Enhancedsteganographicmethodusing LSBParityandspreadspectrumtechniquefor Audio Signals

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Enhanced steganographic method using LSB,

Parity and spread spectrum technique for Audio
Signals
Thesis · October 2014

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.16950.91203
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Parity and spread spectrum technique for
Audio Signals
THESIS
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD
OF THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF TECHNOLOGY
IN
ELECTRONICS & COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING
SUBMITTED BY
Ramandeep Kaur
(University Roll No. 1268999)
OCTOBER 2014
PUNJAB TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

JALANDHAR, INDIA
Parity and spread spectrum technique for
Audio Signals
THESIS
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD
OF THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF TECHNOLOGY
(ELECTRONICS & COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING)
SUBMITTED BY
Ramandeep Kaur
(University Roll No. 1268999)
SUPERVISED BY
Ms. Jagriti Bhatia
Mr. Abhishek Thakur
OCTOBER 2014
INDO GLOBAL COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, ABHIPUR, MOHALI,

PUNJAB, INDIA
INDO GLOBAL COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING ABHIPUR (MOHALI)
CANDIDATE'S DECLARATION
I hereby certify that the work which is being presented in this thesis entitled “Enhanced
steganographic method preserving base quality of Information using LSB, Parity and spread
spectrum technique” by “RAMAANDEEP KAUR” (University Roll No.: 1268999) in partial
fulfillment of requirements for the award of degree of M.Tech (Electronics and Communication) in
the Department of Electronics and Communication at INDO GLOBAL COLLEGE OF
ENGINEERING under PUNJAB TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY JALANDHAR, is an authentic
record of my own work carried out during a period from January 2014 to July 2014 under the
supervision of “JAGRITI BHATIA” and “ABHISHEK THAKUR”. The matter presented in this
thesis has not been submitted by me in any other University/ Institute for the award of any other
Degree.
SIGNATURE OF THE STUDENT
This is to certify that the above statement made by the candidate is correct to the best of my
knowledge.
SIGNATURE OF THE SUPERVISOR
The M.Tech viva-voce examination of RAMANDEEP KAUR (University Roll No.: 1268999) has
been held on _______________ and accepted.
SIGNATURE OF THE SUPERVISOR SIGNATURE OF EXTERNAL EXAMINER
SIGNATURE OF CO-SUPERVISOR
SIGNATURE OF HOD
i
Abstract
The information & communication technologies play a vital role in socioeconomic development
of society. In our daily life we communicate by sharing text, audios and videos. The data
transmission in public communication system is not secure because of crackers and thieves. On
the large demand of communication, the security becomes the main issue. Increased use of
electronic communication has given birth to new ways of transmitting information securely. So
we need a secure system to exchange data securely between users. For such kind of need of
security, steganography is very useful and attractive technique. In steganography we hide the
data or information.
The message before and after steganography has the same characteristics. Steganography is
often confused with cryptography because the two are similar in the way that they both are used
to protect confidential information. The difference between the two is in the appearance in the
processed output. The output of steganography operation is not apparently visible but in
cryptography the output is scrambled so that it can draw attention.
In this thesis we work on the audio steganography. Here we hide the secret message in layers of
audio file. A perfect audio Steganographic technique aim at embedding data in an imperceptible,
robust and secure way and then extracting it by authorized people. Hence, in the future, the
challenge in digital audio steganography is to obtain robust high capacity steganographic
systems.
In recent years there are various techniques used in audio steganography, but here we use three
steganographic methods instead of one steganographic method. This has been done by using
layering approach known as multilevel technique. In multilevel technique one level serves as a
ii
carrier for second level. Multilevel technique has advantage over other techniques that its
decoding is difficult or we can hide more than one message in single cover file. In this thesis we
are using three techniques that are least significant bit (LSB) coding, parity coding and spread
spectrum coding.
The performance of hiding message is measured by comparing the peak signal to noise ratio
(PSNR), mean square error (MSE) of individual technique with the combined technique along
with the improvement in Bit error rate (BER), capacity. Here value of PSNR for proposed work
is 36.770 or value of MSE is 0.0523. The values of BER at bit indexes 1, 2,5,8,10,15 are 0.1004,
0.7023, 0.7096, 0.7280, 0.7619, and 0.8101 respectively. Previous values of BER at bit indexes
at 1, 2,5,8,10,15 are 0.1588, 0.8595, 0.7661, 0.8688, 0.9996, 0.9342 respectively [3]. These
values are improved then the previous values. The implementation of this proposed work we use
the Image Processing and Speech Processing Toolbox under MATLAB software.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Apart from the efforts of me, the success of this dissertation depends largely on the
encouragement and guidelines of many others. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to
the people who have been instrumental in the successful completion of this dissertation.
I would like to place on record my deep sense of gratitude to. Prof. RAJESH KUMAR, Head of
Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering, Indo Global College of Engineering,
Abhipur, India, for his generous guidance, help and useful suggestions.
I express my sincere gratitude to DR.HARDEEP SINGH SAINI, Professor (ECE), for his
stimulating guidance, continuous encouragement and resourceful help throughout the course of
present work.
I am extremely thankful to DR. PROMILA KAUSHAL, Principal, Indo Global College of

Engineering, Abhipur, for providing me infrastructural facilities to work in, without which this
work would not have been possible.
I express gratitude to Er. JAGRITI BHATIA and Er. ABHISHEK THAKUR, Assistant Professor
Dept. of ECE and other faculty members of ECE Department for their intellectual support
throughout the course of this work. Finally, I am indebted to all whosoever has contributed in
this dissertation work.
Ramandeep kaur
iv
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Title Page
1.1 Digital data security discipline 3
1.2 Block diagram of audio steganography 4
1.3 Continues analog sound wave sampled to produce for audio 5

steganography
1.4 LSB modification procedure for audio steganography 6
1.5 Parity coding method 7
1.6 Phase coding method 10
1.7 The offset values represent binary values 13
1.8 Blocks are recombined to produced final signal 14
1.9 Implementation of echo hiding process 15
1.10 Overview of proposed steganographic method 15
1.11 Audio steganography in MMS 20
1.12 Embedded data transmission over acoustic channels 21
3.1 Multilevel steganography 37
4.1 Figure to open new GUI 40
4.2 Blank GUI 41
4.3 Figure to add buttons in GUI 42
4.4 Property inspector 43
4.5 First level of multilevel steganography 44
4.6 Encoding part of first level program 45
v
4.7 Output of first level encoding 46
4.8 Decoding part of first level 47
4.9 Second level of multilevel steganography 48
4.10 Encoding part of second level 49
4.11 Output of second level encoding 50
4.12 Decoding part of second level 51
4.13 Third level of multilevel steganography 52
4.14 Encoding part of third level 53
4.15 Output of third level encoding 54
4.16 Decode part of third level 55
4.17 PSNR graph of audio steganography 56
4.18 MSE graph of audio steganography 57
4.19 BER of audio steganography 58
6.1 Comparison of BER of previous and proposed algorithm 60
vi
CONTENTS
Page No.
Candidate’s Declaration i
Abstract ii
Acknowledgements iv
List of figures 5
List of tables 10
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 steganography 2
1.2 Audio steganography 4
1.3 Digital Audio 5
1.4 Techniques used in audio steganography 6
1.4.1 Least significant bit coding 6
1.4.2 Parity coding 8
1.4.3 Phase coding 10
1.4.4 Spread Spectrum 12
1.4.5 Echo hiding 12
1.5 Multilevel steganography 15
1.6 Parameters 16
1.6.1 Mean Square Error 16
1.6.2 BER 16
vii
1.6.3 Perceptual Quality 17
1.6.4 PSNR 17
1.6.5 Audio processing 18
1.6.6 Analog Signals 18
1.6.7 Digital audio 18
1.7 Applications 19
1.7.1 Secret communication 19
1.7.2 Improved communication 20
1.7.3 Data storage 21
1.8 Advantages 21
1.9 Disadvantages 23
1.10 Techniques 23
Chapter 2: Literature survey 26
Chapter 3: PRESENT WORK 35
3.1 Problem formulation 35
3.2 Objective 36
3.3 Methodology 37
Chapter 4: Results 40
Chapter 6: COMPARISON 59
Chapter 6: CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE 62
viii
5.1 Conclusion 62
5.2 Future Scope 62
References 63
APPENDIX 1: MATLAB 67
ix
List of Tables
Table Title Page
1 Comparison of BER previous and present algorithm 59
2 Comparison of PSNR 60
3 Comparison of MSE 61
x
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
As we know use of internet among public masses is growing, so an increasing amount of data is stored
on computers and transmitted over networks. Broadband communication networks and multimedia data
available are in digital form. There is an abundant availability of public or private digital data on
networks. So many industrials and professionals and researchers pay attention towards data protection.
So data security becomes main issue now days. Data security means protecting data from destructive
forces and the unwanted actions of unauthorized users. Normally an application is developed by a
person or a small group of people and used by many.
Hackers are the people who tend to change the original application by modifying it or use the same
application to make profits without giving credit to the owner. It is obvious that hackers are more in
number compared to those who create. Hence, protecting an application should have the significant
priority. Protection techniques have to be efficient, robust and unique to restrict malicious users [14].
Currently, three main methods are being used: cryptography, watermarking, and steganography
Cryptography s used to hide data in form of shares parts. In cryptography, the structure of a message is
scrambled to make it meaningless and unintelligible unless the decryption key is available.
Watermarking is used to hide image data in image by overlapping. It is of two types visible or invisible
[15]. Techniques such as encryption and watermarking are already used in this regard. However, the
need for new techniques and new algorithms to counter constantly-changing malicious attempts to the
integrity of digital data has become a necessity in now day’s. Hence, protecting an application should
have the significant priority. Protection techniques have to be efficient, robust and unique to restrict
malicious users.
The development of technology has increased the scope of steganography and at the same time
decreased its efficiency since the medium is relatively insecure. This lead to the development of the new
but related technology called "Steganography". Cryptography is about protecting contents of
steganography and steganography is about concealing its existence [11].
1
Digital Data Security
Technique Cryptography Information hiding
Steganography Watermarking
Application Secret Secret Copyright

Information communication
Secret message Signature

Plain Key
text Cover file Key Cover Key
File
Encryption Embedding Encoding
Principle
Cipher Text Stego file Marked File
Visibility
Visible Invisible, inaudible Visible, Invisible
Requirement Robustnes Undetectability, Robustness

Capacity
Figure1.1: Digital data security disciplines
1.1 STEGANOGRAPHY
The word steganography comes from the Greek Stegos, which means covered or secret and -graphy
means writing or drawing. Therefore, steganography means, literally, covered writing [16].
Steganography is the art and science of hiding secret information in a cover file such that only sender
and receiver can detect the existence of the secret information. Secret information is encoded in a
manner such that the very existence of the information is concealed. The main goal of steganography is
to communicate securely in a completely undetectable manner and to avoid drawing suspicion to the
transmission of a hidden data. It is not only prevents others from knowing the hidden information, but it
2
also prevents others from thinking that the information even exists [16]. If a steganography method
causes someone to suspect there is secret information in a carrier medium, then the method has failed. In
order for a data hiding technique to be successful it must adhere to two rules:
• The embedded data must be undetectable within its carrier medium (the audio or image file
used). The carrier should display no properties that flag it as suspicious, whether it is to the
human visual/auditory system or in increased file size for the carrier file.
• The embedded data must maintain its integrity within the carrier and should be easily removable,
under the right circumstances, by the receiving party [17].
Steganography is a powerful tool which increases security in data transferring and archiving.
Steganography is a technique of information hiding in which we hide the existence of secret message. In
this we hide the existence of secret message by embedding it into cover media object. Embedding is a
technique to fix firmly in surrounding mass, e.g. to embed nail into wood. Figure 1.2 shows that
steganography secret message is called message object or media in which data is to be embedded called
as cover object or output produced after steganography is called stego object. Cover object can be audio,
video, text, and image. Data is embedded in cover object in such a way that quality of cover object is
not affected.
Message object
Steganographic Stego object

