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Steganography as an art of
Data Encryption
MSC. Seminar Report
By
Abdulhamid Usman Nuruddeen
MSC/17/CSC/0290
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Umaru Musa
Yar’adua University katsina.
25th May, 2019
Abstract
As sending information became prominent in our contemporary life, many methods were
developed and put into practice in order to secure the information that’s being sent back and
forth through communication medium. But the most trending technique nowadays is
steganography, though the method is old dated back to 440 B.C, still now it’s in research. This
research gives an introduction to the field of steganography as a method of data
encryption/hiding.
Certification
I certify that this research entitled Steganography as an art of Data Encryption by Abdulhamid
Usman Nuruddeen (MSC/17/CSC/0290) were carried under my supervision.
Dr. Abubakar Aminu Mu’azu ________________________
Supervisor Sign/Data
Acknowledgment
I am greatly indebted to my guide Dr. Abubakar Aminu Mu’azu for his invaluable guidance
during the course of the seminar. He always gave useful suggestions and also helped me when
the work was not moving ahead at times.
Abdulhamid Usman Nuruddeen
MSC/17/CSC/0290
Steganography as an art of Data Encryption
!"#
2.1 Capacity #
2.2 Robustness#
2.3 Imperceptibility.#
2.4 Security #
!"#
3.1 Cover-image. #
3.2 Message#
3.3 Stego-image #
3.4 Stego-key #
"!!"#
4.1 Text $
4.2 Image $
4.3 Audio $
4.4 Video $
4.5 Protocol/Network$
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5.1 Spatial Domain Technique'
5.1.1 Least-significant bit (LSB) '
5.1.2 Pixel-value differencing (PVD)'
5.1.3 LSB and PVD '
5.2 Transform Domain Technique. '
5.2.1 Discrete Fourier transformation (DFT)'
5.2.2 Discrete cosine transformation (DCT)(
5.2.3 Discrete wavelet transformation (DWT)(
(
) (
%
1 Introduction
As using internet for sending information is growing (Hattab & Mehdi, 2018), there is need to
secure that information, many methods were adopted such as watermarking and steganography,
watermarking is for copyright protection and digital signatures while steganography is digital
objects (Setyono & Ignatius Moses Setiadi, 2019). The term steganography is derived from the
Greek words “steganos” (covered or secret) and “graphia” (writing or drawing) through hiding a
secret information in human body by means of writing or drawings (Siper, Farley, & Lombardo,
2005). Steganography is one of the types of cryptography, in which the existence of an
information is being hide, using tools such as microscopic writing, invisible ink, or hiding code
words within sentences of a message [25] in a way that attention will not be drawn (Kang, Liu,
Yang, Luo, & Zhang, 2019; Liu & Lee, 2019; Meng, Zhou, Cui, Sun, & Yuan, 2019; Setyono &
Ignatius Moses Setiadi, 2019) So that only the intended person that is aware of what happen can
be able to understand or encrypt the hidden information (Gahan & Devanagavi, 2019).
Steganography is the latest method that is continually in in practice to transfer information
securely to the receiver (Prabhune & Joshi, 2016), these information can be of type text, image,
audio, video and protocol (Agarwal, 2019; Hahn, 2019) and the steganography techniques for
hiding information include least-significant bit (LSB), pixel-value differencing (PVD) and LSB
and PVD (Liu & Lee, 2019) in order to detect and decrypt the hidden message a key maybe
required which is additional encrypted message, such as password, for decryption. For example,
when a secret information is encrypted within an image or any other digital objects, the result is
an encrypted-digital object. A possible formula of the procedure may be represented as: cover
medium + encrypted information + decryption key = actual-medium (Kadhim Farhan, Subhi Ali,
& Mazin Ali, 2019; Rana, 2016), this indicates that for any encrypted message or information
there is need for a decryption key, to recover the actual information. Steganalysis refers to the
group of techniques that can differentiate between clean images and stego images (images that
have been used as a carrier media of an embedded message), (Ibrahim & Rasool, 2017). In a
clear sense steganalysis is the art of uncovering steganographic information.
