STEGANOGRAPHY

Author1 I.JAI CHANDRA KUMAR III/IV B.TECH, ECE Vagula.dileepreddy@gmail.com Ph No: 9032562631 J.B.I.E.T This topic deals with the working of steganography process, i.e., hiding data in both MP3 & JPEG file format. In particular, it is about, data hiding within audio, basic requirements and the state of image techniques. The proposed method is characterized by perfect transparency, robustness, high bit rate, low processing load and particularly high security. The data hiding approach in the data compression domain has recently become of great interest. Secret data embedded in the compressed file would not be easily found and people would not suspect that there is something hidden in the file.

ABSTRACT
Secrecy became an important issue in human communication because of the value of information. Steganography is the art of hiding information in ways that prevent the detection of hidden messages. When they are used alone, they are not sufficient to solve all information security related issues. In addition to applying steganography, a secret message can be compressed. The compressed message usually takes up far less space in the cover and minimizes the information to be sent. Therefore using Encryption & Compression in conjunction with steganography has become mandatory. The effectiveness of this process mainly depends on the medium data in which data is hidden. With the wide spread use of mp3 file format for audio files and storage it has joined ranks with other steganographic mediums. Another important steganographic medium is JPEG file format for pictures. 1

1. INTRODUCTION: The process through which we can hide information is known as Steganography. The word Steganography comes from the Greek word and means covered writing.

We can hide information in any digital media for example in images, music file that is Mp3, WAV files etc with actually disturbing the original file that is we can view the image with actually disturbing the image there will slightly different but invisible to human naked eye. Digital watermarking is a process through which we can embedded whole block of text in the image file like the painter use to keep there signature underneath there painting the only difference is here we can see the signature but there the signature is invisible and can be viewed only after scanning the image file. 2. HISTORY OF STEGANOGRAPHY: The word "Steganography" is derived from the Greek roots stegos and graphia which literally means "covered writing or hidden writing". Its ancient origins can be traced back to 440BC. Herodotus mentions two examples of Steganography in The Histories of Herodotus. Demeratus sent a warning about a forthcoming attack to Greece by writing it on a wooden panel and covering it in wax. Steganography has been widely used in historical times,especially before cryptographic systems are developed. Examples of historical usage include: Hidden messages in wax tablets: in ancient Greece, people wrote messages on 2

the wood, then covered it with wax so that it looked like an ordinary, unused tablet Hidden messages on messenger's body: also in ancient Greece. Herodotus tells the story of a message tattooed on a slave's shaved head, hidden by the growth of his hair, and exposed by shaving his head again. The message, if the story is true, carried a warning to Greece about Persian invasion plans Hidden messages on paper: written in secret inks under other messages or on the blank parts of other messages. At the time of World War II German developed a technique that would shrink the whole image to a size of dot. Since the dots were typically extremely small -- the size of a period produced by a typewriter or even smaller -- the stego text was whatever the dot was hidden within. If a letter or an address, it was some alphabetic characters. If under a postage stamp, it was the presence of the stamp. The problem with the WW-II microdots was that they needed to be embedded in the paper, and covered with an adhesive (such as collodion), which could detected by holding a suspected paper up to a light and viewing it almost edge on. The embedded microdot would reflect light differently than the paper. The technology works by replacing the bits in unused data areas in computer files,

such as graphics, sound, text, HTML or even in the floppy disks with the message that will invisible. Example of this can be plain text, cipher text, images. Many Steganography methods messages. Around year 1996 when the Internet was growing rapidly people began to recognize e-commerce as an emerging Business and evolved into important market the only problem was the security issues. This technology was not trusted by the public and was not willing to put their personnel information on the web, which has no protection. The Cypherpunks a group of people recognized a way to create so that people can trust the online business environment as a safely technology. This was possible through Steganography techniques. They created safety of the publics information by a lock in the corner on the screen hide information in the least significant areas or the noise of carrier

Process
First, the secret message and the cover message are passed into the encoder. Inside the encoder, protocols will be implemented to embed the secret information into the cover message. Type of protocol depends on the information. E.g.: image protocol is used to embed information inside image. A key is often needed in the embedding process. (Public / Private key). Private key encodes the secret message. Public key decodes the message at receiver side. The advantage is that chance of the third party attacker getting hold of the stego object and finding the secret info is reduced. After passing through the encoder, a stego object will be produced. Then it is sent off via