Carrier object
method
Fig1.2: Block diagram of audio steganography
The main goal of steganography is to hide a message m in some audio or video (cover) data d to obtain
d’, practically indistinguishable from d, so that the secret listener to this conversation cannot detect the
presence of m in d’. Moreover, the modification of the carrier caused by inserting steganograms cannot
3
be “visible” to the third party observer, i.e., he/she cannot point to the difference between modified and
unmodified carrier if he/she is not aware of the steganographic procedure [11].
Generally, in steganography the following operations are performed:
• Write a non-secret cover message.
• Produce a stego-message by concealing a secret message embedded on the cover message by
using a stego-key.
• Send the stego-message over the insecure channel to the receiver.
• At the receiver end, on receiving the stego-message, the intended receiver extracts the secret
embedded message from the stego- message by using a pre agreed stego-key[1].
Some of the applications of Steganography include ownership protection, proof for authentication, air
traffic monitoring, medical applications etc. Modern techniques of steganography exploit the
characteristics of digital media by utilizing them as carriers (covers) to hold hidden information. Covers
can be of different types including image, audio, and video, text, and IP datagram [15]. The primary goal
of steganography is to reliably send hidden information secretly, not merely to obscure its presence.
Steganography in today’s computer era is considered a sub-discipline of data communication security
domain. Lately, new directions based on steganographic approaches started to emerge to ensure data
secrecy. Rather than as a substitute to existing solutions, these approaches could achieve better data
secrecy if combined with conventional security techniques [15]. Modern techniques of steganography
exploit the characteristics of digital media by utilizing them as carriers (covers) to hold hidden
information.
1.2 AUDIO STEGANOGRAPHY
In Audio Steganography, the weakness of the Human Auditory System (HAS) is used to hide
information in the audio. That is, while using digital images as cover files the difficulty of the human
eye to distinguish colors is taken advantage of, while using digital audio one can count on the different
sensitivity of the human ear when it comes to sounds of low and high intensity; usually, higher sounds
are perceived better than lower ones and it is thus easier to hide data among low sounds without the
human ear noticing the alteration. In audio steganography data is embedded in digital audio signal. Here
secret message is embedded by small change in binary sequence of sound file. Audio file can be WAV,
AU, or MP3 sound files. Audio steganography is more difficult than other methods of steganography.
4
Audio steganography is more challenging than others because audio files are larger than images or text
and characteristics of human auditory system (HAS) like large power, dynamic range of hearing and
large range of audible frequency.. HAS can perceive sound over a range of power greater than 109 to 1
and range of frequency greater than 103 to 1 [9]. Auditory perception is based on the critical band
analysis in the inner ear where a frequency-to-location transformation takes place along the basilar
membrane. The power spectra of the received sounds are not represented on a linear frequency scale but
on limited frequency bands called critical bands. Range of sound frequencies which human ear can hear
is 20 Hz to 20,000 kHz.
1.3 DIGITAL AUDIO

Digital audio is discrete rather than continuous signal as found in analog audio. A discrete signal is
created by sampling a continuous analog signal at a specified rate. For example, the standard sampling
rate for CD digital audio is about 44 kHz [9].
Continuous signal sampling process discrete digital signal
Figure 1.3: Continuous analog sound wave is sampled to produce digital signal
Digital audio is stored in a computer as a sequence of 0's and 1's. With the right tools, it is possible to
change the individual bits that make up a digital audio file. Such precise control allows changes to be
made to the binary sequence that are not discernible to the human ear [18]. In the digital domain, PCM
(Pulse Code Modulation) is the most straightforward mechanism to store audio. PCM consists
essentially of sampling analog information signal. The analog audio is sampled in accordance with the
Nyquest theorem and the individual samples are stored sequentially in binary format. According to
Nyquest theorem minimum sampling rate fs that can be used for a given sampling system must be twice
greater than or equal to analog input frequency fa .
5
fs ≥ 2f …………………………….[1]
The wave file is the most common format for storing PCM data and the WAVE file format is a subset
of Microsoft's RIFF specification for the storage of multimedia files. That’s why .wav files have been
used here for below mentioned experiments.
1.4 TECHNIQUES USED IN AUDIO STEGANOGRAPHY

This section presents some common methods used in audio steganography. Many software
implementations of these methods are available on the Web and are listed in the Links section. Some of
the latter methods require previous knowledge of signal processing techniques, Fourier analysis, and
other areas of high level mathematics. Figures and pseudo code are used in place of exact mathematical
formulas in attempts to make the theory more accessible to readers possessing just a basic knowledge of
steganography. Some commonly used methods of audio steganography are listed and discussed below in
brief.
1.4.1 Least significant bit coding:

One of the earliest techniques studied in the information hiding of digital audio (as well as other media
types) is LSB coding. In this technique LSB of binary sequence of each sample of digitized audio file is
replaced with binary equivalent of secret message. It is the simplest way to embed information in a
digital audio file. It allows large amount of data to be concealed within an audio file, or it allow high
embedding rate without degrading quality of audio file [19]. Use of only one LSB of the host audio
sample gives a capacity equivalent to the sampling rate which could vary from 8 kbps to 44.1 kbps [20].
In LSB coding, the ideal data transmission rate is 1 kbps per 1 kHz. In some implementations of LSB
coding, however, the two least significant bits of a sample are replaced with two message bits. This
increases the amount of data that can be encoded but also increases the amount of resulting noise in the
audio file as well. Thus, one should consider the signal content before deciding on the LSB operation to
use. For example, a sound file that was recorded in a bustling subway station would mask low-bit
encoding noise. On the other hand, the same noise would be audible in a sound file containing a piano
solo. To extract a secret message from an LSB encoded sound file, the receiver needs access to the
sequence of sample indices used in the embedding process. Normally, the length of the secret message
to be encoded is smaller than the samples in a sound file. One must decide then on how to choose the
6
subset of samples that will contain the secret message and communicate that decision to the receiver.
One trivial technique is to start at the beginning of the sound file and perform LSB coding until the
message has been completely embedded; leaving the remaining samples unchanged. This creates a
security problem, however in that the first part of the sound file will have different statistical properties
than the second part of the sound file that was not modified [21]. One solution to this problem is to pad
the secret message with random bits so that the length of the message is equal to the total number of
samples. Yet now the embedding process ends up changing far more samples than the transmission of
the secret required. This increases the probability that a would-be attacker will suspect secret
communication. After executing the program the procedure can showed with the help of original data as
shown in figure 1.4:
1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0
1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1
1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0
1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1
0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0
0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1
0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
Figure 1.4: LSB modification procedure for audio steganography
A more sophisticated approach is to use a pseudorandom number generator to spread the message over
the sound file in a random manner. One popular approach is to use the random interval method, in which
a secret key possessed by the sender is used as a seed in a pseudorandom number generator to create a
random sequence of sample indices [21]. The receiver also has access to the secret key and knowledge
of the pseudorandom number generator, allowing the random sequence of sample indices to be
reconstructed. Checks must be put in place, however, to prevent the pseudorandom number generator
from generating the same sample index twice [21]. If this happened, a collision would occur where a
sample already modified with part of the message is modified again. The problem of collisions can be
7
overcome by keeping track of all the samples that have already been used [21]. Another approach is to
calculate the subset of samples via a pseudorandom permutation of the entire set through the use of a
secure hash function. This technique insures that the same index is never generated more than once.
Advantages:
• It is easy to implement.
• It provides very high channel capacity.
• It is easy to combine with other hiding techniques.
Disadvantage:
• It has considerably low robustness against attacks.
• Perceptual transparency of stego objects is decreased.
1.4.2 Parity Coding
Instead of breaking a signal down into individual samples, the parity coding method breaks a signal
down into separate regions of samples and encodes each bit from the secret message in a sample region's
parity bit. If the parity bit of a selected region does not match the secret bit to be encoded, the process
flips the LSB of one of the samples in the region.
Thus, the sender has more of a choice in encoding the secret bit, and the signal can be changed in a more
unobtrusive fashion. Using the parity coding method, the first three bits of the message 'HEY' are
encoded in the following figure. Even parity is desired.
In figure 1.5,
Sample region 1
• message bit m1=0

• Regions parity bit p1=1
• Flip LSB of one of the samples in the region.
• p1 = m1
Sample region 2
8
• p2= m2
Sample region 3

• p3=m3
1 1 0 1 0
0 0 1 1 0
0 1 0 1 0
1 1 0 1 1
1 0 0 1 1 1
1 0 0 1 0
Sample Region 3
0 1 1 0 1 0
0 1 1 0 1 0
Sample Region 1 1 0 1 1 1 0
Sample Region 2
Figure 1.5: Parity coding method
The decoding process extracts the secret message by calculating and lining up the parity bits of the
regions used in the encoding process. Once again, the sender and receiver can use a shared secret key as
a seed in a pseudorandom number generator to produce the same set of sample regions.
There are two main disadvantages associated with the use of methods like LSB coding or parity coding.
The human ear is very sensitive and can often detect even the slightest bit of noise introduced into a
9
sound file, although the parity coding method does come much closer to making the introduced noise
inaudible.
Both methods share a second disadvantage however, in that they are not robust. If a sound file
embedded with a secret message using either LSB coding or parity coding was resample, the embedded
information would be lost [22]. Robustness can be improved somewhat by using a redundancy technique
while encoding the secret message. However, redundancy techniques reduce data transmission rate
significantly.
1.4.3 Phase Coding:

Phase coding addresses the disadvantages of the noise-inducing methods of audio steganography.
Phase coding relies on the fact that the phase components of sound are not as perceptible to the
human ear as noise is perceptible.
Rather than introducing perturbations, the technique encodes the message bits as phase shifts in the
phase spectrum of a digital signal, achieving an inaudible encoding in terms of signal-to-perceived
noise ratio [23]. Or we can say that phase coding depend on replacing selected phase components
with hidden data. It is noted that among all hiding techniques phase coding tolerates better signal
distortion. Phase coding has inserted data in phase components using an independent multi band
phase modulation. In this approach imperceptible phase modifications are achieved using
controlled phase alteration of host audio shown in figure 1.6. The original sound signal is broken
up into smaller segments whose lengths are equal to size of message to be encoded.
Continuous Signal Encoded Signal
Figure 1.6: Phase coding method
10
Phase coding is explained in the following procedure:
• The original sound signal is broken up into smaller segments whose lengths equal the size of the
message to be encoded.
• A Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) is applied to each segment to create a matrix of the phases
and Fourier transform magnitudes.
• Phase differences between adjacent segments are calculated.
• Phase shifts between consecutive segments are easily detected. In other words the absolute
phases of the segments can be changed but the relative phase differences between adjacent
segments must be preserved. Therefore the secret message is only inserted in the phase vector of
the first signal segment as follows:

