CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Since the early days of communication, diplomats military commanders understood that it
was necessary to provide some mechanism to protect the confidentiality of correspondence
and to have some means of detecting tempering. Julius Caesar is credited with the invention
of the Caesar Cipher C.50 BC, which was created in order to prevent its secret messages
from being read, should a message fall into the wrong hands, but for the most part protection
was achieve through the application of procedural handling controls. Sensitive information
was markup to indicate that it should be protected and transported by trusted persons, guided
a stored in a secure environment or storing box. As postal services expanded, government
created official organizations to intercept, decipher, read and reseal letters (e.g. the UK secret
office and deciphering branch in 1653). In the mid-19 th century more complex classification
system were developed to allow government to manage their information according to the
degree of sensitivity. The British government codified these to some extent with the
publication of the official secrets acts in 1889. By the time of the First World War, multi-tie
classification systems were use to communicate information to and from various fronts,
which encouraged greater use of code making and breaking sections in diplomatic a military
head quarters. In the United Kingdom these led to the creation of government code and
Cypher school in 1919. Encoding became more sophisticate between the wars as machines
were employed to scramble and unscramble information. The volume of information shared
by the allied countries during the Second World War necessitated formal alignment of
classification systems and procedural controls. An arcane range of markings evolved to

indicate who to could handle documents (usually official rather than men) and were they
should be store as increasingly complex safes, a storage facilities were developed. Procedures
evolved to ensure documents were destroyed properly and it was the failure to follow these
procedures which led to some of the greatest intelligence coups of the war (U-570). The end
of the 20th century and early years of the 21st century saw rapid advancement in
telecommunications, computing hardware and software, and data encryption. The availability
of smaller, more powerful and less expensive computing equipment made electronic data
processing within the reach of small business and the home user. These computers quickly
became interconnected through the internet. The rapid growth and widespread use of the
electronic data processing a electronic business conducted through the internet, along with
numerous occurrences of international terrorism, fueled the need for better method of
protecting the computers and the information they store, process and transmit. The academic
disciplines of computers security and information assurance emerge along with numerous
professional Organizations to all sharing the common goals of ensuring the security and
reliability of information systems.

1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT:

The aim of the project is to encrypt the data i.e., hide the data over an image using different
steganographic algorithms and to compare those algorithms in the context of speed, quality of
concealing and the use of watermarks and to describe their functionality in data security.

1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The objective of this study is to develop a text medium (text-text steganography) to hide the
occurrence of communication. While most methods in use today are invisible to the

observer's senses, mathematical analysis may reveal statistical discrepancies in the stego
medium. These discrepancies expose the fact that hidden communication is happening.
Therefore the objectives of this study include:

developing a text medium (text-text steganography) to hide the occurrence of

communication

Testing the efficiency and accuracy of hiding the data through algorithms using
different software.

1.4 RESEARCH METHOD

In this project, I use a method of encrypting text in a text file in order to test the accuracy and
efficiency of encryption. This process helps to send the information to the authorised party
without any potential risk. The proposed method will help to secure the content with in the
text and encryption of text file with in the text will help to make the document much securer
because even though if the unauthorised person succeeds in being able to hack the text file,
the person will not able to read the message as well as acquire the information in the text file.

1.5 THE SCOPE OF STUDY

The scope of the project is to limit unauthorized access and provide better security during
message transmission. To meet the requirements, I use the simple and basic approach of
steganography.

In this project, the proposed approach finds the suitable algorithm for

embedding the data in a text using steganography which provides the better security pattern
for sending messages through a network. For practically implementing the function of the
discussed algorithms, Microsoft .NET.framework is used. Although the Microsoft .NET is not
particularly known for its top security functionalities, I use this for easier application
development and a well user defined interface.

1.6 LIMITATION
Text steganography application is an advance data security that involves hiding of text with
text to avoid tampering or misuse of the text by unauthorized user before it gets the end user.
Though the project is interesting but a lot of challenges were encountered in the course of the
project. Starting up the project was not an easy one because it has to do with sensitivity,
meditating, concentration and creativity to ensure a reasonable output. Also the collection of
data through internet and interviewing method was not an easy one. A lot of challenges and
confusion came up like how text can be hidden with text, how the output will look like, how
the interface will look like, is it going to be user friendly, interactive without exposing some
necessary information to unauthorized users.