3. BASIC PRINCIPLE OF STEGANOGRAPHY

some communication channels such as email, to the intended recipient for decoding. The recipient decodes the stego object in order to view the secret information. The decoding is reverse of the encoding (extracts secret data from a stego object). STEGANOGRAPHY & WATERMARKING: The first is known as the classical Steganography and it aims on transmitting message by means of casual looking medium and watermarking is invisible. Major issue facing electronic commerce on Internet for digital information is how to protect the copyrights and intellectual property of those who are legally owned. Copyright protection involves ownership authentication and it can be used to identify illegal copies. One approach is to mark works of author by adding information about relationship by digital watermark. It provides placing information with in the digital works. It also provides some mechanisms such as to know whether the work has been tampered with or copied illegally. The important characteristics of digital watermarking are it should not take additional formats or storage space; watermark should be integrate with in the information and cannot be removed easily. It should be fairly tamperresistant and able to with stand signal distortions, compressions and malicious attempt to remove the watermark. It can be made invisible to human eye but can be readable by computer. Various sorts of information can be stored in a watermark, including license, copyright, copy control, content authentication, 4

STEGANOGRAPHY & ENCRYPTION:

"Steganography differs from encryption in that encryption disguises the content of a message, whereas steganography disguises the existence of a message." Encryption takes a message and translates it using a code. An encrypted message appears to a viewer as a bunch of gibberish, thus making it clear to the viewer that he/she is looking at an encrypted message. One would need the code to return the encrypted message into its original form, much like a child would use a Dick Tracy decoder ring to decode a secret message given during the once popular radio program. However, if steganography has been used on a message, the viewer would not be able to tell that the message contains a hidden message within it. To use another childhood example, the writing of a message using invisible ink would constitute steganography. If you knew that a piece of paper had an invisible message on it, you could uncover the message using specific tools; otherwise, you would think you were looking at a blank piece of paper

and tracking information. This information can be used for copy protection, document identification, ownership designation, or as a means to track works to and from licensed users.

Word-shift coding. Feature coding.

Line-shift coding: This is a method that moves vertical text lines making the document unique. For example one could take the original document and move every second line 1/300 inch up or down. But this method is detectable than other methods. Word-shift coding: In this method a codeword is inserted into the document by shifting the horizontal locations of the words within text lines, while maintain the natural look of the document. But this method is applicable only to the documents with spacing between adjacent words. That is taking each text and locating the largest and smallest spaces between the words. That is by reducing the largest and smallest spaces by the same amount by this it maintain the line length and there is little visible change. This can be detected only if the author algorithm is obtained or applying random horizontal shifts to the words it is time consuming. Feature coding This method is watermarking. The author can use this technique by changing certain text features, for example extending or shortening the upward vertical end lines of letters such as b, d, h or altering the end line lengths.

4. DIFFERENT TYPES OF AVAILABLE TECHNIQUES:

4.1 INFORMATION HIDING IN TEXT/DOCUMENTS.
Brassil designed a method of marking the printable documents with a unique codeword and it is not visible to most. This is basically a form of watermarking the code word is binary number that is placed in the document by altering the particular textual features. There are three methods he designed.

There are three common Text Techniques: Line-shift coding.

Textual Steganography can also be done by alternative methods for example syntactic and semantic methods. Syntactic is a method that uses the punctuations and contradictions. Semantic method is also known as substitution. For example we can say THE APPLES IN WASHINGTON ARE KNOWN TO BE THE BEST. When read this sentence you know that apple means bomb and known to be the best refers to major landmark. This technique is almost impossible to detect and extract the hidden message.

the network. Normally gray scale images a preferred because shades change gradually. The solution to be unnoticed a large image file is by image compression. There two types of compression technique they are lossless and lossy compression. As long as data can be compressed the more data we can hide. The complexity of Steganography can vary; the information can hide in specific spot on the image. There are three common techniques: insertion. Masking and filtering. Algorithms and Least significant bit (LSB)

4.2 INFORMATION HIDDING IN IMAGES:

This is a process through which identifying the redundant bits in a medium. These are bits that can be modified without actually disturbing the image. Selecting subset of redundant bits and replacing with secret message data. Through this method it is impossible to detect that there is indeed secret information in the image. But to the computer an image is an array of numbers that represent light intensities at various points or pixels. Digital images are typically stored in 24bit pixel or 8-bit pixel file. A 24-bit file can hold more data within, but then large file would attract the attention if transmitted across 6

transformations.

Low bit encoding consist of similarities Least significant bit insertion is the easiest to use but the most vulnerable to attacks. If the LSB is applied to each byte of 24bit image then three bits can be encoded into each pixel. But then if we apply it to 8bit image then one change would make the image noticeable. Masking and filtering are similar to watermarking by covering or masking the image since human eye cannot detect the slight changes. Algorithms & Transformation method is complex use of mathematics in order to hide the information. with LSB method. Binary data can be hidden in the LSB of audio file but this would cause audible sound to disturb but it is negligible to human ear. Phase encoding is a process through substituting the phase of initial audio segment with a reference phase that represents the data. The original sequence of sound Is broken into a series of N short segments and to each segment discrete Fourier transform is applied, the difference between each adjacent segment is calculated. An artificial absolute phase po is created and for all other segment new phase frames are created. The new phase and magnitude is combined to get new segment and