0
PHASE_NEW = 2 ………………………………… [2]
2
1
• A new phase matrix is created using the new phase of the first segment and the original phase
differences.
• Using the new phase matrix and original magnitude matrix, the sound signal is reconstructed by
applying the inverse DFT and then concatenating the sound segments back together.
To extract the secret message from the sound file, the receiver must know the segment length. The
receiver can then use the DFT to get the phases and extract the information.
One disadvantage associated with phase coding is a low data transmission rate due to the fact that the
secret message is encoded in the first signal segment only. This might be addressed by increasing the
length of the signal segment.
However, this would change phase relations between each frequency component of the segment more
drastically, making the encoding easier to detect. As a result, the phase coding method is used when only
a small amount of data, such as a watermark, needs to be concealed.
Phase coding is a lengthy process. It is difficult to impliment or extract. In this approach, imperceptible
phase modifications are achieved using controlled phase alteration of the host audio [1].
11
1.4.4 Spread Spectrum
In the context of audio steganography, the basic spread spectrum (SS) method attempts to spread secret
information across the audio signal's frequency spectrum as much as possible. In SS we spread message
in a signal using a code and this code is independent of actual signal. So at decode side we should know
that code [1]. This is analogous to a system using an implementation of the LSB coding that randomly
spreads the message bits over the entire sound file. However, unlike LSB coding, the SS method spreads
the secret message over the sound file's frequency spectrum, using a code that is independent of the
actual signal [14]. As a result, the final signal occupies a bandwidth in excess of what is actually
required for transmission.
Two versions of SS can be used in audio steganography: the direct-sequence and frequency-hopping
schemes. In direct-sequence SS, the secret message is spread out by a constant called the chip rate and
then modulated with a pseudorandom signal. It is then interleaved with the cover-signal. In frequency-
hopping SS, the audio file's frequency spectrum is altered so that it hops rapidly between frequencies.
Here signal is broadcast over pseudo random sequence of frequencies. The sequence is obtained by
pseudo random generator. The PN sequences are generated deterministically and these are like random
sequence to observer. The PN sequence is bit stream of 1’s and 0’s occurring randomly with some
unique properties. The math theory behind SS is quite complicated and goes beyond the scope of this
project. However, Katzenbeisser and Petitcolas write about a generic steganography system that uses
direct-sequence SS in Information Hiding Techniques for Steganography and Digital Watermarking.
The following procedural diagram illustrates the design of that system when applied to our specific topic
of audio steganography.
1.4.5 Echo Hiding
In echo hiding, information is embedded in a sound file by introducing an echo into the discrete signal.
Like the spread spectrum method, it too provides advantages in that it allows for a high data
transmission rate and provides superior robustness when compared to the noise inducing methods.
To hide the data successfully, three parameters of the echo are varied: amplitude, decay rate, and offset
(delay time) from the original signal. All three parameters are set below the human hearing threshold so
12
the echo is not easily resolved. In addition, offset is varied to represent the binary message to be
encoded. One offset value represents a binary one, and a second offset value represents a binary zero.
Sample Sample Echo Sample Echo
Binary zero offset
Binary one offset
Figure 1.7: The offset value represents binary values
If only one echo was produced from the original signal, only one bit of information could be encoded.
Therefore, the original signal is broken down into blocks before the encoding process begins. Once the
encoding process is completed, the blocks are concatenated back together to create the final signal [21].
We'll now go through a simple form of the echo hiding process using the message 'HEY'. For brevity,
we'll divide the signal completely up into blocks, although under normal circumstances a random
number of samples between each pair of blocks should remain unused to reduce the probability of
detection.
0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1
Figure1.8: Blocks are recombined to produce the final signal.
13
First the signal is divided up into blocks, and each block is assigned a one or a zero based on the secret
message. In this case, the message is the binary equivalent of 'HEY'.
Using that implementation of the echo hiding process can usually result in a signal that has a fairly
noticeable mix of echoes, thus increasing the risk of detection. A second implementation of the echo
hiding process addresses this problem. First an echo signal is created from the entire original signal
using the binary zero offset value. Then a second echo signal is created from the entire original signal
using the binary one offset value. Thus the "one" echo signal only contains ones, and the "zero" echo
signal only contains zeros. To combine the two echoes together to get the final encoding, two mixer
signals are used.
The mixer signals have a value of either one or zero, depending on which bit is to be encoded in the
block. The "one" echo signal is then multiplied by the "one" mixer signal and the "zero" echo signal is
multiplied by the "zero" mixer signal. Then the two results are added together to get the final signal. The
final signal is less abrupt than the one obtained using the first echo hiding implementation. This is
because the two mixer echoes are complements of each other and that ramp transitions are used within
each signal. These two characteristics of the mixer signals produce smoother transitions between echoes.
To extract the secret message from the stego-signal, the receiver must be able to break up the signal into
the same block sequence used during the encoding process. The following diagram summarizes the
second implementation of the echo hiding process
‘One’ ‘One’
echo mixer
signal signal
Original Encoded
signal signal
‘Zero’ ‘Zero’
echo mixer
signal signal
Figure 1.9: Implementation of echo hiding process
14
1.5 MULTILEVEL STEGANOGRAPHY (MLS)
Multilevel steganography is based on combining of two or more steganographic methods in such a way
that one method is a carrier for other method.
Secret message
Upper level steganographic method Level 1
Middle level steganographic method

Level 2
Lower level steganographic method Level 3
Figure 1.10: Overview of proposed steganographic method
Multilevel steganography has advantage of difficult decoding or sending two or more secret message
through single cover object. Here more than one message can be transmitted with a single cover file. In
multilevel steganography is done by layered approach. Multilevel steganography uses features of
existing steganographic method (upper level method) to create new level (lower level method).
Multilevel steganography has following applications:
• Increased steganographic BW.

• Increase inaudibility [because upper level method is controlled by information carried by lower
level method].
• It increases steganographic transmission reliability.
• It has harder steganograms extraction and analysis.
15
1.6 PARAMETERS
There are some parameters given which is useful in our implementation and will be used.
1.6.1 Mean square error
Mean Squared Error is essentially a signal fidelity measure. The goal of a signal fidelity measure is to
compare two signals by providing a quantitative score that describes the degree of similarity/fidelity or,
conversely, the level of error/distortion between them [24]. Usually, it is assumed that one of the signals
is a pristine original, while the other is distorted or contaminated by errors. The distortion in the audio
signal can be measured using MSE. The MSE between the signals is given by the following formula:

∑!
"# ……………………………….. [3]
2
Where x(n) represent cover audio signal and y(n) represent stego audio signal.
1.6.2 BER
Bit error rate refers to the amount of stego data that may be reliably embedded within a host signal per
unit of time or space, such as bits per second or bits per pixel. A higher bit rate may be desirable in some
applications in order to embed more copyright information. In this study, reliability was measured as the
bit error rate (BER) of extracted stego data. The BER (in percent) is given by the expression [24]:
$ ∞ *+,
Q(x) = ( )
√&' . &
- /0 …………………………….. [4]
Where x is a function of the block size.
1.6.3 PERCEPTUAL QUALITY

Perceptual quality refers to the imperceptibility of embedded stego data within the host signal. In most
applications, it is important that the watermark is undetectable to a listener or viewer. This ensures that
the quality of the host signal is not perceivably distorted, and does not indicate the presence or location
16
of a watermark. In this study, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the stego signal versus the host signal
was used as a quality measure [24]:
∑9
:;< .8
,
1234 1056$7 ∑9 ………………………………………….5
:;<.8*=8
,
1.6.4 PSNR
Embedding this extra data must not degrade human perception about the object. Namely, the stego
should be “invisible” in a stego audio or “inaudible” in stego digital music. Evaluation of
imperceptibility is usually based on an objective measure of quality, called peak signal to noise ratio
(PSNR), or a subjective test with specified procedures. It’s measure of quality of audio signal by
comparing cover audio signal by comparing cover audio with stego signal. The PSNR values can be
obtained using following formula-
∑9
:;< .8
,
1234 1056$7 ∑9 ………………………………………….. 6
:;<.8*=8
,
Here x (n) represents cover audio signal and y(n) represents stego audio signal .
1.6.5 Audio preprocessing
Audio signal processing, sometimes referred to as audio processing, is the intentional alteration of
auditory signals, or sound, often through an audio effect or effects unit. As audio signals may be
electronically represented in either digital or analog format, signal processing may occur in either
domain. Analog processors operate directly on the electrical signal, while digital processors operate
mathematically on the digital representation of that signal.
Audio signals are sound waves—longitudinal waves which travel through air, consisting of
compressions and rarefactions. These audio signals are measured in bels or in decibels. Audio
processing was necessary for early radio broadcasting, as there were many problems with studio to
transmitter links.
17
1.6.6 Analog signals
"Analog" indicates something that is mathematically represented by a set of continuous values; for
example, the analog clock uses constantly moving hands on a physical clock face, where moving the
hands directly alter the information that clock is providing. Thus, an analog signal is one represented by
a continuous stream of data, in this case along an electrical circuit in the form of voltage, current or
charge changes (compare with digital signals below). Analog signal processing (ASP) then involves
physically altering the continuous signal by changing the voltage or current or charge via various
electrical means. Historically, before the advent of widespread digital technology, ASP was the only
method by which to manipulate a signal. Since that time, as computers and software became more
advanced, digital signal processing has become the method of choice.
1.6.7 Digital signals
A digital representation expresses the pressure wave-form as a sequence of symbols, usually binary
numbers. This permits signal processing using digital circuits such as microprocessors and computers.
Although such a conversion can be prone to loss, most modern audio systems use this approach as the
techniques of digital signal processing are much more powerful and efficient than analog domain signal
processing.
1.7 APPLICATIONS
The rapid spread in digital data usage in many real life applications have urged new and effective ways
to ensure their security. Efficient secrecy can be achieved, at least in part, by implementing
steganograhy techniques. The goal of steganographic systems is to obtain secure and robust way to
conceal high rate of secret data. We focus in this paper on digital audio steganography, which has
emerged as a prominent source of data hiding across novel telecommunication technologies such as
covered voice-over-IP, audio conferencing, etc. The multitude of steganographic criteria has led to a
great diversity in these system design techniques. In this paper, we review current digital audio
steganographic techniques and we evaluate their performance based on robustness, security and hiding
capacity indicators. Another contribution of this paper is the provision of a robustness-based
classification of steganographic models depending on their occurrence in the embedding process.
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1.7.1 Secret communication
To maintain patients’ medical records secrecy, proposed to telemedicine users, a multilevel-access
control audio steganography system for securing transmission of medical images. The system embeds
medical images in audio files that are sent to different recipients such as doctor’s in-charge of the
corresponding patient. For more security, only intended receivers have the knowledge of a key that will
be used to extract the medical images.
To exploit the expanding use of audio multimedia messaging (MMS) among mobile phone
users, presented an alternative way for hidden communications, where data are hidden in text messages
(SMS) or in MMS. However, in, a real time application that hides text in image and then disseminates it
in MMS is presented. The system is created on a pair of Nokia 3110c handsets in Java 2 platform, micro
edition (J2ME).The system makes use of the 4 last bits of a snapshot image taken by the camera phone
to embed the message and then send it using a carrier medium such as MMS or Bluetooth. A
preestablished key between the sender and the receiver is used to open the image and read the message
[15]. The general principle of MMS use in audio steganography is shown in Figure 1.11:
Rx
Network
Tx Tx
Rx
Speech
Speech sentence
sentence
Audio Audio
Hide
MMS MMS
Secret Extract
message
Secret
Message
Figure 1.11: Audio steganography in MMS
19
1.7.2 Improved communication
In order to improve the intelligibility and the perceived quality of telephone speech (PSTN), proposed a
data hiding technique to extend the PSTN channel bandwidth. Since human voice occupies 8 kHz or
more in bandwidth, wideband speech (which lies in an interval of 50 Hz to 7 kHz) provides a higher
intelligibility compared to narrowband speech (where the only information that could be transmitted is
in the frequency band of 200 Hz to 3.5 KHz). Wideband speech is divided into three subbands: lower
band (LB) 50-200, narrowband 0.2-3.5 and upper band (UB) 3.5-7 kHz. The characteristics (magnitude
frequencies and their locations) of LB and UP are embedded in the narrowband part of the speech based
on a perceptual masking principle. While this hidden signal is not audible to the human ear, PSTN
channel utilizes normal narrowband speech, but at the receiver side the embedded sub-bands are
extracted. Thus, the speech takes the form of a wideband speech with higher intelligibility and better
quality. Improved communication was also a target for steganographic systems where hidden data are
sent over acoustic channels as described in Figure 1.12. In data are pushed into live music or ambient
sounds and transmitted over an acoustic channel. The transmitter in this case is a speaker, and the
receiver is microphones which are already present in numerous devices and environments. The
developed technique was applied in a simple navigation system, where acoustic data are embedded into
background music to indicate the location of the receiver [15].
Data
Data Extract
ADC
Audio Audio
Embed DAC
Figure 1.12: Embedded data transmission over acoustic channels
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1.7.3 Data storage
Given the possibility to hide more than 16 Kbps in a wide-band audio file with a conventional LSB
encoding method, digital information can be reliably stored in audio steganographic systems. Another
application for data storage could be seen in subtitled movies. Actors speech, film music, background
sounds could be used to embed the text needed for translation. In this case, bandwidth is substantially
reduced [15].
1.8 ADVANTAGES:
Audio based Steganography has the potential to conceal more information:

