Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no

one, apart from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message,
a form of security through obscurity. The word steganography is of Greek origin and
means "concealed writing". The first recorded use of the term was in 1499 by Johannes
Trithemius in his Steganographia, a treatise on cryptography and steganography
disguised as a book on magic. Generally, messages will appear to be something else:
images, articles, shopping lists, or some other covertext and, classically, the hidden
message may be in invisible ink between the visible lines of a private letter.

The advantage of steganography, over cryptography alone, is that messages do not attract
attention to themselves. Plainly visible encrypted messages—no matter how unbreakable
—will arouse suspicion, and may in themselves be incriminating in countries where
encryption is illegal.[1] Therefore, whereas cryptography protects the contents of a
message, steganography can be said to protect both messages and communicating parties.

Steganography includes the concealment of information within computer files. In digital

steganography, electronic communications may include steganographic coding inside of a
transport layer, such as a document file, image file, program or protocol. Media files are
ideal for steganographic transmission because of their large size. As a simple example, a
sender might start with an innocuous image file and adjust the color of every 100th pixel
to correspond to a letter in the alphabet, a change so subtle that someone not specifically
looking for it is unlikely to notice it.

SYSTEM DESIGN
3.1 PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Steganography is the hiding of a message within another media. To show how
Steganography can be effectively used to transport sensitive data over the Internet in a
secure fashion. A prime candidate for Steganography is the use of an image to conceal a
hidden ciphered message. Steganography improves encryption and security by creating a
medium in which sensitive data can be passed through prying eyes via a file, without
alerting anyone that the transmitted file actually contains a message. Steganography
should be implemented more in practice today as cyber-terrorism and data-theft becomes
an everyday occurrence.
Steganography is a relatively old technology, but is still very young in regards to modern
usage. With the high security concerns of corporations and individual users alike, the
secure transportation of data needs to be a viable option. There are numerous techniques
and methods for Steganography, which have been highly researched and used in practice.
The following research uses encoded images and sound files which were presented to test
subjects in pairs (one encoded file and its original). The subjects were then asked to
analyze them and attempt to pick out the Steganographic media from each pair. This also
shows how modern Steganography detection techniques perform when put to the test.
HIDDEN MESSAGE: The message to be embedded. It is anything that can
be represented as a bit stream.
COVER IMAGE: Data / medium in which hidden message will be embedded.
STEGO IMAGE: Modified version of the cover that contains the embedded message
MODULES: There are 4 modules:
Ø Encoding
Ø Decoding
Ø Simulation
Ø Analysis
ENCODING:
User will take the file containing audio or video or message and we will take the file
containing the Image and we will embed audio or video or message in the Image

DECODING:

User will take the file in which message or audio or video which is embedded in
the image and we will retrieve the Message or audio or video from the file and we will
save to the specified file by the user.

SIMULATION:

User will take the file containing audio or video or message and we will take the
file containing the Image and we will embed audio or video or message in the Image.
When we embed we will get one StegoImage which will be Black in color and is used for
simulation purpose to know how audio or video or message is embedded in the Image

ANALYSIS:

User will take the Original Image and the StegoImage which we obtained in the
Simulation part and he will compare the difference b/w two images using different
Benchmark Test.
The user wants to send a secret text message or audio or video files to other user
who is at destination .Initially user will give password before sending message.

When a message has been sent at destination by retyping the password, the original
message can be retrieved.