STEGANOGRAPHY

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Business

Communication and Ethics

Prepared By:

Name Roll No.

Rahul Chavan 11
Aditi Deolekar 12
Kimaya Dhanawade 13
Ankush Bhat 69

Submitted to:

Prof. Darshana Pachkawade

(Department Of Humanities)

Department Of Computer Engineering

Pillai College Of Engineering

New Panvel – 410 206
University Of Mumbai
AcademicYear(2019-2020)
 Acknowledgement

We have put in a lot of effort and dedicatedly worked towards completing this report. However,
this would not have been possible were it not for the constant motivation and encouragement that
we received from the teaching as well as non teaching faculty of our college. We would like to
express our heartfelt gratitude to our Principal Prof. Dr. Sandeep Joshi for providing a platform
for us students to showcase our skills and knowledge. We are thankful to The Department of
Computer Engineering and our Head Of Department Prof.Sharvari Govilkar for providing us
with the necessary resources and information. We extend our thanks to the Head Of Department
of Humanities Prof. Dr. Malavika Sharma and our Business Communication and Ethics teacher
Prof. Darshana Pachkawade for the constant supervision and guidance during the process of
report making. We would like to thank all the Lab Assistants and the Librarians for providing us
with the latest softwares and references required. We would also like to expand our deepest
gratitude to all those who have directly and indirectly guided us in completing this project.

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 Summary

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 steganography 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 messages to be hidden. This message hides message within the image. For a more
secure approach, the project it allows user to use the bits for replacement instead of LSB
replacement from the image. Sender select the cover image with the secret text or the text file
and hide it in the image with the bit replacement choice, it helps to generate the code. The stego
image is sent to the destination with the help of private or public communication network. On the
other side i.e. receiver. Receiver download the stego image and using the software retrieve the
secret text hidden in the stego image.

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 Table Of Contents

Acknowledgement I

Summary II

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 3

3. Methodology 5

4. Process 6

5. Aspects of Steganography 7

6. Algorithms 11

7.Experimental Work and Results 15

8. Applications 17

9. Conclusion & Future Scope 18

References III

Appendix IV

Index V
 Chapter 01
Introduction

Steganography is a Greek word which means concealed Writing. The word steganos means
covered and graphical means writing. Thus it is not only an art of hiding data but also hiding the
fact of transmission of secret data.

The art and science of hiding information by embedding messages within other, seemingly
harmless messages. Steganography works by replacing bits of useless or unused data in regular
computer files (such as graphics, sound, text, HTML, or even floppy disks ) with bits of
different, invisible information. Steganography techniques can be applied to images, a video file
or an audio file. Typically, however, steganography is written in characters including hash
marking, but its usage within images is also common. At any rate, steganography protects from
pirating copyrighted materials as well as aiding in unauthorized viewing.

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History
The first recorded uses steganography can be traced back to 440 BC when herodotus mentions
two examples in his histories. Histiaeus sent a message to his vassal, by shaving the head of his
most trusted servant, marking the message on his scalp and sent him back as he regrow his hair.
Additionally, wax tablets were in common use then as reusable writing surfaces. Hence forth
according to changing lifestyles and new techniques meaning and methods of steganography
changed over the time.During World War 2, many agents used so called microdots. A whole
document was reduced to the size of a dot. Steganography also includes all kinds of invisible
inks.

With the development of technology, possibilities of data hiding information in digital pictures.
All pixels in digital pictures are coded using a specified amount of bits and usually it's
impossible to notice the changing of least important bits.sans definite proof, that the terrorists
who plotted and deployed the 9/11 mission in New York City utilized steganography. This is
what primarily brought the science of stenography front and center. Data can be stolen and
encrypted through a file transfer or, more often than not, through email. And as with what has
been suspected for 9/11, steganography can be used for secret communications that deal with
terrorist plots​.