• Audio files are generally larger than images
• Our hearing can be easily fooled
• Slight changes in amplitude can store vast amounts of information
The flexibility of audio Steganography is makes it very potentially powerful :
• The methods discussed provide users with a large amount of choice and makes the
technology more accessible to everyone. A party that wishes to communicate can rank
the importance of factors such as data transmission rate, bandwidth, robustness, and noise
audibility and then select the method that best fits their specifications.
• For example, two individuals who just want to send the occasional secret message back
and forth might use the LSB coding method that is easily implemented. On the other
hand, a large corporation wishing to protect its intellectual property from "digital pirates"
may consider a more sophisticated method such as phase coding, SS, or echo hiding.
• Another aspect of audio Steganography that makes it so attractive is its ability to combine
with existing cryptography technologies.
• Users no longer have to rely on one method alone. Not only can information be
encrypted, it can be hidden altogether.
• Many sources and types makes statistical analysis more difficult :
• Greater amounts of information can be embedded without audible degradation
Security :
21
• Many attacks that are malicious against image Steganography algorithms (e.g.
geometrical distortions, spatial scaling, etc.) cannot be implemented against audio
Steganography schemes. Consequently, embedding information into audio seems more
secure due to less steganalysis techniques for attacking to audio.
• As emphasis placed on the areas of copyright protection, privacy protection, and
surveillance increases, Steganography will continue to grow in importance as a protection
mechanism.
• Audio Steganography in particular addresses key issues brought about by the MP3
format, P2P software, and the need for a secure broadcasting scheme that can maintain
the secrecy of the transmitted information, even when passing through insecure channels.
1.9 DISADVANTAGES:
• Embedding additional information into audio sequences is a more tedious task than that of
images, due to dynamic supremacy of the HAS over human visual system.
• Robustness: Copyright marks hidden in audio samples using substitution could be easily
manipulated or destroyed if a miscreant comes to know that information is hidden this way.
• Commercialized audio Steganography have disadvantages that the existence of hidden
messages can be easily recognized visually and only certain sized data can be hidden.
• Compressing an audio file with lossy compression will result in loss of the hidden message
as it will change the whole structure of a file.
Also, several lossy compression schemes use the limits of the human ear to their advantage
by removing all frequencies that cannot be heard. This will also remove any frequencies that
are used by a Steganography system which hides information in that part of the spectrum.
• PSNR, MSE, Capacity and BER values of all steganographic techniques are poor if we use
them individually.
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1.10 TECHNIQUES
Audio unprocessed by reverb and delay is metaphorically referred to as "dry", while processed audio is
referred to as "wet".
• Echo - to simulate the effect of reverberation in a large hall or cavern, one or several delayed
signals are added to the original signal. To be perceived as echo, the delay has to be of order 35
milliseconds or above. Short of actually playing a sound in the desired environment, the effect of
echo can be implemented using either digital or analog methods. Analog echo effects are
implemented using tape delays and/or spring reverbs. When large numbers of delayed signals are
mixed over several seconds, the resulting sound has the effect of being presented in a large room,
and it is more commonly called reverberation or reverb for short.
• Flanger - to create an unusual sound, a delayed signal is added to the original signal with a
continuously variable delay (usually smaller than 10 ms). This effect is now done electronically
using DSP, but originally the effect was created by playing the same recording on two
synchronized tape players, and then mixing the signals together. As long as the machines were
synchronized, the mix would sound more-or-less normal, but if the operator placed his finger on
the flange of one of the players (hence "flanger"), that machine would slow down and its signal
would fall out-of-phase with its partner, producing a phasing effect. Once the operator took his
finger off, the player would speed up until its tachometer was back in phase with the master, and
as this happened, the phasing effect would appear to slide up the frequency spectrum. This
phasing up-and-down the register can be performed rhythmically.
• phaser - another way of creating an unusual sound; the signal is split, a portion is filtered with an
all-pass filter to produce a phase-shift, and then the unfiltered and filtered signals are mixed. The
phaser effect was originally a simpler implementation of the flanger effect since delays were
difficult to implement with analog equipment. Phasers are often used to give a "synthesized" or
electronic effect to natural sounds, such as human speech. The voice of C-3PO from Star Wars
was created by taking the actor's voice and treating it with a phaser.
• Chorus - a delayed signal is added to the original signal with a constant delay. The delay has to
be short in order not to be perceived as echo, but above 5 ms to be audible. If the delay is too
short, it will destructively interfere with the un-delayed signal and create a flanging effect. Often,
23
the delayed signals will be slightly pitch shifted to more realistically convey the effect of
multiple voices.
• Equalization - different frequency bands are attenuated or boosted to produce desired spectral
characteristics. Moderate use of equalization (often abbreviated as "EQ") can be used to "fine-
tune" the tone quality of a recording; extreme use of equalization, such as heavily cutting a
certain frequency can create more unusual effects.
• Filtering - Equalization is a form of filtering. In the general sense, frequency ranges can be
emphasized or attenuated using low-pass, high-pass, band-pass or band-stop filters. Band-pass
filtering of voice can simulate the effect of a telephone because telephones use band-pass filters.
• overdrive effects such as the use of a fuzz box can be used to produce distorted sounds, such as
for imitating robotic voices or to simulate distorted radiotelephone traffic (e.g., the radio chatter
between star fighter pilots in the science fiction film Star Wars). The most basic overdrive effect
involves clipping the signal when its absolute value exceeds a certain threshold.
• Pitch shift - this affect shifts a signal up or down in pitch. For example, a signal may be shifted
an octave up or down. This is usually applied to the entire signal and not to each note separately.
Blending the original signal with shifted duplicate(s) can create harmonies from one voice.
Another application of pitch shifting is pitch correction. Here a musical signal is tuned to the
correct pitch using digital signal processing techniques. This effect is ubiquitous in karaoke
machines and is often used to assist pop singers who sing out of tune. It is also used intentionally
for aesthetic effect in such pop songs as Cher's Believe and Madonna's Die another Day.
• Time stretching - the complement of pitch shift, that is, the process of changing the speed of an
audio signal without affecting its pitch.
• Resonators - emphasize harmonic frequency content on specified frequencies. These may be
created from parametric EQs or from delay-based comb-filters.
• Robotic voice effects are used to make an actor's voice sound like a synthesized human voice.
• Synthesizer - generate artificially almost any sound by either imitating natural sounds or creating
completely new sounds.
• Modulation - to change the frequency or amplitude of a carrier signal in relation to a predefined
signal. Ring modulation, also known as amplitude modulation, is an effect made famous by
Doctor Who's Daleks and commonly used throughout sci-fi.
24
• Compression - the reduction of the dynamic range of a sound to avoid unintentional fluctuation
in the dynamics. Level compression is not to be confused with audio data compression, where
the amount of data is reduced without affecting the amplitude of the sound it represents.
• 3D audio effects - place sounds outside the stereo basis
• Reverse echo - a swelling effect created by reversing an audio signal and recording echo and/or
delay while the signal runs in reverse. When played back forward the last echoes are heard
before the effected sound creating a rush like swell preceding and during playback. Jimmy Page
of Led Zeppelin used this effect in the bridge of "Whole Lotta Love".
• active noise control- a method for reducing unwanted sound
• wave field synthesis - a spatial audio rendering technique for the creation of virtual acoustic
environments
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CHAPTER 2
LITERATUTRE SURVEY
For studying the concepts of Audio Steganography, I have surveyed many research papers. In this
section I have described the relevant papers of different authors.
P. Balgurgi et al. (IEEE 2012) this paper proposes the LSB coding with XORing method in which
the data embedding was done by XORing the LSB’s. One of the secret signal (data to be embedded)
used in XORing method. The secret signal retrieved from the stego at the receiver side. It was seen
from both that there was no difference between the original and retrieved message that means the
recovery is 100%. Here the message retrieved when the LSB’s of the stego signal are extracted directly.
This indicates that the direct extraction of LSB’s would only result in noise if embedding was done
using XORing method. Thus it increases the security.
Kamalpreet et al. (IJARCSSE 2014) this paper proposed an audio steganography technique for hiding
text data into digital audio files based on three different techniques to select the carrier audio samples
into which bits of the secret data are to be hidden. In this paper three secret messages could be hidden.
Three traditional method of steganography blended in a level based approach to reach the goal. The
output stego object was very difficult to decode which makes this method successful in the world of
audio steganography
This had been done with a layering approach. This method was named as multi-level steganography. It
used at least two steganographic methods in which one method serves as a carrier for the second one.
Multi-Level Steganography had advantage of difficult decoding and sending two or more secret message
through a single cover object. This paper defines a method for audio steganography using LSB coding,
parity coding and phase coding technique in multi-level steganography. In this thesis the review of three
layered approach for audio multi-level steganography had been presented. Here three secret messages
rather than one can be transmitted with a single cover file. In this paper, three permutations of audio
steganography methods are compared. The result of the stego audios was compared by PSNR graph.
Each permutation had three levels. Three levels of audio steganography can be identified as layer 1,
layer 2 and layer 3. This method has provided an effective way to achieve higher security, increased
undetectability and the maintained consistency in the clarity of digital audio signal.
26
Kaliappan Gopalan et al. (IEEE 2010) this paper presents that audio steganography using bit
modification of time domain audio samples is a simple technique for multimedia data embedding with
potential for large payload. Depending on the index of the bit used to modify the samples in accordance
with the data to be hidden, the resulting stego audio signal may become perceptible and/or susceptible to
incorrect retrieval of the hidden data. In this paper they present some results of the tradeoff between the
conflicting requirements of data robustness, payload and imperceptibility. Experimental results on both
clean and noisy host audio signals indicate that while the payload can be as high as over 3000 bits/s –
much higher rate than common audio data embedding techniques – notice ability of embedding is
decreased and noise tolerance increased by using higher bit indices than the traditional least significant
bit. Bit error rates of below one percent were observed for data retrieved from noise-added stego audio
signals with 39 dB of SNR for an embedded payload of over 10 Kbits in a 3.3 s host audio.
They presented some results of a study on the conflicting requirements of payload, perceptibility and
data robustness in bit modification audio steganography. The study demonstrated the capability of the
technique for hiding a potentially large payload of data with robustness using high bit indices for
embedding. A tradeoff between noise tolerance and payload, both of which depend on higher bit indices,
was needed for a reasonably imperceptible embedding.
M Wakiyama et al. (IEEE 2010) this paper describes an audio steganography using low bits coding.
This approach was to replace the data of lower bit in a cover audio data by a secret data. In this, we
explain two kinds of new methods by low bit coding. We used wave file as an audio data. The wave file
format was a subset of Microsoft’s RIFF specification for the storage of multimedia files. We used 8 bits
mono audio data. The secret data is a written text file.
Here they propose two kinds of new methods of extended low bits coding. We made a program and
experimented to verify the method. We could embed the secret data using new method of extended low-
bit coding. From now on, we would make program to extract secret data. Our future works were to
increase the capacity of the secret data as well as to improve the Confidentiality of audio steganography.
H. Kumar et al. (IEEE 2012) in this paper we have presented a Steganography method of embedding
text data in an audio file. The basic approach behind this paper was to provide a good, well organized
method for hiding the data and sent to the destination in safer manner. In the proposed technique first the
27
audio file was sampled and then appropriate bit was modified. In selected sample one bit was modified
at least significant bit .The remaining bits may be used but it may because noise. they have attempted to
provide an overview, theoretical framework about audio Steganography techniques and a novel
approach to hide data in an audio using least Significant bit (LSB). As Steganography became more
widely used in computing there are some issues that not to be resolve. Every technique had some
limitations but some advantages also. The proposed system was to embed message in audio file and
recovered correctly at the receiver end. A method of embedding text data in audio file using least
significant bit is been done. The header part was left out as it can create corruption in audio file. This
method did not affect the file size of the audio.
F Rezaei et al. (IEEE 2013) in this paper, they present and investigate a method to attack and remove
multimedia steganography in digital audio data. Among the existing steganography methods that could
be used to hide secret data in digital audio carriers, the Spread Spectrum methods were among the most
effective and robust for embedding steganography data. Though there were currently a few research
efforts on removing or destroying steganography in multimedia, there had been very few efforts on
removing steganography from audio. In this paper, we had introduced a simple but very effective anti
steganography approach for removing hidden information from digital audio data embedded using
Spread Spectrum methods. The main concept in our approach was to leverage limited pseudo-random
shuffling of the samples in the audio stream so that the synchronization information necessary for
decoding Spread Spectrum steganography information cannot be attained. Our simulation results in this
paper have demonstrated great performance in removing audio steganography by achieving a 50% bit
error rate after applying our antisteganography approach to the digital audio data while maintaining the
audio quality.
In this paper, they have presented and evaluated our method for the removal of steganographically
hidden information from audio signals. Among the existing steganography methods that can be used to
hide secret data in digital audio, Spread Spectrum methods are among the most effective and robust
approaches. Though there are currently several research efforts on removing or destroying
steganography in images or video, there have been very few efforts on removing steganography from
audio. Due to the fact that the audio files can be distributed over internet and can be used to transfer
malicious information, our proposed method can be applied to the audio files that might contain
steganography information. Hence, our possible after the removal operation, while simultaneously
28
ensuring that our operation has very little effect on the audio quality. This proposed method can also be
extended to the transform domain for tackling many steganography issues related to all multimedia on
the Internet, including images, audio and video.
S. Ghosh et al. (IEEE 2012) this paper presents a double layered secure data transfer technique using
Cryptography and Audio Steganography for mobile network. Firstly, the characters of secret text
message were converted to bit values and were encrypted by XOR operation using a Symmetric key.
Then using a secret key-box, it was again scrambled and then divided into 2bit blocks. These blocks
from MSB were replaced by the Left Significant two bits of each byte of cover audio bit stream. The
main trick for this steganography method hides behind logic of selecting the next byte of the cover
audio. And additive method with a key constraint was used as the proposed algorithm. After replacing
by the secret bit blocks, the byte of the cover audio was divided into two nibbles and added overlooking
the carry and was converted to decimal values. The second and third bits were taken together and the
decimal value was considered as key constraint. Both the values were added and next byte was chose
after counting that numbers of byte positions. The technique presented in this paper has overcome many
of the limitations like selection of secret text size and cover audio format, noise removal etc. that helps
the user to transfer data through mobile network in a more secured and efficient way.
In the previous methods, mainly the .wav files were used. Also the secret text file size was limited. But,
in our proposed algorithm, not only .wav or .mp3 could be used but also any kind of audio file can be
used. The main advantage in this audio steganography technique was that it was very hard to find out the
interferences when we hear the stego audio file. Not only the used steganography technique, but also a
strong cryptography technique that was `used here makes this double-layered method a hardbreakable
one.So, according to the previous studies and proposed method provides an efficient technique for the
users who want to send secret data over wireless network concealing from the eavesdroppers.
Mane et al. (IJERA 2012) the objective of this paper is to come up with a technique hiding the
presence of secret message. Steganography an art of secret communication. Its purpose was to hide the
presence of communication, as opposed to cryptography, which aims to make communication
unintelligible to those who don’t possess the right keys. Audio steganography was concerned with
hiding information in a cover (host) audio signal in an imperceptible way. Hidden information from the
stego, or data-embedded audio signal, was retrieved using a key similar to the one that was employed
29
during the hiding phase. Least Significant Bit (LSB) modification technique was the most simple and
efficient technique used for audio steganography. Proposed technique has been tested successfully on a
.wav file at a sampling frequency of 3000 samples/second with each sample containing 8 bits.
Thus, we have proposed a new technique of audio steganography by hiding a speech signal inside a
music file by bit replacement. The advantage of the encoding method is its simplicity. Further, the
decoding method seems to be very safe because of the requirement of the password at the receiver’s
end, in order to know the hidden speech signal. Hence a very high level of data security is maintained
during the transmission of any valuable data.
A. Chadha et al. (IJCA 2013) the main advantage of the method is a very high watermark channel
capacity; the use of only one LSB of the host audio sample gives capacity of 44.1 kbps. The obvious
disadvantage was the extremely low robustness of the method, due to fact that random changes of the
LSBs destroy the coded watermark. In addition, it was very unlikely that embedded watermark would
survive digital to analogue and subsequent analogue to digital conversion. Since no computationally
demanding transformation of the host signal in the basic version of this method needs to be done, this
algorithm has a very small algorithmic delay. This permits the use on this LSB in real-time applications.
This Algorithm was a good basis for steganographic applications for audio signals and a base for
steganalysis.
S. Kumar Bandyopadhyay et al. (IJARCCE 2012) an effective audio steganographic scheme should
possess the following three characteristics: Inaudibility of distortion (Perceptual Transparency), Data
Rate (Capacity) and Robustness. These characteristics (requirements) are called the magic triangle for
data hiding.
This method of LSB modification of Steganography was the least secure. This method’s security lies on
the presumption that no other parties are aware of this secret message. This method was easy to
implement but was very susceptible to data loss due to channel noise and re-sampling.
Disadvantages associated with phase coding are a low data transmission rate due to the fact that the
secret message was encoded in the first signal segment only and to extract the secret message from the
sound file, the receiver must know the segment length. As a result, this method can be used when only a
small amount of data needs to be concealed. Otherwise this can be proved as a good method for audio
Steganography.
30
L. Babu et al. (IJCSMC 2013) in this paper Data hiding in audio signals using LSB &DCT method was
implemented using MATLAB successfully. LSB based steganography embed the text message in LSB
of cover image. DCT based steganography embed the text message in LSB of DC coefficients. This
paper implements LSB based steganography, DCT based steganography and computes PSNR ratio
(decibels). This ratio was used as a quality measurement between two images. If PSNR ratio was high
then images are better of quality. Comparison of LSB based and DCT based stego images using PSNR
ratio shows that PSNR ratio of LSB based steganography scheme was high as compared to DCT based
steganography scheme for all types of images- (Grayscale as well as Color). DCT based steganography
scheme works perfectly with minimal distortion of the image quality as compared to LSB based
steganography scheme. Even though the amount of secret data that can be hidden using DCT technique
was very small as compared to LSB based steganography scheme still, DCT based steganography
scheme was recommended because of the minimum distortion of image quality. As future work, data
hiding in audio signal may be extended to other steganographic technique like wavelet transformation
for more secure data transmission and the noise attack may be extended to some of salt & pepper noise
instead of AWGN.
K Bhowal et al. (Springer 2011) in the current internet community, secure data transfer was limited
due to its attack made on data communication. So more robust methods are chosen so that they ensure
secured data transfer. One of the solutions which came to the rescue was the audio Steganography. “A
GA Based Audio Steganography with enhanced security” was one propose system which was based on
audio Steganography and cryptography, ensures secure data transfer between the source and destination.
Here they present a novel, principled approach to resolve the remained problems of substitution
technique of audio Steganography. They use most powerful encryption algorithm (RSA) to encrypt
message in the first level of security, which was very complex to break. In the second level, they use a
more powerful GA based LSB (Least Significant Bit) Algorithm to encode the encrypted message into
audio data. Here encrypted message bits are embedded into random and higher LSB layers, resulting in
increased robustness against noise addition. The robustness specially would be increased against those
intentional attacks which try to reveal the hidden message and also some unintentional attacks like
noise addition as well. On the other hand, to reduce the distortion, GA operators are used. The basic
31
idea behind this paper was maintained randomness in message bit insertion into audio data for hiding the
data from hackers and multi-objective GA is used to reduce distortion.
They propose a reduced distortion bit-modification algorithm for LSB audio steganography. The key
idea of the algorithm is watermark bit embedding that causes minimal embedding distortion of the host
audio. Listening test showed that described algorithm succeeds in increasing the depth of the embedding
layer from lower to higher random LSB layers without affecting the perceptual transparency of the stego
audio signal. The improvement in robustness in presence of additive noise was obvious, as the proposed
algorithm obtains significantly lower bit error rates than the standard algorithm. The steganalysis of the
proposed algorithm was more challenging as well, because there was a significant number of bits flipped
in a number in bit layers and the adversary could not identify exactly which bit layer was used for the
data hiding.
H.B. Kekre et al. (IJCA 2010) Steganography was the practice of encoding secret information in
indiscernible way. Audio Steganography was a technique used to transmit hidden information by
modifying an audio signal in an imperceptible manner. It was mainly required for increasing security in
transferring and archiving of audio files. Steganography complements rather than replaces encryption by
adding another layer of security- it was much more difficult to decrypt a message if it was not known
that there is a message. The basic idea of the paper was to present methods that hides information
(audio, image and text) in cover audio using Least Significant Bit (LSB) coding method along with
encryption so as to increase the security. Two novel methods had been proposed in this paper, one was
considering parity of the digitized samples of cover audio and the other was considering the XOR
operation. A novel method which was an extension to the XOR method that uses multiple LSB s for
data embedding is also proposed. Experimental results were presented in this paper to demonstrate the
effectiveness of the proposed methods. In addition, subjective listening tests were performed and the
perceptual quality of the stego audio signal is found to be high.
The paper proposes two methods using LSB coding along with encryption to hide information (audio,
image and text) in digital audio files. In the first method, the information was hidden by altering LSBs
indirectly considering parity of samples of cover audio. In the second method, information was hidden
by performing XOR operation on LSBs. In both these methods, direct LSB extraction would only result
in noise. Thus, by using encryption along with steganography, these methods provide an additional level
of security. From experimental results, it was seen that the proposed methods were effective. From
32
listening tests, no difference was found between the original audio signal and the stego audio signal. The
hidden information was recovered without any error. A novel idea which was an extension to the second
proposed method based on XORing of LSBs that uses multiple LSBs had also been presented. This
approach increases the capacity of the cover audio by as much as 8 times and also provides robust
encryption. This would give great security and the embedded message couldn’t be extracted without the
knowledge of the embedding process.
L. Rana et al. (IJEIT 2013) Data security had been of a great importance since last few decades.
Methods for secure data transmission have been used to transmit digital data in a secure manner which
should not be exploited by unintended users. In this paper, data transmission with the use of audio
steganography had been used where the secret data was spread throughout the audio file with the
concept of randomization. This increases the security of the audio steganography approach and since a
key management is also used in this which states that unless and until receiver has the same key as the
sender than the receiver cannot extract the data. The randomization technique used in this paper is dual
layered as it first randomises the bytes at which the embedding is done and then it randomises the bits at
every byte on which a single bit of secret data will be embedded.
H Malik et al. (IJARCSSE 2013) Steganography is the art and science of hiding that a communication
is taken place. It embeds the secret file (text, audio or image) in other carrier file. Audio information
hiding has attracted more attentions recently. Spread spectrum (SS) technique has developed rapidly in
this area due to the advantages of good robustness and immunity to noise attack. Spread spectrum
techniques really of digital communications systems. Two commonly spread spectrum techniques are
used direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) and frequency hopped spread spectrum (FHSS).
Implementation of steganography in audio data using Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum method has
been presented in this thesis. The message is transmitted through noise-like wave. This method can be
applied to embed messages in audio data. The embedded audio data will be heard as noise. In this thesis
Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum method is used. A key is needed to embed messages into noise , this
key is used to generate pseudo-random key sequence. The information to be embedded must first
modulated using the pseudorandom key sequence. Also, Random location selection to embed the data
within the cover image pixels is also proposed in the work. These modifications give a more secure
stego-graphic system, making guesses about the bit-rate or message length less feasible. The proposed
33
stego and extraction system uses DSSS technique. These are used to increase the security and robustness
of the system. Improvement has been achieved in robustness on the expense of reducing the capacity of
hiding. The imperceptibility of the stego audio and extracted image is assessed by using peak signal-to-
noise ratio (PSNR) and normalized correlation measure.
This is work can be extended by improving the performance of methodology by making it more robust
and less complex for low frequency audio signal. Also, time consumption for embedding as well as for
extraction of watermark can be reduced.
34
CHAPTER 3
PRESENT WORK
3.1 PROBLEM FORMULATION