4.3 INFORMATION HIDING IN THE AUDIO

Digital audio files have two primary characteristics, sample quantization method and temporal sampling. Here we have to consider the signal and transmission environment need to consider when choosing the data to hide. Basically there are four techniques to insert the data into audio files. Low bit encoding. Phase coding. Spread spectrum. Echo data hiding.

finally all segments are combined. But then the receiver should know the length of the segment and data interval. Spread spectrum is the most common method of using Steganography in audio files. It takes the encoded data is spread across as much frequency spectrum as possible. Using the Direct Sequence spread spectrum encoding can be done. The signal is multiplied by certain maximum length pseudorandom sequence, known as chip. This method doest not cause any noise. Echo data hiding is process through which the data can be inserted into audio signal by introducing an echo, varying three parameters of echo, Initial amplitude, decay 7

rate and offset or delay. So the human ear cannot distinguish the change in the signal.

This is done by synchronization chip signal which causes the embedded data to be lost.

4.4

INFORMATION

HIDING

IN
Change the length of audio files Altering the length of piece of audio without changing the pitch. This can be an affective attack on audio files. Robustness Attacks: Attempt to diminish or remove the presence of a watermark. If a series of minor distortions are applied the watermark can be lost while the image remains largely unchanged. Whatever changes have been made will likely be acceptable to pirates who do not usually require high quality copies.

BINARY FILE:
Used to protect copyright inside a binary program. Any changes to that binary file will cause the execution of it to alter. Key generators and Serial keys are no longer sufficient for copyrights purposes One method for embedding a watermark in a binary file works as follows. First, lets look at the following lines of code that have been extracted from a binary file: a=2; b=3; c=b+d; d=b+c; The above instruction is equivalent to: b = 3; a = 2; b = 3; b = 3; d = b + c; a = 2;

6. DETECTION OF STEGANOGRAPHY:
The detection of steganographically encoded packages is STEGANALYSIS. The simplest method to detect modified files, however, is to compare them to the originals. To detect information being moved through the

c = b + 3; c = b + 3;

c = b + 3; a = 2; d = b + c; d = b + c;

5. ATTACKS ON STEGANOGRAPHY:
Basic Attacks: Introduce the timing errors

graphics on a website, for example, an analyst can maintain known-clean copies of these materials and compare them against the current contents of the site. The differences (assuming

the carrier is the same) will compose the payload. In general, using an extremely high compression difficult, but rate not makes steganography while impossible;

can't be sure whether you really have a file used for transport or not-- all you have is a probability.

compression errors provide a good place to hide data, high compression reduces the amount of data available to hide the payload in, raising the encoding density and facilitating easier detection (in the extreme case, even by casual observation). Steganalysis is the art and science of detecting messages this is hidden analogous using to steganography;

7. LIMITATIONS OF STEGANOGRAPHY:
Both parties must agree on the method used. If they dont, then the receiving party may not know that there is a hidden message. The size of the medium used to hide the data. In order for steganography to be useful the message should be hidden without any major changes to the object it is being embedded in. This leaves limited room to embed a message without noticeably changing the original object. The image has to be compressed. In order to avoid detection in the network. It would be better to use a 24bit image. If we use 8bit image then preferably it would be a grey scale image. 8bit image stegonized files cannot be used for sensitive document transfer.

cryptanalysis applied to cryptography The goal of steganalysis is to identify suspected packages, determine whether or not they have a payload encoded into them, and, if possible, recover that payload. It is complicated primarily by four things: The suspect files may or may not have The payloads, if any, may have been any data encoded into them in the first place. encrypted before being encoded into the carriers. Some of the suspect files may have had noise or irrelevant data encoded into them (which reduces stealth but can make analysis very time-consuming). Unless you can completely recover, decrypt, and inspect the payload, you often

Use more than one digital watermark so detect

We propose a steganalysis technique to embedding using sequential steganography algorithms. Abrupt changes in statistics due to sequential steganography are detected during this process to estimate the message location and length. Analytical derivations are presented for the cases when the stego parameters of interest are completely and partially known. The proposed method is characterized by perfect transparency, robustness, high bit rate, low processing load and particularly high security. The data hiding approach in the data compression domain has recently become of great interest. Secret data embedded in the

that Originality can be detected if image is degraded. Digital watermark can be made visible only if author wants

8. CONCLUSION:
Steganography has its own place in security. It is not intended to replace cryptography but supplement it. Hiding a message with steganography methods reduces the chance of a message being detected. However, if that message is also encrypted, if discovered, it must also be cracked The effectiveness of the process i.e., data hiding within audio & image mainly depends on the medium data in which data is hidden. It retrieves data from the image file and audio file decompresses it. This package contains two sessions. The first sessions deals with Embedding, Retrieving & Authentication of data followed by compression and decompression of data in images. The second session deals with decoding and encoding with data security by providing a password in audio.

compressed file would not be easily found and people would not suspect that there is something hidden in the file. Presentation shows that the proposed method is promising.

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