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 Chapter 02
Literature Review

Parmar Ajit Kumar Maganbhai1 , Prof. Krishna Chouhan published a paper named ‘A Study and
Literature Review on Image Steganography’ studied for improving the steganalysis performance
and also analyzing the hiding capacities of the existing research work. The steganalysis
performance of state-of-the-art detectors is near-perfect against current steganographic schemes.
A novel, robust and secure hiding schemes that can resist steganalytic detection must be
implemented. Hiding schemes are characterized by three complementary requirements- security
against steganalysis, robustness beside distortions in the transmission channel, and capacity in
terms of the embedded method. This work would be able to be extended for different formats of
images. This work may be extended using other transforms methods also. R

In the year of 2013 Soni, A.; Jain, J.; Roshan, R., The Fractional Fourier transform (FrFT),
Investigated on as a generalization of the classical Fourier transform, introduced years ago in
mathematics literature.

In 2012 Hemalatha, S, Acharya, U.D. and Renuka presented integer Wavelet Transform (IWT) is
used to hide the key thus it is very secure and robust because no one can realize the hidden
information and it cannot be lost due to noise or any signal processing operations. Result shows
very good Peak Signal to Noise Ratio, which is a measure of security.

Marvel et al. It is proposed that (Spread Spectrum Image Steganography) SSIS is a blind scheme
where the original image is not needed to extract the hidden information unless the receiver
possesses the secret key to extract the secret message, otherwise it is virtually undetectable.Thus
making this technique reliable and secure.

Jessica Fridrich et al. This paper proposes a highly accurate steganalysis technique which can
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even estimate the length of secret message embedded in LSB method. In this method, the test
image is divided into groups of n consecutive or disjoint pixels. This method exploits the
modified pixel values to determine the content of secret message. A discriminating function is
applied on the group of pixels. This discriminating function determines the regularity or
smoothness of pixels. Then a permutation function called flipping is applied on the pixel groups.
By using discriminating function and flipping, Pixels groups are classified into three categories,
i.e Regular groups, Singular groups and Unused Groups. For a given mask, fraction of Regular
groups Rm and fraction of singular groups Sm are calculated. Presence of noise in the image
causes Rm to be greater than Sm.

R. Chandramouli and N. Memon, gives an analysis of various methods of LSB techniques for
image steganography.

Andrew D. Ker Detecting LSB matching steganography is quite difficult compared to the LSB
replacement steganography. In this paper Histogram characteristic function (HCF) is used for the
detection of steganography in color images, but it cannot be used for gray scale images.

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 Chapter 03
Methodology

Referring through various research papers we came across methods to encrypt sensitive
information. One of the methods was Steganography. Steganography is an ancient art but
performed in various techniques for data encryption and decryption. With change in technology
from year to year, form of Steganography changed. Hence, there are various research papers
available related to different mechanisms of Steganography. Several researches have been done
for detecting the hidden bits in digital images as well as different techniques were identified for
information hiding in images, text, audio, video to secure point to point communication. In
research we got to know that, various algorithms are proposed to perform Steganography.
Collectively, the information of project is acquired. This report is made from combining all the
information, analytical data we got from the research papers we studied.

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 Chapter 04
Process

There are different methods for implementation of Steganography. But the basic process is to
encode a message then transfer it from one place to another and decode it further from the
receiver's end. Various methods of encoding data gives us different types of steganography. LSB
is a traditional method of Steganography. Recently,   ​the authors proposed a technique using
integer wavelet transform (IWT) along with graceful graph to offer a secure and random image
steganography with high imperceptibility.

3.1The Encoding Process

The steganography technique used is LSB coding. The offset of the image is retrieved from its
header. That offset is left as it is to preserve the integrity of the header, and from the next byte,
we start our encoding process For encoding, we first take the input carrier file i.e. an image file
and then direct the user to the selection of the text file.

The text file is taken as input and separated in stream of bytes. Now, each bit of these bytes is
encoded in the LSB of each next pixel. And, finally we get the final image that contains the
encoded message and it is saved, at the specified path given by user, in PNG format usingImage
IO write method. This completes the encoding process.

