it is necessary to rst understand exactly what makes a good steganographic image: Perceptability The stegogramme that is produced after embedding a secret message, should not be altered such that it is visually obvious that information has been embedded. In fact, the resulting image should be so similar to the original that if you compare both side by side, you should not be able to see any dierence at all between the two. Capacity The amount of information that is embedded should be as small as possible. Logic suggests that the longer the message, the more the image has to be altered to compensate for this. Obviously, the more a Work is modied, the easier it is for the steganalyst to discover artefacts within an image. Therefore, the usual practise for embedding is to make the message as short as possible so that the image is altered as little as possible. Robustness This refers to the degree of diculty required by a steganalyst to determine whether or not the image contains a hidden message or not. A good implementation of steganography would be one where the image can be subjected to many attacks that each prove inconclusive.

CURRENT RESEARCH PAPER

Paper -1
CPSC 350 Data Structures: Image Steganography
Nick Nabavian nabav100@chapman.edu Nov. 28, 2007

Abstract:
Steganography is the process of hiding a secret message within a larger one in such a way that someone can not know the presence or contents of the hidden message. The purpose of Steganography is to maintain secret communication between two parties. This paper will show how Steganography is used in a modern context while providing a practical understanding of what Steganography is and how to accomplish it.

Conclusion:
With this project I have learned a lot, especially about bit operations and bitmasking, something that I never understood before. This project was fun from the start and only got more interesting as I went on developing it. I became more interested in the subject the more I researched it. I have learned that while implementing Image Steganography is important, thinking of how to detect and attack it and the methods to do so are far more complex than actually doing the Steganography itself. There is a lot of research that is beginning to discover new ways to detect Steganography, most of which involves some variation of statistical analysis. It is interesting to see what other methods will be developed and how accurate they will be at detecting Steganography.

Paper- 2 AN OVERVIEW OF IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY

T. Morkel 1, J.H.P. Eloff 2, M.S. Olivier 3 Information and Computer Security Architecture (ICSA) Research Group Department of Computer Science University of Pretoria, 0002, Pretoria, South Africa

Abstract:
Steganography is the art of hiding the fact that communication is taking place, by hiding information in other information. Many different carrier file formats can be used, but digital images are the most popular because of their frequency on the Internet. For hiding secret information in images, there exists a large variety of steganographic techniques some are more complex than others and all of them have respective strong and weak points. Different applications have different requirements of the steganography technique used. For example, some applications may require absolute invisibility of the secret information, while others require a larger secret message to be hidden. This paper intends to give an overview of image steganography, its uses and techniques. It also attempts to identify the requirements of a good steganographic algorithm and briefly reflects on which steganographic techniques are more suitable for which applications. Conclusion : Although only some of the main image steganographic techniques were discussed in this paper, one can see that there exists a large selection of approaches to hiding information in images. All the major image file formats have different methods of hiding messages, with different strong and weak points respectively. Where one technique lacks in payload capacity, the other lacks in robustness. For example, the patchwork approach has a very high level of robustness against most type of attacks, but can hide only a very small amount of information. Least significant bit (LSB) in both BMP and GIF makes up for this, but both approaches result in suspicious files that increase the probability of detection when in the presence of a warden.

REFERENCES:
1. AN OVERVIEW OF IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY

T. Morkel , J.H.P. Eloff, M.S. Olivier Information and Computer Security Architecture (ICSA) Research Group Department of Computer Science University of Pretoria, 0002, Pretoria, South Africa
2. Image Steganography

Nick Nabavian nabav100@chapman.edu Nov. 28, 2007