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Using Blowfish Encryption To Enhance Security Feature of An Image
Using Blowfish Encryption To Enhance Security Feature of An Image
Shreyank N Gowda
e-mail:kini5gowda@gmail.com
Abstract—The use of images to hide information is a feature follows: 00101101 00011101 11011100 10100110
which leaves little doubt in a viewer's mind. Using any medium 11000101 00001101 11010010 10101100 01100011.
to hide information refers to a method called steganography. The Blowfish encryption algorithm is the most efficient
When we use an image as a medium then that method is called encryption algorithm in the world as per [1]. It produces
image steganography. The most famous method to now is the encrypted information that is harder to decrypt than even the
Least Significant Bit Algorithm (LSB). In that method, the least currently most used algorithm Advanced Encryption Standard
significant bit of each pixel is taken and information is hidden in [2].
that. This however is easily breakable. Hence an alternative and
more secure solution is provided. First the data is encrypted II. BACKGROUND
using the Blowfish algorithm. Next an innovative method is
presented. This encrypted block is broken down to 'n' smaller In [3] the author exudes the idea of hiding an image using
blocks and 'n' images are chosen at random and each image is a texture as the medium cover image. Since a texture is just a
made to hide a block of the encrypted data. To maintain the set of pixels that repeat itself it becomes easier to hide data.
correct sequence of blocks a hash table is maintained. This is Also since the texture could be spread to any desired size,
then encrypted using LSB to a new image called the hashing much larger information could be hidden.
image. This hashing image is sent along with the 'n' other images. In [4] the authors use non-linear chaotic mapping. The
To extract the data out, first the hash image is obtained and data to be hidden is firstly made to embed onto a scrambled
using this the encrypted block is reassembled and then original image. At the same time the image used as cover is subject to
data is obtained by decryption. Discrete Wavelet Transform. This output image is later
embedded together with the scrambled image. This method
Keywords-blowfish; steganography; lsb; data hiding can hide large amount of data, but should the map used for
mapping be obtained its extremely easy to obtain the
I. INTRODUCTION information.
Steganography is something often confused and In [5] the authors suggest a method of hiding data using
misinterpreted with cryptography. Both, though are being any one of the different RGB colour channels. An image has 3
used for the same aim, that is to hide important information. channels, so changing any one of the channel's does not
However the difference lying mainly with the fact that in significantly change the image from a visual perspective.
cryptography the intention is to make extracting the data However this method cannot be used for larger images.
impossible, where as in steganography the main aim is to In [6] the authors propose various steps, first Huffman
prevent any sort of attack. Cryptographic algorithms give encoding is done on the data and the data is then broken down
output where the information can be seen although encrpyted to blocks. Simultaneously Discrete Cosine Transform is
and the nature of this output would likely cause an attack. performed on the cover image. Least Significant Bit
Steganographic algorithms try to ensure such attacks never algorithm is then modified using the Huffman values obtained.
happen by concealing the fact that information is being Maintaining these Huffman codes is extremely important
hidden in the first place. since loss of Huffman codes implies a loss of data.
This paper will combine the benefits of both types of Computation time for this method is also relatively large.
algorithms to serve the main purpose: hiding of data. Some In [7] double layer of security is given to the data, the first
standard algorithms are used and combined with an layer is using the standard Least Significant Bit method and
innovative enhancement together to make a much more the second layer involves using the Data Encryption Standard
efficient algorithm in itself. Algorithm. Steganography does not replace the encryption of
First let us understand the famous LSB algorithm. To data, instead it provides an extra security feature to the data.
understand LSB algorithm consider an example, a grid for 3 This helps to increase the security of the data as the text is
pixels of a 24-bit image can be as follows: 00101101 now encrypted as well.
00011100 11011100 10100110 11000100 00001100 In [8] the message desired to be hidden is embedded in
11010010 10101101 01100011 When the number 200, which only the blue part of the RGB channel. Results showed that
binary representation is 11001000, is embedded into the least this enhanced the security level of the image as visual
significant bits of this part of the image, the resulting grid is as distortion was not visible.
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proposed algorithm along with the extra feature of breaking to
blocks and the formation of hash table, which all add to the
complexity to execute the program and hence will certainly
lead to an increased output in terms of time of execution. Still
the time for execution as can be seen is not too large relatively.
Also usually files of size at least 1 MB are taken to be hidden
which gives an even smaller difference for output.
TABLE II. TIME OF EXECUTION
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capacity have helped me in carrying out this project work. I [5] M T Parvez and A Gutub, “RGB Intensity Based Variablr-Bits Image
would like to take this opportunity to thank them all. Steganography”, IEEE Asia-Pacific Services Computing Conference,
pp 1322-1326, December 2008.
I would like to thank Dr. Shobha, HOD Computer Science
[6] A Nag, S Biswas, D Sarkar, P P Sarkar “A novel technique for image
and Engineering Department, R. V. C. E, Bengaluru for her steganography based on Block-DCT and Huffman Encoding”
invaluable suggestions and expert advice. International Journal Of Computer Science and Information
I thank my parents, brother, friends and all faculty of the Technology, pp 103-112, vol 2, June 2010.
Department of Computer Science And Engineering, R.V.C.E [7] S Singh and V K Attri "Dual Layer Security of data using LSB Image
for their help. Steganography Method and DES Encryption Algorithm"
International Journal of Signal Processing, Image Processing and
Pattern Recognition Vol. 8, No. 5 (2015), pp. 259-266.
[8] S Gupta , G Gujral and N Aggarwal "Enhanced Least Significant Bit
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