3.2 The Decoding Process

The offset of the image is retrieved from its header. Create the user space using the same process
as in the Encoding. Using get Raster() and getDataBuffer() methods of Writable Raster and
DataBufferByte classes. The data of image is taken into byte array. Using above byte array, the
bit stream of original text file is retrieved into another byte array. And above byte array is written
into the decoded text file, which leads to the original message.
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 Chapter 05
Aspects of Steganography

4.1.1 Text Steganography

It consists of hiding information inside the text files. In this method, the secret data is hidden
behind every nth letter of every word of text message. Numbers of methods are available for
hiding data in text file. These methods are : i) Format Based Method ii)Random and Statistical
Method iii) Linguistics Method
Text steganography can be achieved by altering the text formatting, or by altering certain
characteristics of textual elements (eg., characters). The goal in the design of coding methods is
to develop alternatives that are reliably decodable (even in the presence of noise) yet largely
indiscernible to the reader. These criteria, reliable decoding and minimum visible change, are
somewhat conflicting: herein lies the challenge in designing document marking techniques. The
three coding techniques that we propose illustrate different approaches rather than form an
exhaustive list of document marking techniques.The techniques can be used either separately or
jointly. These are the following:
1. Line Shift Coding: This is a method of altering a document by vertically shifting the locations
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of text lines to encode the document uniquely.
2. Word-Shift Coding: This is a method of altering a document by horizontally shifting the
locations of words within text lines to encode the document uniquely
3.Fenture Coding: This is a coding method that is applied either to a format file or to a bitmap
image of a document.

4.1.2 Image Steganography

Hiding the data by taking the cover object as image is referred as image steganography: Image
steganography pie intensities are used to hide the data. In digital steganography, images are
widely used cover source because there are member of bits presents in digital representation of
an image.

4.1.3 Audio Steganography

In audio steganography, secret message is embedded into digitized audio signal which result
slight altering of binary sequence of the corresponding audio file. There are several methods are
available for audio steganography. We are going to have a brief introduction on some of them. It
involves hiding data in audio files. This method hides the data in WAV, AU and MP3 sound
files. There are different methods of audio steganography.
These methods are : i) Low Bit Encoding ii) Phase Coding iii) Spread Spectrum

4.1.4 Video Steganography

It is a technique of hiding any kind of files or data into digital video format. In this case video
(combination of pictures) is used as carrier for hiding the data. Generally discrete cosine
transform (DCT) alter the values (e.g 8.667 to 9) which is used to hide the data in each of the
images in the video, which is unnoticeable by the human eye. H264, Mp4, MPEG, AVI are the
formats used by video steganography.In all of these methods, the basic principle of
steganography is that a secret message is to be embedded in another cover object which may not
be of any significance in sud a way that the encrypted data would finally display only the cover
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Data. So it cannot be detected easily containing hidden information unless proper decryption is
used.

4.2 Steganography in Image

Hiding information inside images is a popular technique nowadays. An image with a secret
message inside can easily be spread over the World Wide Web or in newsgroups. The use of
steganography in newsgroups has been researched by German steganographic expert
NielsProvos, who created a scanning cluster which detects the presence of hidden messages
inside images that were posted on the net. However, after checking one million images, no
hidden messages were found, so the practical use of steganography still seems to be limited.
Image Steganography is the technique of hiding the data within the image in such a way that
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prevents the unintended user from the detection of the hidden messages or data. To hide a
message inside an image without changing its visible properties, the cover source can be altered
in noisy areas with many color variations, so less attention will be drawn to the modifications.
The most common methods to make these alterations involve the usage of the least-significant
bit or LSB, masking, filtering and transformations on the cover image. These techniques can be
used with varying degrees of success on different types of image files. The project deals with
learning about the various types of steganography available. Image steganography is performed
for images and the concerning data is also decrypted to retrieve the message image. Since this
can be done in several ways, image steganography is studied and one of the methods is used to
demonstrate it. Image steganography refers to hiding information ie text, images or audio files in
another image or video files. The current project aims to use .steganography for an image with
another image using spatial domain technique. This hidden information can be retrieved only
through proper decoding technique. This encryption and decryption of the images is done using
java codes.

