Steganography History of Steganography

• Steganography • First used by Greek historian Herodotus

– Means “covered or hidden writing” • Text was written on tablets covered with wax
– Process of hiding a message in appropriate • Upon delivery wax would be melted.
carrier (image or audio or video)
• Slaves were shaved and tattooed
– Prevents anyone else from knowing that a
message is being sent.
– Used by civil right organizations & Terrorists.

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Computer Steganography Computer Steganography

• Computer Steganography • Embedded data
– The message one wishes to send secretly
– Changes are made to digital carriers (images or
sounds) • Cover-text
– The innocent message which is used to hide the secret
– Changes represent the hidden image. message.
– Successful if not noticeable. • Stego-text
– Emphasis on detecting hidden communications – Cover Text + Secret Text
has become an important area since September • Stego-key
11. – hiding process to restrict detection or recovery of
hidden data
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Steganography and
Watermarking
• Steganography
– Message that we are hiding is a secret
– Not generally related to what we hide it in
• Watermarks
– Message that we are hiding might not be a secret
(Might not even hide)
– Does relate to what we put it in
– Ex. Hold a $20 bill up to light to see watermark
(authenticity) , Company Logos (Ownership)
Computer Steganography
• How to make it secure?
– Messages can be compressed and encrypted before
being hidden in carrier.
– Compressed messages take less space hence minimizes
the information to be sent.
– Random looking message resulting from encryption
and compression will be easier to hide.
– Message can be scrambled and will be difficult to
encode.

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 Various techniques in Various techniques in
Steganography Steganography
• Many approaches to hide data in a file • Substitution is the naïve approach to this
problem
• Embedded bits can be inserted in any place
• It replaces cover file bits with embedded file
or in any order
bits
• Areas that are less detectable or dispersed • Replacing certain cover file bits are detectable
through out the cover file are suitable • Careful selection of bits in cover file is
• Selection of cover medium will enhance important
Steganography better.

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Types of digital carriers Types of digital carriers

• Common ways of hiding data- • Common ways of hiding data- (contd.)
– Data may be embedded in files as noise. – Hidden in documents by manipulating the
– Properties of images such as luminescence, positions of the lines of the words.
contrast and color can be manipulated. – Messages can be retrieved e.g. By taking
– Audio files can be manipulated by introducing second letter of each word (null cipher).
small echoes or slight delays. – Web browsers ignore spaces, tabs, certain
– Signals can be masked with sounds of higher characters & extra line breaks.
amplitude.
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Types of digital carriers Classification of Steganography

• Common ways of hiding data- (contd.) •
– Unused/Reserved space on a disc can be used.
– OS allocates minimum amount of space for a
file and some of it goes unused.
– Unused space in file headers, TCP/IP packet
headers.
– Spread spectrum techniques can be used by
placing an audio signal over a number of
different frequencies.
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 Classification of Steganography Classification of Steganography
• Technical Steganography • Semagrams
– Scientific methods to hide – Use symbols or signs to hide.
– Uses innocent looking object, every day physical
– e.g. Use of invisible ink or size-reduction objects to convey message
• Linguistic Steganography • e.g. doodles, adding spaces to text, different flourishes in
letters.
– Non obvious ways to hide
• Opencodes
– Categorized as semagrams or open codes
– Hides message in a legitimate carrier
– Categorized as jargon codes and covered ciphers.

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Classification of Steganography Classification of Steganography

• Jargon Code • Null Ciphers
– Language understood by group of people but – Hides according to pre arranged set of rules
meaningless to others. • e.x. every fifth word, every third character of the word.
• Innocent conversation conveying special meaning
• Covered Ciphers
– Hides message in the carrier medium
– Can be recovered by anyone who knows the secret of
how it is concealed.
– Classified into Null Cipher & Grille Cipher.
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Null Cipher Null Cipher

• PRESIDENT'S EMBARGO RULING • PRESIDENT'S EMBARGO RULING
SHOULD HAVE IMMEDIATE NOTICE. SHOULD HAVE IMMEDIATE NOTICE.
GRAVE SITUATION AFFECTING GRAVE SITUATION AFFECTING
INTERNATIONAL LAW. STATEMENT INTERNATIONAL LAW. STATEMENT
FORESHADOWS RUIN OF MANY FORESHADOWS RUIN OF MANY
NEUTRALS. YELLOW JOURNALS NEUTRALS. YELLOW JOURNALS
UNIFYING NATIONAL EXCITEMENT UNIFYING NATIONAL EXCITEMENT
IMMENSELY. IMMENSELY.
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 Image Structure and Image
Null Cipher (Contd.)
processing
• Hidden Message • Digital Imaging
– Pershing sails from N.Y. June I – Most common type of carrier used
• Null Cipher – Produced by camera/scanner or other devices.
– Used by German embassy in Washington. DC, – Approximation of the original image.
to send messages to h.q. in Berlin during – System producing image focuses a two
World War I. dimensional pattern of varying light intensity
and color onto a sensor.

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Image Structure and Image Image Structure and Image

processing processing
• Digital Imaging • Digital Imaging
– Pattern has a co-ordinate system. – Size of the image given in pixels.
• Origin
Upper left hand corner • e.g. 640 x 480 (contains 307,200) pixels.
• Pattern described by function f(x,y) – Spatial resolution of an image is the physical
– Image can be described as an array of numbers size of the pixel in the image.
which represents light intensities at various – Pixels are indexed by X & Y co-ordinates.
points.

