MUTHAYAMMAL ENGINEERING COLLEGE

(An Autonomous Institution)

(Approved by AICTE, New Delhi, Accredited by NAAC & Affiliated to Anna

University)
Rasipuram - 637 408, Namakkal Dist., Tamil Nadu

Image Processing Technology Research on Image Stenography

Abstract
Steganography is the science that involves communicating secret data in an appropriate
multimedia carrier, e.g., image, audio, and video files. It comes under the assumption that if the
feature is visible, the point of attack is evident, thus the goal here is always to conceal the very
existence of the embedded data. Steganography has various useful applications. However, like
any other science it can be used for ill intentions. It has been propelled to the forefront of current
security techniques by the remarkable growth in computational power, the increase in security
awareness by, e.g., individuals, groups, agencies, government and through intellectual pursuit.
Steganography's ultimate objectives, which are undetectability, robustness (resistance to various
image processing methods and compression) and capacity of the hidden data, are the main
factors that separate it from related techniques such as watermarking and cryptography. This
paper provides a state-of-the-art review and analysis of the different existing methods of
steganography along with some common standards and guidelines drawn from the literature.
This paper concludes with some recommendations and advocates for the object-oriented
embedding mechanism. Steganalysis, which is the science of attacking steganography, is not the
focus of this survey but nonetheless will be briefly discussed.

Advantage of steganography over cryptography?

The advantage of steganography over cryptography alone is that the intended secret
message does not attract attention to itself as an object of scrutiny. Plainly visible encrypted
messages, no matter how unbreakable they are, arouse interest and may in themselves be
incriminating in countries in which encryption is illegal.

steganography is more discreet than cryptography when we want to send a secret

information. On the other hand, the hidden message is easier to extract.
Basics of steganography

It describe a digital image as a finite set of digital values, called pixels. Pixels are the smallest
individual element of an image, holding values that represent the brightness of a given color at
any specific point. So the image as a matrix (or a two-dimensional array) of pixels which contains
a fixed number of rows and columns.

When using the “digital image” term here It referencing to the “raster graphics”, which are
basically a dot matrix data structure, representing a grid of pixels, which in turn can be stored in
image files with varying formats.

Pixel concept and color models

Pixels are the smallest individual element of an image. So, each pixel is a sample of an original
image. It means, more samples provide more accurate representations of the original.
The intensity of each pixel is variable. In color imaging systems, a color is typically represented
by three or four component intensities such as red, green, and blue, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and
black.

So, each pixel from the image is composed of 3 values (red, green, blue) which are 8-bit values
(the range is 0–255).
 for each pixel we have three values, which can be represented in binary code (the computer
language).
When working with binary codes, It has more significant bits and less significant bits, as you can
see in the image below.

The leftmost bit is the most significant bit. If we change the leftmost bit it will have a large
impact on the final value. For example, if we change the leftmost bit
from 1 to 0 (11111111 to 01111111) it will change the decimal value from 255 to 127.

On the other hand, the rightmost bit is the less significant bit. change the rightmost bit it will
have less impact on the final value. For example change the leftmost bit
from 1 to 0 (11111111 to 11111110) it will change the decimal value from 255 to 254. Note that
the rightmost bit will change only 1 in a range of 256 (it represents less than 1%).

Summarizing: each pixel has three values (RGB), each RGB value is 8-bit (it means we can store
8 binary values) and the rightmost bits are less significant. So, if we change the rightmost bits it
will have a small visual impact on the final image. This is the steganography key to hide an image
inside another. Change the less significant bits from an image and include the most significant bits
from the other image.

Hiding an Image:
1. To hide an image inside another, the image which will be hidden needs to have at most the
same size of the image which will hide it.
2. Create two loops to go through all rows and columns (actually each pixel) from the images.
3. Get the RGB from the image 1 and image 2 as binary values:
We can use the __int_to_bin method to convert a decimal value to a binary value:
4. We merge the most significant bits from the image 1 with the most significant bits from the
image 2:
Using the __merge_rgb method:
the __merge_rgb function is using the 4 most significant bits from each image, but it could be
changed. Keep in mind that using fewer bits from the hidden image will result in low quality of
the recovery image.
5. Finally, we convert the new binary value to a decimal value:
Using the __bin_to_int method:
And set it to a new pixel position from the resulted image.
Revealing an Image:
1. To reveal an image, we must know how many bits were used to hide the image. In this
case, we are using a fixed number of 4 bits.
2. First of all, we need to create two loops to go through all pixels from the image:
3. So, we extract each RGB channel as a binary value from the current pixel:
Using the __int_to_bin method:
4. Then, we create a new RGB value by concatenating only the 4 rightmost bits from the current
pixel with zero values (to create a new 8-bit value):
5. Finally, we convert the binary value to a decimal value and set it to the current pixel in the new
image:
6. The developed algorithm has only one more last step to remove the black borders when the
hidden image was smaller than the image which is hiding it.
How is it different from cryptography?
Cryptography and steganography are both methods used to hide or protect secret data.
However, they differ in the respect that cryptography makes the data unreadable, or hides
the meaning of the data, while steganography hides the existence of the data.
In layman’s terms, cryptography is similar to writing a letter in a secret language: people can
read it, but won’t understand what it means. However, the existence of a (probably secret)
message would be obvious to anyone who sees the letter, and if someone either knows or figures
out your secret language, then your message can easily be read.
Crpytography is often used to supplement the security offered by steganography. Crypography
algorithms are used to encrypt secret data before embedding it into cover files.
Image Steganography –
As the name suggests, Image Steganography refers to the process of hiding data within an image
file. The image selected for this purpose is called the cover-image and the image obtained after
steganography is called the stego-image.
How is it done?
An image is represented as an N*M (in case of greyscale images) or N*M*3 (in case of colour
images) matrix in memory, with each entry representing the intensity value of a pixel. In image
steganography, a message is embedded into an image by altering the values of some pixels,
which are chosen by an encryption algorithm. The recipient of the image must be aware of the
same algorithm in order to known which pixels he or she must select to extract the message.

Figure – Process of Image Stegaography

Detection of the message within the cover-image is done by the process of steganalysis . This
can be done through comparison with the cover image, histogram plotting, or by noise detection.
While efforts are being invested in developing new algorithms with a greater degree of immunity
against such attacks, efforts are also being devoted towards improving existing algorithms for
steganalysis, to detect exchange of secret information between terrorists or criminal elements.