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 Chapter 06
Algorithms
There are two different methods for image steganography:
1. Spatial methods
2. Transform methods
In spatial method, the most common method used is LSB substitution method.

6.1 LSB (Least Significant Bit)

The easiest way to embed secret information within the cover file is called LSB insertion. In this
technique, the binary representations of the secret data have been taken and the LSB of each byte
is overwritten within the image. If 24-bit color images are used, then the quantity of modification
will be small.
As an example, supposing that we have three neighbouring pixels (nine bytes) with the following
RGB encoding:
01101010 11110010 00110110
01101001 11110000 00110101
01100000 11101111 00110100

Now if we wish to embed the following 9 bits of compressed secret information: ​010010011.
If we insert these 9 bits over the LSB of the 9 bytes above, we get the following sequence of bits
(where bits in red color have been modified):
0110101​0​ 1111001​1 ​0011011​0
0110100​0​ 1111000​1​ 0011010​0
0110000​0​ 1110111​1​ 0011010​1

Note that we have successfully hidden 9 bits but at a cost of only modifying 5, or roughly 50% of
the LSB bits.
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LSB insertion is the easiest way to embed secret data in an image. By replacing the LSB of each
sampling bit with a binary information, LSB insertion permits for a huge amount of secret
information to be embedded. During hiding and unhiding procedure, the content of the secret
information should not be modified.

6.1.1 LSB Encoding Algorithm

First the original image, as shown in the and the compressed encrypted secret message are taken.
Then the encrypted secret data has to be converted into binary format. Binary conversion is done
by taking the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) values of the
character and converting them into 54 binary format and generating a stream of bits. Similarly, in
cover image, bytes representing the pixels are taken in single array and byte stream is generated.
Message bits are taken sequentially and then are placed in LSB bit of image byte. Same
procedure is followed till all the message bits are placed in image bytes. Image generated is
called ‘Stego-Image’ as shown. It is ready for transmission through the Internet.
Algorithm for hiding secret data in Cover image:
Step-1: Read the cover image and secret text information which is to be embedded into the
cover image.
Step-2: Compress the secret information.
Step-3: Convert the compressed secret information into cipher text by using secret key shared by
the receiver and sender.
Step-4: Convert compressed encrypted text message into binary form.
Step-5: Find LSBs of each RGB pixel of the cover image.
Step-6: Embed the bits of the secret information into bits of LSB of RGB pixels of the cover
image.
Step-7: Continue the procedure until the secret information is fully hidden into cover file.

6.1.2 LSB Decoding Algorithm

First, ‘Stego-Image’ is taken and single array of bytes are generated as it was done at the time of
encoding. The total number of bits of encrypted secret information and the bytes representing the
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55 pixels of stego-image are taken. Counter is initially set to 1, which in turn gives the index
number of the pixel byte where secret message bit is available in LSB. The process is continued
till the final count of secret message bit is reached. After this, the bit stream of the message shall
be generated. Available bits are grouped to form bytes such that each byte represents a single
ASCII character. Characters are stored in a text file which represents the encrypted embedded
message. After that the decryption and decompression are to be performed.
Algorithm for unhiding secret data from Stego image:
Step-1: Read the stego image.
Step-2: Find LSBs of each RGB pixel of the stego image.
Step-3: Find and retrieve the LSBs of each RGB pixel of the stego image.
Step-4: Continue the process until the message is fully extracted from stego image.
Step-5: Decompress the extracted secret data.
Step-6: Using shared key, decrypt secret information to get original information.
Step-7: Reconstruct the secret information.

6.2 LZ Compression Algorithm:

Step-1: Read the original file.