Audio data hiding can be used anytime you want to hide data. There are many reasons to hide data but
most important is to prevent unauthorized persons from becoming aware of the existence of a message.
In the business world Audio data hiding can be used to hide a secret chemical formula or plans for a new
invention.
Audio data hiding can also be used in the non commercial sector to hide information that someone wants
to keep private. Terrorists can also use Audio data hiding to keep their communications secret and to
coordinate attacks. Data hiding in video and audio is of interest for the protection of copyrighted digital
media, and to the government for information systems security and for covert communications. It can
also be used in forensic applications for inserting hidden data into audio files for the authentication of
spoken words and other sounds, and in the music business for the monitoring of the songs over
broadcast radio. Here we discuss the disadvantages of the previous procedures in dividedly and how
those are different with present method. The main disadvantages associated with the use of every
existing technique; like LSB has its disadvantage is that it is very simple technique, so in LSB it is easy
to extract hidden data. In Echo hiding is, human ear is very sensitive to noise and it can often detect even
the slightest bit of noise introduced into a sound file and another problem is robustness. Phase coding
has main disadvantage of low data transmission rate because of the fact that the secret message is
encoded only in the first signal segment. Hence this method is used only when a small amount of data
needs to be transferred. In Parity bit is also same as LSB, in Parity is also easy to extract data,
disadvantage of spread spectrum is that it occupies more band width. So we can say that every technique
has some advantages and disadvantages also. So we conclude that capacity, mean square error (MSE),
and peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) values of previous techniques are poor. Individually every
technique has some problem. If we combine these techniques than the problems can be resolved. For this
purpose we can use multilevel technique, this will provide the multilevel security also increase the
capacity and improve other problems.
35
3.2 OBJECTIVE
The emergence of the Internet with rapid progress of information technologies, digital contents are
commonly seen in our daily life distributed through the network. The digital contents are easy to
make an exact copy, illegal distribution and copying of digital contents has become main concerns for
authors, publishers and legitimate owners of the contents. There are several ways to protect digital
content. One can protect the content by encrypting it, but this avoids free distribution and circulation
of the content through the network, which is most of the time not desirable to the author of the
content. Therefore, for the purpose of protecting the content we use Audio Steganography by which
content should not be encrypted or scrambled. Audio 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. Audio Steganography conceals a
hidden message to content but the existence of a message is kept secret. In another word, Audio
steganography is a technique to conceal information into digital content files for purposes such as
secret communication and covert channel.
Our objective is to develop a high performance speech steganography system. The design of such
system mainly consists in the optimization of the following attributes:
• The accuracy with which the stego signal can be recovered at the receiver. Efficient techniques
are to be developed to minimize the impact of noise on the stego-signal.
• We use Audio Steganography using LSB, Parity and Spread Spectrum thus providing three tier
securities.
• Even if Audio is tampered with our hidden message doesn't get lost and thus our purpose is
fulfilled.
• Better MSE, PSNR and BER results of Audio Steganography with LSB, Parity and Spread
Spectrum.
• To combine these three techniques we use multilevel technique. In multilevel technique we use
Layering approach. Multilevel steganography is based on combining of two or more
steganographic methods such a way that one method is a carrier for other method. Here more
than one message can be transmitted with a single carrier file. It uses features of existing
steganographic method (upper level method) to create new one (lower level method).
36
Cover object
(C1)
LSB technique
Secret
message (S1)
Decoy object Level 1