– Spatial Frequency Rate of change of f(x,y)
– The light intensities are called pixels. value as we move across the image.
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Image Structure and Image Image Structure and Image

processing processing
• Digital Imaging • RGB Color Cube
– Gradual changes in f(x,y) corresponds to low
spatial frequencies (Coarsely sampled image)
– Rapid changes correspond to high (must be
represented by densely sampled image)
– Dense sampling produces high-resolution
image (many pixels contribute a small part of
the scene)

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 Image Structure and Image Image Structure and Image
processing processing
• RGB Color Cube • Color selection dialog box showing RGB levels.

– Representing color by the relative intensity of

the three colors- red, green & blue.
– Absence yields black (intersection of 3 axes)
– Presence of all three colors yield white


– Cyan 100% blue & 100% green


– Magenta 100% blue & 100% red


– Yellow 100% green & 100% red
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Image Structure and Image Image Structure and Image

processing processing
• RGB Color Cube • RGB Color Cube
– Each RGB Component is specified by single byte (8 – Color palettes and 8-bit color used with Graphics
bits). Interchange Format (GIF) and Bitmap (BMP) image
– Color intensity (0-255) formats.
– This 24 bit encoding supports 16,777,216 (224)Colors – Value of pixel points color in the palette.
– Each picture element (pixel) encoded in 24 bits. Called – When GIF image is displayed the software paints color
24 bit true-color.
– Can be represented by 32-bits (Extra bits
from the palette to the screen.
– Offers loss less compression because the image
Transparency) 0 (transparent) 255 (opaque)
recovered after encoding and compression is bit-for-bit
– Some use 8 bit true-color.
identical to the original image.
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Image Structure and Image Image Structure and Image

processing processing
• Palette-based images • Dithering
– Two steps in creating – To simulate missing colors from an image palette
• Color quantisation & dithering – Done by intermingling pixels of two or more colors
– Color quantisation algorithm (two parts) – Colors reordered so that matches the original image
• Generating color palette
– If unavailable colors differs too much then results in
• Mapping the pixels to the palette grainy appearances
• Involves truncating the colors of 24-bit image to a finite
number of colors (256 for GIF, 216 for Netscape GIF, 2 for – Errors are present in terms of false contours
black & white) • Error Negative (Rounded pixel value results in decrease)
To generate the palette, colors are extracted from the image and • Error Positive , otherwise
each pixel mapped to nearest color in the palette.

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 Digital Carrier methods Digital Carrier methods
• Common methods of Digital Carrier • Simple method of hiding.
– Image and audio files easiest & common – Hiding the character ‘G’ across the following
carrier. eight bytes of a carrier file.
– Least significant bit substitution or overwriting. 10010101 00001101 11001001 10010110
• Most Common method 00001111 11001011 10011111 00010000
• LSB term comes from the numeric significance
• MSB - 28 LSB - 20


– ASCII value of G ( 71 01000111)
10010100 00001101 11001000 10010110
00001110 11001011 10011111 00010001
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Digital Carrier methods Steganography Examples

• Simple method of hiding. – More than 100 programs currently available.
– Eight bit can be written to the LSB of each of – Ranging from free downloads to commercial
the 8 carrier bytes. products
– Only half bytes changed (in this case)
– LSB substitution can be used to overwrite
• RGB Color Encoding in GIF,BMP
• Pulse code modulation in audio files.
• Changing LSB changes numeric value very
little
• Least likely to be detected by human eye.
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Examples of Hiding data in Examples of Hiding data in

various carriers various carriers (Contd.)
– Hiding Burlington International Airport Map • A GIF Carrier file containing the airport map

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 Examples of Hiding data in Examples of Hiding data in
various carriers (Contd.) various carriers (Contd.)
– Example employs Gif-it-Up, Nelsonsoft • A JPEG Carrier file containing the airport map
program
– Hides information using LSB Substitution
– Includes encryption option


– Original Carrier (Mall GIF) 632,778 bytes


– Steganography file 677,733 bytes

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Examples of Hiding data in Signal level comparisons between a WAV carrier

file before (above) and after (below) insertion.
various carriers (Contd.)


– Method JP Hide & Seek (JPHS) by Allan
Latham
– Hides information using LSB Substitution
– Blowfish crypto algorithm used for
randomization and encryption.


– Original Carrier 207,244 bytes


– Steganography file 227,870 bytes

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Examples of Hiding data in Examples of Hiding data in

various carriers (Contd.) various carriers (Contd.)


– Method S-Tools, by Andy Brown

– Original WAV Carrier 178,544 bytes
– Hides information using LSB Substitution in
GIF, BMP & WAV files.


– Steganography WAV file 178,298 bytes
– Audio files well suited as relatively large in size
– Employs a password for LSB randomization
– Hard to identify small hidden items.
– Encrypts the data using
• Data Encryption Standard (DES),
• International Data Encryption Algorithm (IDEA) • Tools available @ StegoArchive.com
• Message Digest Cipher (MDC) • Freeware, shareware & commercial tools.
• Triple-Des

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