Step-2: Count the total number of words, alphabets, special characters and digits in the file.
Step-3: Find out the repeated words in the file.
Step-4: Prepare the word dictionary for the original file context.
Step-5:Create compressed file. In the compressed file place the word’s number instead of actual
words.
Step-6: Add dictionary to compressed file.
Step-7: Save the compressed file along with the dictionary.

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The compressed context of the above example is as follows:

After applying lossless LZ compression, the size of the original context is reduced from 79 bytes
to 59 bytes.

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 Chapter 07
Experimental Works and Results

Comparing cover image with stego image needs an image quality measure. Commonly used
measures are MSE, PSNR, Correlation and Histogram.

7.1 MSE
In statistics, MSE is quantifying the difference between values implied by an estimator and the
true values of the quantity being estimated. MSE measures the average of the squares of the
"errors." The MSE between cover file and stego file is calculated.

7.2 PSNR
PSNR scales the MSE according to the image range. The PSNR between cover image and stego
image is given. A higher PSNR indicates that the quality of the stego image is similar to the
cover image.

7.3 Correlation
Correlation, a best known method, not only evaluates the degree of closeness between two
functions but also determines the extent to which the cover image and the stego image are close
to each other even after embedding data. The MSE, PSNR and Correlation values for various
image file formats are shown in the Table. The results show that MSE, PSNR and correlation are
in comparison with already existing results. The MSE obtained for different file formats varies
from 2.6 to 4.0 and PSNR varies from 42.15 to 49.42 dB and 99.98% of correlation is obtained
with the proposed technique.

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7.4 Histogram
An image histogram is a bar chart that shows the distribution of intensities in an image

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 Chapter 08
Application
Following are some applications of Steganography :
● Confidential Communication and Secret Data Storing
● Protection of Data Alteration.
● Access Control System for Digital Content Distribution
● Database Systems
● Digital Watermarking
9.1 Advantages
● The main advantages of this system is Security that it provides security to your messages
without knowing to third party.
● Number of bits have been replaced according to user or sender, therefore third party cannot
guess password.
● In steganography anyone cant jump on suspect by looking images.
● It is Reliable. Easy to use.Easy Maintenance. Normal network user can't guess image.
● System have been secured by password authentication.
9.2 Disadvantages
● Images can have attacks like diluting, nosing, contrast changes and so on.
● Number bits of pixel should be replaced by equal bits of message.If someone is
eavesdropping then there is probability of message get unfold.
● If more than two people having same steganography software then hidden massage can
acquire.
● This software has been implemented by java, which is open source, therefore code is
readable so anyone with bad mentality can make software perform inverse operation.
● Only unintended user may know the actual working of software.
● Intruder may penetrate suspecting images to get hidden data.

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 Chapter 09
Conclusion and Future Scope

It is observed that through LSB Substitution Steganographic method, the results obtained in data
hiding are pretty impressive as it utilizes the simple fact that an image could be broken up to
individual bit-planes each consisting of different levels of information. It is to be noted that as
discussed earlier, this method is only effective for bitmap images as these involve lossless
compression techniques. But this process can also be extended to be used for color images
where, bit plane slicing is to be done individually for the top four bit-planes for each of R. G, B
of the message image.It is also important to discuss that though steganography was once
undetected, with the various methods currently used, it is not only casy to detect the presence but
also retrieving them is easier. For instance, without having to use a software or complex tools for
detection, simple methods to observe if an image file has been manipulated are:

1. Size of the image: A Steganographic image has a huge storage size when compared to a
regular image of the same dimensions. Le if the original image storage size would be few KBs,
the Steganographic image could be several MBs in size. This again varies with the resolution and
type of image used.

2. Noise in image: A Steganographic image has noise when compared to a regular image. This is
the reason why initially little noise is added to the cover image, so that the Steganographic image
doesn't appear very noisy when compared to the original cover image.