(C2)
Level 2
Parity bit Secret

encoding message (S2)
Level 2
Decoy object
(C3) Level 3
Secret
Spread
message (S3)
spectrum
Stego object
(C4)
Figure 3.1: Multilevel steganography
3.3 METHODOLOGY
Phase 1: An opening GUI is developed for this implementation, after code is developed for loaded the
audio file and message file in the matlab database.
Phase 2: Code is developed for LSB, Parity and Spread Spectrum.
37
Phase 3: Develop a code to save the final Stego audio file obtained after processing or applying all the
three techniques i.e., LSB, Parity and Spread Spectrum.
Phase 4: After that we develop code for the extraction process. Within the extraction process we
develop coed for the message extraction from the audio file
Algorithms for LSB, Parity, Spread spectrum
Level 1 (LSB coding):
Encoding Algorithm:
• Input the text to be embedded.
• Convert the text into 5 bit code by checking the redundancy in binary code of alphabets and
numbers.
• Read WAV audio file as cover file.
• Select audio sample and hide the converted 5 bit code of the text in WAV file using LSB
algorithm.
• Repeat till the whole message can be embedded in audio.
Decoding Algorithm:
• Read the stego-object i.e. cover audio after encoding.
• Extract the message by reading the control symbols in samples and reading LSB.
Level 2 (parity bit coding):
• Firstly we select the .wav file as carrier and text as message.

• Then we open the carrier file.
• Then prepare message text as a binary column vector.
• Skip first 44 bytes of carrier which is address part of wav file.
• Then divide the rest bytes of certain in number of regions. The region is defined by number of
elements in each region.
• Now count the number of elements in each region .if it does not match with message bit then
change the last bit of region with message bit.
• The result is stego file as output.
38
Level 3 (Spread spectrum):
• Prepare the information signal to be spread.

