STEGANOGRAPHY

Submitted By: Nawlendu Bhushan

Steganography
Steganography is the art of hiding information in ways that prevent the detection of the hidden information.
The word derives from Greek stego and graphia, and literally means covered writing While cryptography scrambles messages so that they cannot be understood, Steganography hides messages so that they cannot be seen.

Hiding a secret message within a cover-medium in such a way that others can not discern the presence of the hidden message . Quite often, Steganography is hidden in pictures .

History and Evolution

In ancient Greece people wrote messages on wood and covered it with wax upon which innocent cover message was written. Hidden messages on messengers body were also written in ancient Greece. In world war II steganography using invisible ink was widespreadly used by Japanese and French spies. Modern steganography entered the world in 1985 with the advent of digital computers being applied to solve classical steganography problems.

Modern Techniques
Based on the carrier file used the modern day steganography is divided into following classes: Text Steganography Image Steganography Audio Steganography Video Steganography

Terminology
Carrier or Cover File - An original message or a file in which hidden information will be stored inside of it. Stego - Medium: The medium in which the information is hidden. Embedded or Payload The information which is to be hidden or concealed. Steganalysis The process of detecting hidden information inside a file.

Steganography Procedure

A Steganography System
Message File Cover File Message File

Steganography Tool

Steganography Tool

Steg File (with hidden data)

Steg File (with hidden data)

Hiding messages

Extracting messages

Text Steganography
Apparently neutrals protest is thoroughly discounted and ignored. Isman hard hit. Blockade issue affects pretext for embargo on by-products, ejecting suets and vegetable oils.
-A message sent by a German spy in World War II.

Pershing sails from NY June

Text Steganography
Another possible way of storing a secret inside a text is using a publicly available cover source, a book or a newspaper, and using a code which consists for example of a combination of a page number, a line number and a character number. It can be easily detected by looking for patterns in texts, odd use of language and unusual amount of white spaces.

Image Steganography
For different image formats different Steganography algorithms exist. Compression plays a very important role in choosing which steganographic algorithm to use. Lossy compression techniques result in smaller image file sizes, but it increases the possibility that the embedded message may be partly lost due to the fact that excess image data will be removed.

Image Steganography

Transform Domain

Image Domain

JPEG

Patchwork Spread spectrum

LSB in BMP

LSB in GIF

LSB Algorithm
Messages are encoded in the least significant bit of every byte in an image. By doing so, the value of each pixel is changed slightly, but not enough to make significant visual changes to the image, even when compared to the original. Example: Inserting the word bomb using LSB techniques: b = 01100010 o = 01101111 m = 01101101 b = 01100010

Image bits:
01011010 01011010 10110110 10110111 10100100 00101011 10101101 11111011 01011001 01011000 10101011 10010111 00101011 11011011 11011010 10101010 10101111 10101110 10010100 10010101 01010100 01010101 11101010 11101011 10101011 10101001 10101000 01001000 01001001 11010100 10100111 01010101 01010100 10110000 01000111 01010110 01010111 10101010 01000011 01000010 11111000 11111001 01011011 11010101 01010100

Image Steganography

Removing last two LSB of each color components

Image of a tree with a hidden image

Extracted image from image of tree

JPEG Images
RGB YUV

Halving and DCT Semi compressed image Huffman coding

lossy

lossless

Compressed image RGB= red, green and blue color of a pixel Y=luminance, U,V= chrominance (color)

Using the principles of LSB insertion the message can be embedded into the least significant bits of the coefficients before applying the Huffman encoding. By embedding the information at this stage, in the transform domain, it is extremely difficult to detect, since it is not in the visual domain.

GIF images
GIF image cannot have a bit depth greater than 8, thus the maximum number of colours that a GIF can store is 256. GIF images are indexed images where the colours used in the image are stored in a palette, sometimes referred to as a colour lookup table. Each pixel is represented as a single byte and the pixel data is an index to the colour palette. The colours of the palette are typically ordered from the most used colour to the least used colours to reduce lookup time.

GIF Images
LSB algorithm can be applied on GIF images although extra care should be taken. If adjacent palette entries are similar there are little or no visible changes to image but in case of dissimilarity it is evident. GIF images are vulnerable to visual attacks as palette processing leaves a definite marks on the image. LSB in GIF is a very efficient algorithm to use when embedding a reasonable amount of data in a grayscale image.

BMP Images
In embedding a message in GIF images there exists a trade off between size of the data and invisibility. A BMP image can store a large sized message but there is a larger probability of detection. A disadvantage in BMP regarding LSB is the suspicion arise due to transmission of large size BMP image because it is not used anymore. LSB in BMP is most suitable for applications where the focus is on the amount of information to be transmitted and not on the secrecy of that information.

Patchwork and Spread Spectrum

In patchwork two random patches of an image is chosen and the brightness of one patch is increased by a constant while that of another patch is reduced by the same constant. The contrast change encodes one bit. More bits can be embedded by selecting more patches. It is most suitable for sending small amount of very sensitive information. In spread spectrum technique hidden data is scattered throughout the cover file making it harder to detect.

Comparison

Audio and Video Steganography

Embedding secret messages in digital sound is usually a more difficult process than embedding messages in images. There are softwares which can be used to embed message in WAV, AU and MP3 files. Algorithms used for audio Steganography are LSB coding, parity coding, spread spectrum and echo hiding. Video files are a collection of images and sounds, so the techniques of embedding message is same as those of images and audios.

Applications
Steganography is used by some modern printers, including HP and Xerox brand color laser printers. Tiny yellow dots are added to each page. The dots are barely visible and contain encoded printer serial numbers, as well as date and time stamps. Steganography can be used for digital watermarking, where a message (being simply an identifier) is hidden in an image so that its source can be tracked or verified. It has some ill usages also. It is believed that in 9/11 incident Al-Qaida used video steganography to send messages to its militants.

References
Petitcolas, FAP; Anderson RJ; Kuhn MG (1999).
"Information Hiding: A survey" (pdf). Proceedings of the IEEE (special issue) 87 (7): 106278. doi:10.1109/5.771065 Petitcolas, Fabian A.P.; Katzenbeisser, Stefan (2000). Information Hiding Techniques for Steganography and Digital Watermarking. ISBN 1-58053-035-4. Johnson, Neil; Duric, Zoran; Jajodia, Sushil (2001). Information hiding: steganography and watermarking: attacks and countermeasures. ISBN 978-0-79237204-2.

!!THANKS!!