Future Scope

Steganography, though is still a fairly new idea. There are constant advancements in the
computer field, suggesting advancements in the field of steganography as well. It is likely that

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there will soon be more efficient and more advanced techniques for Steganalysis. A hopeful
advancement is the improved sensitivity to small messages. Knowing how difficult it is to detect
the presence of a fairly large text file within an image, imagine how difficult it is to detect even
one or two sentences embedded in an image! It is like finding a microscopic needle in the
haystack. What is scary is that such a small file of only one or two sentences may be all that is
needed to commence a terrorist attack. In the future, it is hoped that the technique of Steganalysis
will advance such that it will become much easier to detect even small messages within an
image.

In this work it explores only a small part of the science of steganography. As a new discipline,
there is a great deal more research and development to do. The following section describe areas
for research which were offshoots of. or tangential to our main objectives.

1. Detecting Steganography in Image Files: Can steganography be detected in images files? This
is a difficult question. It may be possible to detect a simple Steganographic technique by simple
analyzing the low order bits of the image bytes If the Steganographic algorithm is more complex,
however, and spreads the embedded data over the image is random way or encrypts the data
before embedding, it may be nearly impossible to detect

2. Steganography on the World Wide Web: The world wide web(www) makes extensive use of
inline images. There are literally millions of images on various web pages worldwide. It may be
possible to develop an application to serve as a web browser to retrieve data embedded in web
page images. This stego-web could operate on top of the existing WWW and be a means of
covertly disseminating information.

3. Steganography in printed media:If the data is embedded in an image, the image printed, then
scanned and stored in a file can the embedded data be recovered? This would require a special
form of steganography to which could allow for inaccuracies in the printing and scanning
equipment.

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 References
Abhijeet Khire, “Steganography” , “Optics studies” final report.

“Distributed Steganography” IEEE ​October 2011.

Madhusudan Joshi, Chandra Shakhar, Kehar Singh, “Image encryption using chaos and radial
Hilbert transform”, ICOP - International Conference on Optics and Photonics, November 2009.

Narendra Singh, Alok Sinha, “Optical image encryption using fractional fourier transform and
chaos”, Optics and Lasers in Engineering”, Vol. 46 Issue 2, pp 117 – 123, February 2008.

Soni, A.; Jain, J.; Roshan, R., "Image steganography using discrete fractional Fourier transform,"
Intelligent Systems and Signal Processing (ISSP), 2013 International Conference on , vol., no.,
pp.97,100, 1-2 March 2013.

Thenmozhi, S.; Chandrasekaran, M., "Novel approach for image steganography based on integer
wavelet transform," Computational Intelligence & Computing Research (ICCIC), 2012 IEEE
International Conference on , vol., no., pp.1,5, 18-20 Dec. 2012.

III
 Appendix

● carrier: The file or signal use to hide and transmit the payload. (see cover)
● channel: The input into the steganography system, such as an image.
● cover: The media object in which the hidden message (payload) will be transmitted.
"Cover" refers to this piece of media before it is embedded with secret data. Such images
are specifically called "cover images" and texts are specifically called "covertexts"
● double-steging: A specific steganography-jamming technique that involves applying
steganography to a media object thought to be a stego-object with the intention of
destroying the originally embedded message.
● plaintext: An unembedded, unencoded message.
● payload: The message to be transmitted.
● stego-object: The media object after the hidden message has been embedded within it.
Called "stego text" when embedded in text and "stego image" when embedded in an
image.
● steganography-jamming: A general steganalysis tactic whereby the steganalysis seeks to
destroy the hidden message without actually uncovering it.

IV
 Index

C​ Cryptography : 3,4

D ​Digital : 2, 3 ,19, 20
Decoder : 5, 7, 9

E​ Embedded data : 10,17,20

Encoder : 5, 7, 9

I ​Image steganography : 6,7, 11

S ​Stego Image : 5 ,6 ,7,13

Security : 1, 2, 12,13, 19

T ​Text steganography : 5, 6, 9, 10 ,11

​W ​Watermarking : 4,8