• Prepare pseudo noise (PN) sequence that is used to modulate information.
• Modulate the information signal with PN sequence. However, the frequency of PN sequence
must be greater than frequency of information signal.
• Send or insert the resulting signal.
• The recipient must have same PN sequence to understand the message.
• Modulate the resulting message with same PN sequence.
• The result is information signal.
39
Chapter 4
RESULTS
GUI
A graphical user interface (GUI) is a graphical display in one or more windows containing controls,
called components that enable a user to perform interactive tasks. The user of the GUI does not have to
create a script or type commands at the command line to accomplish the tasks.
Unlike coding programs to accomplish tasks, the user of a GUI need not understand the details of how
the tasks are performed. The GUI components can be menus, toolbars, push buttons, radio buttons, list
boxes, and sliders—just to name a few. GUIs created in MATLAB software can group related
components together, read and write data files, and display data as tables or as plots.
Opening a New GUI in the Layout Editor
• Start GUIDE by typing guide at the MATLAB prompt. This displays the GUIDE Quick Start
dialog shown in the following figure.
Figure 4.1: Figure to open new GUI
40
• GUIs (also known as graphical user interfaces or UIs) provide point-and-click control of
software applications, eliminating the need to learn a language or type commands in order to run
the application.
• GUIDE (graphical user interface design environment) provides tools for designing user
interfaces for custom apps. Using the GUIDE Layout Editor, you can graphically design your
UI. GUIDE then automatically generates the MATLAB code for constructing the UI, which you
can modify to program the behavior of your app.
• In the Quick Start dialog, select the Blank GUI (Default) template.
• Click OK to display the blank GUI in the Layout Editor, as shown in the figure (4.2).
Figure 4.2: Blank GUI
41
Adding the Components
• Add the three push buttons to the GUI. For each push button, select the push button from the
component palette at the left of the Layout Editor and drag it into the layout area.
• MATLAB apps are self-contained MATLAB programs with GUI front ends that automate a task
or calculation.
• The GUI typically contains controls such as menus, toolbars, buttons, and sliders. Many
MATLAB products, such as Curve Fitting Toolbox, Signal Processing Toolbox, and Control
System Toolbox, include apps with custom user interfaces.
• We can also create your own custom apps, including their corresponding UIs, for others to use.
Position them approximately as shown in the following figure (4.3).
Figure 4.3: Figure to add buttons in GUI
42
Property Inspector
About the Property Inspector
In GUIDE, as in MATLAB generally, you can see and set most components’ properties using the
Property Inspector. To open it from the GUIDE Layout Editor, do any of the following:
• Select the component you want to inspect, or double-click it to open the Property Inspector and bring it
to the foreground.
• Select Property Inspector from the View menu.
• Click the Property Inspector button.
The Property Inspector window opens, displaying the properties of the selected component. For
example, here is a view of a push button’s properties.
Figure 4.4: Property inspector
43
In the following figures, result of all the intermediate steps of the proposed algorithm is highlighted.
1. In figure (4.5) GUI shows the first level program in first level program of multilevel technique.
We are using the least significant bit coding in this level. In LSB we replace least significant bits
of audio file with message bits. Length of message bits is less than audio file. In this first step we
hide data using least significant bit in an audio file. Here we replace least significant bit with the
secret message. Here we have three buttons encoding, decoding and next level buttons.
Encoding button is used to do encoding of data and audio file. While we press this button
encoding window will get open. When we press decode button then decoding window will get
open. Next level button is going to for next level.
Figure 4.5: First level of multilevel steganography
44
2. Here in figure (4.6) GUI shows encoding part of first level program. Here we have four buttons
select wav file button, enter text button, encode button or back button.
Read WAV audio file as cover file. To read or upload audio file in matlab we use the
function:“[m,fs,nbits]=wavread([handles.pname, handles.fname])” Here ‘m’ is the sample data
with dimension number of samples number of channels and ‘fs’ is the sampling rate, and ‘nbits’ is
number of bits per sample used to encode data in file.
We select the audio file using select wav file button and convert that file into digital form. Enter
text button is used to enter the message which we want to hide in audio file. We input the text to
be hiding. Select audio sample and hide the converted 8 bit code of the text in WAV file by replacing the
LSB of audio sample with the message bits. Repeat till the whole message can be embedded. Then
convert that message in the form of bits. Encode button is used to encoding process. Here we
replace the LSB of audio file with the bits of message bits. Back button is used to go back on last
window.
Figure 4.6: Encoding part of first level program
45
3. This figure (4.7) shows the result after first level encoding. Here we can see that sound wave
remains same before and after steganography. There is no change in audio file. So no any third
person could detect the hidden message.
On the left hand side we have original file or on the right hand we have embedded audio file. We
can see that there is a no change in both of the files. So this is very safe for users to send secret
data.
Figure 4.7: Output of first level encoding
46
4. In this figure (4.8) GUI shows the decode part of first level program here we can decode the
message hidden in first level. Decoding is the process of transforming information from a difficult
to understand stored symbols format to one that is easier to understand, which is reverse
of encoding. Revere method of encoding is used to extract hidden messages from the LSB’s of
audio file.
In LSB chances of distortion are very less. So it’s more secure to hide data in LSB, so that we
can retrieve same message as the message is embedded in encoding side.
Here we have three buttons select wav file button, decode button or back button. Select wav file
button is used to select stego file. Here we read the stego object that is covered audio after
encoding. Decoding button is used to decode or extract the secret message from stego file. Here
we extract the message by reading the control symbols in samples and reading LSB.
Figure 4.8: Decoding part of first level
47
5. Here in figure (4.9) GUI shows the second level of multilevel steganography. In this level we are
using the Parity bit coding. In parity bit coding sample regions parity bit is used for data
embedding. Instead of breaking a signal down into individual samples, the parity coding method
breaks a signal down into separate regions of samples and encodes each bit from the secret
message in a sample region's parity bit. If the parity bit of a selected region does not match the
secret bit to be encoded, the process flips the LSB of one of the samples in the region.
Here we have four buttons. Encoding, Decoding, back or next level button. As like first level
when we press encoding button encoding window will get open where we can stego file obtained
after first level audio file and second secret message. Here we can hide same message second time
to make it more secure. Decoding button is used to open decoding window. Back button is used to
go back or next level button used to go at next level.
Figure 4.9: Second level of multilevel steganography
48
6. Here in figure (4.10) GUI shows the second level encoding part of first level program. It is same
as first level steganography. Here cover audio file is stego file of first level. Here we open the
carrier file. Then prepare message text as a binary column vector. Skip first 44 bytes of carrier
which is address part of wav file. Then divide the rest bytes of certain in number of regions.
Region is defined by no of elements in each region. Or then we check last or parity bit of region.
If it does not match with the message bit then we replace the parity bit with the message bit.
Here we have four buttons. Select a wav file button, select a text file button, encoding button and
back button. We select a stego file using select a wav file button. And then we select a text or
message which is to be hiding. Then encode the data using encoding button.
Figure 4.10: Encoding part of second level
49
7. Here this figure (4.11) shows the output of second level. Which is same as the first level’s output.
This shows that audio file or cover file remains same even after second level encoding.
Here stego file which is output of first level is on left hand side or new file which become after
second level encoding is on right hand side. Or both graphs are the same even after embedding of
data second time. So we can say that we can hide data more than one time in a same audio file. It
does not make any change. So it’s safe to hide data in single audio file more than one time.
Figure 4.11: Output of second level encoding
50
8. In this figure (4.12) GUI shows second level decoding part. Here we extract the secret message
hidden in second level. The decoding process extracts the secret message by calculating and
lining up the parity bits of the regions used in the encoding process. Once again, the sender and
receiver can use a shared secret key as a seed in a pseudorandom number generator to produce the
same set of sample regions.
Here we have three buttons. One is to select wav file. By using this button we select the stego file
which becomes after second level encoding and extract the hidden message. Back button is used
to go back. Here we extract the data hidden in the parity bit of sample region.
Figure 4.12: Decoding part of second level
51
9. This figure (4.13) shows the third level of our multilevel technique. In this level we use the spread
spectrum technique. Here we use the frequency hopping spread spectrum. SS method attempts to
spread secret information across audio signals frequency spectrum using a code that independent
of actual signal. In spread spectrum transmission bandwidth is of several orders of magnitude,
minimum bandwidth is required for transmission a given piece of information.
In frequency hopping SS the audio files frequency spectrum is altered so that it hops rapidly
between frequencies. Signal is broadcasted over pseudo random sequence which is obtained by
pseudorandom generator. The PN sequence is bit stream of 1’s and 0’s occurring randomly with
some unique properties. Here we have three buttons encoding button is used for encoding at third
level. Decoding button is used for decoding and back button is used to go back.
Figure 4.13: Third level of multilevel steganography
52
10. This figure (4.14) in GUI shows the encoding part of third level steganography. This is also same
as first or second level encoding. Firstly we select the .wav file as carrier and text as message
same as selected in first or second level. Here .wav file will be second stego file. Prepare pseudo
noise (PN) sequence that is used to modulate information. PN sequence is has values of -1 or +1.
We spread message in entire length of audio file, so the final signal occupies a bandwidth in
excess of what is actually required for transmission.
Here we have six buttons select wav file button is used to select wav file which is stego file of
second level. Select text file button is used to select message which is to be hiding. Encoding
button is used for encoding using spread spectrum technique. Here we also use encrypt or decrypt
buttons. These are used to apply password to make our technique more secure.
Figure 4.14: Encoding part of third level
53
11. Here this figure (4.15) shows the output of third level. Which is same as the first level’s output.
This shows that audio file or cover file remains same even after third level encoding. So nobody
can differentiate between cover file and stego file. On the left hand side we have stego signal of
first level or on the right hand side we have stego signal of third level. Both are the same and
there is no change even after hiding three messages.
Figure 4.15: Output of third level encoding
54
12. This figure (4.16) shows the decode part of third level to extract. Here we extract the third
message hidden in audio file. In SS we spread message in a signal using a code and this code is
independent of actual signal. So at decode side we should know that code.
Here we have four buttons. Select a .wav file button which is used to select output file in which
data is hidden. Here decode button is used to decode or extract hidden file from output file which
is third message in an audio file. Here firstly we extract third hidden message then we extract
second message at second level and then extract first message at first level. Decrypt button is used
to decrypt the output file and back button is used to go back. Here we first select the stego file and
then decode the message and apply decryption key.
Figure 4.16: Decode part of third level
55
13. It measures the quality of audio signal. PSNR compare the original audio signal with stego signal
[1]. PSNR is measured in decibels (db).
∑9
:;< .8
,
PSNR=10 log$7 ∑9
:;<.8*=8
,
… (1)
Here x (n) represent cover audio file and y (n) is stego audio signal.
This figure (4.17) shows the comparison of PSNR values of LSB, parity, spread spectrum
coding with the combined (multilevel) technique of these three techniques.
Figure 4.17: PSNR graph of audio steganography

In figure (4.17) value of PSNR of parity bit coding is 30.0702 and PSNR of LSB is 31.3735 and PSNR
of SS is 33.0825 and PSNR of proposed technique is 36.8796 which is higher than other three methods
56
14. It measures the distortion in the audio signal. It defines the square of error between original audio
signal and stego audio signal [1].
MSE=10 log$7 ∑H
I"7xn yn
&
…… (2)
Here x (n) represents cover audio file and y(n) represents stego audio file.
This figure (4.18) shows the comparison of MSE values of LSB, parity, spread spectrum coding
with the combined (multilevel) technique. MSE is essentially a signal fidelity measure. PSNR is
easily measured via MSE. Because MSE and PSNR are reciprocal to each other.
Figure 4.18: MSE graph of audio steganography
In figure (4.18) MSE value of Parity bit coding is highest i.e. 0.25 and MSE of LSB is 0.19 and MSE of
SS coding is 0.13 and MSE of proposed technique is less then all three methods i.e. 0.054.
57
15. BER is used to quantify a channel carrying data by counting rate of errors in data string. It is a
countless performance measure.
IJ JK LMMJMN
BER= OJOPQ IJ JK RSON NLIO … … … … … … …. (3)
This figure (4.19) shows the bit error rate (BER) on different bit indexes. BER refers to amount
of stego data that may be reliably embedded within a host signal per unit time or space, such as
bits per second. Here reliability is measured as the bit error rate (BER) of extracted stego data. In
this table we are showing the BER at different bit indexes of audio file.
Figure 4.19: BER of audio steganography
Here figure (10) shows the value of bit error rate at different bit indexes i.e. 1, 2,5,8,10,15 are
0.1004, 0.7023, 0.7096, 0.7280, 0.7619, and 0.8101 respectively. Value of BER at lower bit (on
first bit) is less and on higher bits is more, so it shows that it is more safe to hide data on lower
bits than at higher bits.
16. Last parameter we have calculated is capacity. It is amount of secret information that can be
embedded within the host message or host audio signal.
TUV+TW X+VY+V
Z.YZUVZ[ X+VY+V
Capacity = …… (4)
Here value of capacity that is calculated is 87.90%. This is variable according to change in length
of audio file and change in length of text message.
58
Chapter 5
Comparison
6.1 Comparison of BER

In this thesis we present some results of BER by using the audio steganographic technique for hiding data in
digital audio files. Average value of BER of previous technique (i.e. audio steganography using bit modification)
is 0.7645 [3] and BER of proposed technique is 0.6354, which is less than the previous one.
Bit error rate(BER)
Bit index Previous Present
1 0.1588 0.1004
2 0.8595 0.7023
5 0.7661 0.7096
8 0.8688 0.7280
10 0.9996 0.7619
15 0.9342 0.8101
Table 1: Comparison of BER previous and present algorithm
In figure (11) comparison graph shows that value of BER at bit index ‘1’ is very low i.e. 0.1588 in
previous technique and 0.1004 in proposed technique. As the bit indexes increases the BER also
increase. So it shows that it is safer to hide data at lower bits then that at higher bits.
59
Figure 6.1: Comparison of BER of previous and proposed algorithm
6.2 Comparison of PSNR