2 Things to Consider in Steganography
As outlined by (Nwanebu, 2008; Sabnis & Awale, 2016) there are certain things to consider
about steganography which include
2.1 Capacity: Number bits required to alter in order to hide the information.
2.2 Robustness: Unaltered information after steganalysis are what make steganography useful.
2.3 Imperceptibility: Ability to make information unnoticed.
2.4 Security: Ability to make information difficult or impossible to interpret by third party.
3 Terminologies used in Steganography
While terminologies as mentioned by [11], [16], [17] are:
#
3.1 Cover-image: the image to use in hiding information.
3.2 Message: the information to be hidden.
3.3 Stego-image: the actual message that is hidden in another image.
3.4 Stego-key: the key to use in steganalysis.
4 Types of steganography
Steganography has been further divided into five types as follows (Agarwal, 2019):
$
4.1 Text: where plain text consisting alphabets, alphanumeric or numbers kin which three
different coding techniques were used, such as line-move coding, word-shift coding and
feature coding (DIng et al., 2017).
4.2 Image: the most widely used form of steganography is using image to hide information,
some of the most common methods include; least significant bit (either 2 or three bit)
(LSB), masking and filtering can be used to hide information inside images, as one of the
most popular and easiest method of hiding information (Din, Mahmuddin, & Qasim,
2019).
4.3 Audio: by altering the audio in a way that it is difficult to detect the changes by just
listening, three methods were used in concealing information in audio, which include
reverberate concealing, LSB and stage coding.
4.4 Video: by introducing the information to be hide in the video, so that it cannot be detected
by mere eye looking or listening, two ways of hiding information in video include tri-way
pixel value differencing and motion vectors.
4.5 Protocol/Network: by using control protocols to hide data in network datagrams, such as
HTTP, FTP, TCP, UDP etc. (Al-manaseer, 2019)
5 Steganography techniques
Techniques of steganography as mentioned by (Agarwal, 2019; Al-manaseer, 2019) can be
classified into two categories; namely :- a. Spatial domain and b. Transform domain.
'
5.1 Spatial Domain Technique: Changes occur in special domain technique by altering some
bits of the image pixel. Some of the techniques used in spatial domain are, LSB, PVD
(Bhattacherjee, 2019; Hattab & Mehdi, 2018), Combine LSB and PVD etc.
5.1.1 Least-significant bit (LSB): Also called substitution-based spatial domain
technique (Nwanebu, 2008), were image is converted into bits, separate the most
significant bit from the LSB and substitute the LSB with the secret information.
5.1.2 Pixel-value differencing (PVD): It provides both high embed-ding
capacity and outstanding imperceptibility for the stego-image; this segments the
cover image into non overlapping blocks containing two connecting pixels and it
modifies the pixel difference in each pair for data embedding (Kaur & Behal,
2014).
5.1.3 LSB and PVD: This technique combines the two LSB and PVD, in order
to give more secured technique.
5.2 Transform Domain Technique: also known as frequency domain (Kaur & Behal, 2014),
this is more than just changing some bits, it requires intensive calculations and changes
which make it tedious compared to spatial domain technique. Technique in performing
transformation domain include: Discrete Fourier transformation technique (DFT), Discrete
cosine transformation technique (DCT), Discrete Wavelet transformation technique (DWT)
etc.
5.2.1 Discrete Fourier transformation (DFT): The features for steganalysis are
extracted from the DFT of the histogram of differential images and divided into
low and high frequency bands.
(
5.2.2 Discrete cosine transformation (DCT): it is the transformation of spatial
domain into the frequency domain, its commonly JPEG compression (Kour,
Talwar, & Vaid, 2016).
5.2.3 Discrete wavelet transformation (DWT): DWT hierarchically decays an
image into small waves known as wavelets. This is advantageous over DCT
because of its ability to capture frequency and location information. The algorithm
breaks down the image into multi-resolution sub-bands known as lower
approximation (LL), horizontal (HL), vertical (LH) and diagonal components
(HH). The HH components is a high frequency sub-band, which is the perfect
location to embed a secret message (Nwanebu, 2008).
6 Conclusion
Conclusively, we have seen things to consider in steganography as a means of data encryption as
well as terminologies used in steganography, also many methods of steganography were
presented as well as the techniques and a brief explanation of each.
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