Chapter One

Introduction
1.1 Steganography
The word steganography is derived from the Greek words Stegos meaning cover and Grafia
meaning writing defining it as covered writing. Image steganography the information is hidden
exclusively in images. Steganography is the art and science of secret communication. It is the
practice of encoding/embedding secret information in a manner such that the existence of the
information is invisible. The actual files can be referred to as cover text, the cover image, or cover
audio message. After inserting the secret message, it is referred to as stegomedium. A stego-key
has been used for hiding encoding process to restrict detection or extraction of the embedded data.
Watermarking and fingerprinting related to steganography are basically used for intellectual
property protection needed. A digital watermark is a kind of marker covertly embedded in a noise-
tolerant signal such as audio or image data. It is typically used to identify ownership of the
copyright of such signal. The embedded information in a watermarked object is a signature refers
the ownership of the data in order to ensure copyright protection. In fingerprinting, different and
specific marks are embedded in the copies of the work that different customers get. In this case,
that becomes easy for the property owner to find out such customers who give themselves the right
to violate their licensing agreement when they illegally transmit the property to other groups. in
steganography, the existence of the information in the sources will not be noticed at all. Although
Steganography is separate and different from cryptography, but they are related in the way that
they both are used to protect valuable information. From here emerged the urgent need to find new
techniques alternative organization to overcome these weaknesses, giving rise to conceal
information technology (Information Hiding), which are based on a different principle to the idea
of organization, where they are buried information (Information Embedding) within other media
carrier, and making them aware by hackers and attackers, and so are the public domain of
information to users of the network, while the content monopoly "on the relevant agencies, which
alone knows how to extract content.
 Background to the study
Currently, the digital information revolution has brought significant changes in our society
and daily routines. In line with the revolution, Internet and wireless network offer ubiquitous
channels to deliver and exchange information. Therefore, public information exchange is
secured by using an encryption method where a secret data can be encrypted to prevent the
content from being intercepted. However, with the technological advancement of information
security, most Internet users are not aware that sending encrypted messages will draw
unnecessary attention to malicious black hats such as crackers and hackers. This is because the
encrypted data appears as a string of gibberish data that might arouse suspicion. Moreover,
there is a possibility of illegal exploitation attempts to the vulnerability of the encrypted
messages due to curiosity and inquisitiveness of a hacker. As a result, the secret data which
has been encrypted could be illegally intercepted, unauthorized tampered or even damaged
during data transmission.
In order to alleviate the issue mentioned above, steganography is introduced as an alternative
design to conceal a secret data into an unsuspicious cover-object so that it can be sent stealthily
through a public communication channel without drawing any unnecessary attention of the
black hats. Steganography is derived from the findings of Johannes Trithemus (1462-1516)
entitled Steganographia which comes from the Greek words (στεγανό-ς, γραυειν), steganos
literally means “covered”; and graphia means “writing”. Eventually the entire definition is
defined as covered writing (Petit colas et al., 1999).

Problem statement
s

Most of the information intruders acquire from a system is in a form that they can read or they are
not covered. Intruders may reveal the information to others, modify it to misrepresent an
individual or organization, or use it to launch an attack.
Significance of the study
Project Scope
The scope of the project is to limit unauthorized access and provide better security during message
transmission, it is also developed for hiding information in any image, audio, video and text file.
Objective

General Objective

The general objective of this project is hiding data using Steganography.

Specific Objective

The specific objectives are:

 Design for encryption of the secret information is hiding in with data by using encryption key
and password.
 Design for Decryption secrete information from data by using decryption key and password.
Literature Review

A lot of researches have been made on data hiding Debnath Bhattacharyya, Poulami Das, Samir
Kumar Bandyopadhyay, and Tai-hoon Ki, have presented the most necessities of any data hiding
system are security, capability and lustiness. It is very tough to archive of these factors together
because these are reciprocally proportional to every alternative. Authors have focuses on
maximizing security and capacity issue of information using Steganography. Steganography
system would embed a large amount of information, perfectly securely with no visible degradation
to the cover object. The information hiding method uses high digital image as a cover. It provides
the power to cover a major quality of information creating it totally different from typical
knowledge hiding mechanisms. They need used the massive payloads like image in image and text
in image.

To provide a lot of security the author advised the new procedures in steganography for hiding
information within a digital color picture image. Steganography system would embed a large
amount of information, perfectly securely with no visible degradation to the cover object.

Xikai Xu during this work author has delineated a Steganography system that embeds secret
messages into an image stream. Usually the compression methods are employed securing
 acceptable quality. However sometimes, compression strategies are lossy because decryption
image might not be identical with the original. There are some disadvantage of compression
and knowledge embedding methodology. Signal noise and irrelevance are common samples of
knowledge embedding. But encryption strategies try and take away signal noise and
irrelevance

In 2005 Steganographic file system which is done by ross and published by journal of computer
science and IEEE

This project is a storage mechanism designed to give the user a very high level of protection
against being compelled to disclose the file content. It will deliver a file to any user whose
name and password is known, but an attacker who does not possess this information and cannot
guess it, can gain no information about whether the file is present, even given complete access
to all assumptions and hardware

Figure 1 system design of steganography 1

In 2005 new robust information hiding technique which is done by N. Al-Mahhaye and published
by international conference listed of IEEE and ISI

This project aims to hide small color image inside another bigger color image. It uses the transform
domain in the steganography process to increase its robustness against the changes and treatment
its done for the cover image. The proposed system is a secret key steganography system, where
the key is secret between the two parties and stored inside stego image to increase the quality of
the system. The proposed system gives good result in imperceptibility, security, robust, capacity
and quality
In 2008 securing cover file of hidden data using statistical technique and AES encryption
algorithm which is done by ansafe and published by two international conference listed of IEEE
and ISI Thomson and local conference

The aim of this research is to study the different types of steganography systems design and
implementation of steganography system which embeds information in .EXE files the system
tries to find a solution to the size of the cover file and making it undetectable by antivirus
software. The system includes two main functions

First the hiding of the information in a PE-file, through the execution of four process (specify
the cover file, specify the information file, encryption of the information and hiding the
information) and the second function is the extraction of hiding information through three
process (specify the steno file, extract the information, and decryption of the information)

The system has achieved the main goals such as make the relation of the size of the cover file
and the size of information independent and the result file does not make any conflict with
antivirus software

Figure 2 system design of steganography 2