Table (1) shows the comparison of PSNR value between Parity bit, LSB and SS coding techniques with
proposed technique. PSNR value of proposed technique is more than that of others. So it shows that
multilevel technique which is combination of all three coding techniques is better than others.
Parity bit LSB coding SS coding Proposed

coding
PSNR 30.0702 31.3735 33.0825 36.8796
Table 2: Comparison of PSNR
60
6.3 Comparison of MSE
Table (3) shows the comparison of MSE value of Parity bit, LSB, SS coding techniques with proposed
technique which is combination of all three techniques. MSE value of multilevel technique is less than
all three. So multilevel technique is better than others.
Parity bit LSB coding SS coding Proposed

coding
MSE 0.25 0.19 0.13 0.054
Table 3: Comparison of MSE
61
Chapter 6
Conclusion and Future scope
5.1 Conclusion
The objective of this thesis work was to increase the PSNR, MSE, BER and capacity values of audio
steganography. So we can increase the security of audio steganography. We analyze the different
techniques and conclude that every technique has some advantages and disadvantages also. And we also
conclude that capacity, mean square error (MSE), and peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and bit error
rate (BER) values of previous techniques are poor.
Every technique has some problem if we use them individually. Here we use the technique in which we
combine the three different techniques which is called multilevel technique. Multilevel technique
provides three times security. Here we are using the least significant bit coding, parity bit coding and
spread spectrum coding. We are combining these techniques using multilevel technique. Multilevel
steganography has advantage that its decoding is difficult and we can send more than one secret message
through single cover object. In this thesis we have proved that PSNR, MSE, BER and capacity values
are better, when we combine the LSB, parity, spread spectrum techniques rather than we use them
individually. Or output stego object is very difficult to decode which makes this method successful in
the world of audio steganography.
5.2 Future scope
In this thesis we improve PSNR, MSE, BER capacity of audio steganography using combination of
three techniques i.e. LSB, parity bit coding or spread spectrum coding. In further we can extend this
approach by combining any four techniques or more. We can increase capacity and can make system
more secure towards detection. we can also improve the BER on higher bit indexes because error on
higher bit indexes is more as compare to on lower (first) bit index.
62
References
[1] Pooja P. Balgurgi, Prof. Sonal K. Jagtap, “Intelligent Processing: An Approach of Audio
Steganography”, 2012 International Conference on Communication, Information & Computing
Technology (ICCICT), Oct. 19-20, Mumbai, India
[2] Kamalpreet kaur, Deepankar Verma, “ Multi-Level Steganographic Algorithm for Audio
Steganography using LSB, Parity Coding and Phase Coding Technique” , International Journal of
Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering Volume 4, Issue 1, January 2014
[3] Kaliappan Gopalan, Qidong Shi “Audio Steganography using Bit Modification – A Tradeoff on
Perceptibility and Data Robustness for Large Payload Audio Embedding”, IEEE 2010
[4] Masahiro Wakiyama, Yasunobu Hidaka, Koichi Nozaki, “A Novel Phase Coding Technique for
Steganography in Auditive Media”, IEEE 2011, Sixth International Conference on Availability,
Reliability and Security
[5] Harish Kumar, Anuradha, “Enhanced LSB technique for Audio Steganography”, ICCCNT'12
26th_28th July 2012, Coimbatore, India
[6] Fahimeh Rezaei, Tao Ma, Michael Hempel, Dongming Peng, Hamid Sharif, “An Anti-Steganographic
Approach for Removing Secret Information in Digital Audio Data hidden by Spread Spectrum
Methods”, IEEE ICC 2013 - Communication and Information Systems Security Symposium
[7] Saswati Ghosh, Debashis De and Debdatta Kandar,” A Double Layered Additive Space Sequenced Audio
Steganography Technique for Mobile Network”, IEEE 2012 International Conference on Radar,
Communication and Computing (ICRCC), SKP Engineering College, Tiruvannamalai, TN., India. 21 -
22 December, 2012. Pp.29-33.
63
[8] Ashwini Mane, Gajanan Galshetwar and Amutha Jeyakumar, “Data Hiding Technique: Audio
Steganography using LSB”, International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications Vol. 2,
Issue 3, May-Jun 2012 (IJERA).
[9] Ankit Chadha, Neha Satam and Rakshak Sood, Dattatray Bade, “ An Efficient Method for Image
and Audio Steganography using Least Significant Bit (LSB) Substitution”, International Journal of
Computer Applications (0975 – 8887) Volume 77– No.13, September 2013.
[10] Prof. Samir Kumar, BandyopadhyayBarnali, Gupta Banik. “LSB Modification and Phase Encoding
Technique of Audio Steganography Revisited”, International Journal of Advanced Research in
Computer and Communication Engineering Vol. 1, Issue 4, June 2012
[11] Linu Babu, “Steganographic Method for Data Hiding in Audio Signals with LSB & DCT”,
International Journal of Computer Science and Mobile Computing Vol.2 Issue. 8, August.
[12] Krishna Bhowal, Debnath Bhattacharyya, Anindya Jyoti Pal, Tai-Hoon Kim,” A GA based audio
steganography with enhanced security”, Springer July 2011, Springer Science Business Media, LLC
2011
[13] H.B.Kekre, Archana Athawale, Swarnalata Rao, Uttara Athawale,” Information Hiding in Audio
Signals”, International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 7– No.9, October 2010
[14] Lovey Rana, and Saikat Banerjee, “Dual Layer Randomization in Audio Steganography Using
Random Byte Position Encoding”, International Journal of Engineering and Innovative Technology
(IJEIT) Volume 2, Issue 8, February 2013
[15] Heena Malik, Sandeep Singh Kang, “Designing and Evaluation of Performance of a Spread
Spectrum Technique for Audio Steganography”, International Journal of Advanced Research in
Computer Science and Software Engineering, Volume 3, Issue 8, August 2013
64
[16] Fatiha Djebbar, Beghdad Ayad, Karim Abed Meraim and Habib Hamam,” Comparative study of
digital audio steganography techniques”, EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music
Processing 2012, 2012:25 doi: 10.1186/1687-4722-2012-25
[17] Jayaram P, Ranganatha H R, Anupama H S, “Information hiding using Audio Steganography- A

Survay”, the International Journal of Multimedia & Its Applications (IJMA) Vol.3, No.3, August 2011
[18] Deepali Ghanwat , Prof .R .Sunder Rajan, “Spread Spectrum based Audio Steganography in
Transform Domain” Global Journal of Advanced Engineering Technologies, Vol2, Issue4-2013
[19] Sheelu,” Enhancement of Data Hiding Capacity in Audio Steganography”, IOSR Journal of
Computer Engineering (IOSR-JCE) e-ISSN: 2278-0661, p- ISSN: 2278-8727Volume 13, Issue 3 (Jul. -
Aug. 2013), PP 30-35
[20] Burate D. J, M. R. Dixit, “Performance Improving LSB Audio Steganography Technique”,

International Journal of Advance Research in Computer Science and Management Studies Volume 1,
Issue 4, September 2013
[21] Kamred Udham Singh,” LSB Audio Steganography Approach”, International Journal of Emerging
Technology and Advanced Engineering, Volume 4, Issue 4, April 2014
[22] Kriti Saroha, Pradeep Kumar Singh,” A Variant of LSB Steganography for Hiding Images in
Audio”, International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887) Volume 11– No.6, December
2010
[23] Digvijay Singh Mankotia, Kuldeep Sharma, “Evaluating overheads of LSB based Audio
Steganography” International journal of emerging trends and technology in computer science Volume 2,
Issue 3, May – June 2013
[24] Premalatha P, Amritha P P,’’ Optimally Locating for Hiding Information in Audio Signal’’,
International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887) Volume 65– No.14, March 2013
65
[25] Yatin Baluja, Shray Mishra, Trilok Singh Saini, M.V. Patil, “Frequency Domain based data hiding
Technique Audio”, International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and
Technology Vol. 2, Issue 5, May 2013
[26] S.S. Divya, M. Ram Mohan Reddy, “Hiding text in audio using multiple LSB steganography and
provide security using cryptography” International Journal of Scientific & Technology Research
Volume 1, Issue 6, July 2012
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Algorithm for Audio Steganography using LSB Modification and Parity Encoding Technique”,
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Issue 2, July – August 2012
66
APPENDIX
MATLAB
MATLAB (Matrix laboratory) is a numerical computing environment. It is fourth generation

programming language. MATLAB is developed by Math works; MATLAB allows matrix
manipulations, plotting of f u n c t i o n s and d a t a , implementation o f algorithms, creation
of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages, including C, C++, and
Java.
Figure 6.1: logo of MATLAB
67
The MATLAB application is built around the MATLAB language. The simplest way to execute
M A T L A B code is to type it in the command window, which is one of the elements of
MATLAB desktop. When code is entered in the command window, MATLAB can be used as an
interactive mathematical shell. Sequences of commands can be saved in a text file, typically using the
MATLAB editor, as a script or encapsulated into a function, extending the commands available.
With MA TLAB you can create your own Graphical User Interface, or GUI, which consists of a Figure
window containing menus, buttons, text, graphics, etc., that a user can manipulate interactively with the
mouse and keyboard. There are two main steps in creating a GUI: One is designing its layout, and the
other is writing callback functions that perform the desired operations when the user selects different
features.
The diagram in Fig 6.2 shows the main features and capabilities of MATLAB. MATLAB’s built-in
functions provide excellent tools for linear algebra computations, data analysis, signal processing,
optimization, numerical solution of ordinary differential equations (ODEs), quadrature, and many other
types of scientific computations. Most of these functions use state-of-the-art algorithms. There are
numcrom; functions for 2-D and 3-D graphics, as well as for animation. Also, for Lhosc who cannot do
without their FORTRAN or C codes, MATLAB even provides an external interface to run those
programs from within MATLAB. The user, however, is not limited to the built-in functions; he can
write his own functions in the MATLAB language. Once written, these functions behave just like the
built-in functions. MATLAB's language is very easy to learn and to use. There are also several optional
"toolboxes" available from the developers of MATLAB. These toolboxes are collections of functions
written for special applications such as symbolic computation, image processing, statistics, control
system design, and neural networks. The list of toolboxes keeps growing with time. There are now more
than 50 such toolboxes. We do not attempt introduction to any toolbox here, with the exception of the
Symbolic Math Toolbox .The basic building block o f MATLAB is the matrix. The fundamental data
type is the array. Vectors, scalars, real matrices, and complex matrices are all automatically handled as
special cases of the basic data type. What is more, you almost never have to declare the dimensions of a
matrix. MATLAB simply loves matrices. More than a million engineers and scientists in industry and
academia use MATLAB, the language of technical computing
68
Figure 6.2: A SCHEMATIC DIAGRAM OF MATLAB’S MAIN FEATURES.
69
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PUNJAB TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

INDO GLOBAL COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, ABHIPUR, MOHALI,

SIGNATURE OF THE STUDENT

SIGNATURE OF THE SUPERVISOR

SIGNATURE OF THE SUPERVISOR SIGNATURE OF EXTERNAL EXAMINER

cryptography the output is scrambled so that it can draw attention.

challenge in digital audio steganography is to obtain robust high capacity steganographic

I am extremely thankful to DR. PROMILA KAUSHAL, Principal, Indo Global College of

Figure Title Page

1.1 Digital data security discipline 3

1.2 Block diagram of audio steganography 4

1.3 Continues analog sound wave sampled to produce for audio 5

1.5 Parity coding method 7

1.6 Phase coding method 10

1.7 The offset values represent binary values 13

1.8 Blocks are recombined to produced final signal 14

1.9 Implementation of echo hiding process 15

1.10 Overview of proposed steganographic method 15

1.11 Audio steganography in MMS 20

1.12 Embedded data transmission over acoustic channels 21

3.1 Multilevel steganography 37

4.1 Figure to open new GUI 40

4.2 Blank GUI 41

4.3 Figure to add buttons in GUI 42

4.4 Property inspector 43

4.5 First level of multilevel steganography 44

4.6 Encoding part of first level program 45

4.8 Decoding part of first level 47

4.9 Second level of multilevel steganography 48

4.10 Encoding part of second level 49

4.11 Output of second level encoding 50

4.12 Decoding part of second level 51

4.13 Third level of multilevel steganography 52

4.14 Encoding part of third level 53

4.15 Output of third level encoding 54

4.16 Decode part of third level 55

4.17 PSNR graph of audio steganography 56

4.18 MSE graph of audio steganography 57

4.19 BER of audio steganography 58

6.1 Comparison of BER of previous and proposed algorithm 60

1.4.2 Parity coding 8

1.4.3 Phase coding 10

1.4.4 Spread Spectrum 12

1.4.5 Echo hiding 12

1.5 Multilevel steganography 15

1.6.1 Mean Square Error 16

1.6.5 Audio processing 18

1.6.6 Analog Signals 18

1.6.7 Digital audio 18

1.7.1 Secret communication 19

1.7.2 Improved communication 20

1.7.3 Data storage 21

Chapter 2: Literature survey 26

Chapter 3: PRESENT WORK 35

3.1 Problem formulation 35

Chapter 6: CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE 62

Technique Cryptography Information hiding

Application Secret Secret Copyright

Secret message Signature