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INTRODUCTION
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This approach of information hiding technique has recently become
important in a number of application areas. Digital audio, video, and
pictures are increasingly furnished with distinguishing but
imperceptible marks, which may contain a hiding copyright notice or
serial number or even help to prevent unauthorized copying directly.
1.1 Steganography
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Figure: The different embodiment disciplines of Information Hiding.
The arrow indicates an extension and bold face indicates the focus of
this study.
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Figure 1: General scheme of steganography
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In contrast, steganography does not alter the structure of the
secret message, but hides it inside a cover-image so it cannot be
seen. A message in ciphertext, for instance, might arouse suspicion
on the part of the recipient while an “invisible” message created with
steganographic methods will not. In other word, steganography
prevents an unintended recipient from suspecting that the data exists.
In addition, the security of classical steganography system relies on
secrecy of the data encoding system. Once the encoding system is
known, the steganography system is defeated.
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informative,
i.e.,
original cover
or watermark is
needed for
recovery
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Figure 2: Different steganography fields
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CHAPTER 2
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Figure 3: Matrix and bits representation of an image file.
IMAGE FORMATS
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compression. Obviously it would infect any data embedded in the
image. Lossless compression does maintain the original image data
exactly but does not offer such high compression rates as lossy
compression. PNG, BMP, TIFF and GIF etc are example lossless
formats.
Some commonly used formats are JPEG, BMP, TIFF, GIF and
PNG; the last two types of images are also called palette images. We
discuss here all these formats briefly:
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4. JPEG - A creation of Joint Photographic Expert Group was
voted as international standard in 1992. It takes advantage of
limitations in the human vision system (HVS) to achieve high
rates of compression. It is a lossy type of format which allows
user to set the desired level of quality/compression. By far one
of the most common image formats, it is primarily used for
photographs. JPEGs are extremely popular since they
compress into a small file size and retain excellent image
quality.
5. PNG - (Portable Network Graphic) is a lossless image format,
properly pronounced "ping". The PNG format was created in
December 1994 and was endorsed by The World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) for its faster loading, and enhanced quality
platform-independent Web graphics. It was designed to
replace the older and simpler GIF format. Like GIF you can
make transparent images for buttons and icons, but it does not
support animation. The compression is asymmetric; reading is
faster than writing.
We have choosen PNG image file format as our carrier media
because of the following advantages:
1. PNG is the most flexible image format for web because it can
save images in 8-bit, 24-bit and 32-bit colours which is not
possible with GIF and JPEG file formats. For example, GIF can
only store only 8-bit or lower bit depths. Similarly, JPEGs must
be stored in 24-bit and no lower while PNG.s can be stored in
8-bit, 24-bit, or 32-bit.
2. PNG uses a lossless compression method, which means that
an image can be compressed and decompressed without any
loss of the image quality. PNG is compressed using any
number of pre-compressed filters and is then decompressed
when viewed similar to JPEG format, except the PNG format is
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.lossless.. PNG.s compression engine typically compresses
images 5-25% better than GIF.
3. PNG can store a variable transparency value known as alpha
channel transparency. This allows an image to have up to 256
different levels of partial transparency. While, JPEG does not
support transparency, PNG can also store the gamma value of
an image on the platform it was created which can enable a
display system to present the image on its correct gamma
value, if it has been specified. Correct gamma value enables a
picture to display properly on different platform without losing
its quality during transformation.
4. Metadata for Searching and Indexing as keywords and other
text strings (compressed or otherwise) can be incorporated to
enable search engines to locate the image on web.
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Perceptual Transparency: It is important that the embedding
occur without significant degradation or loss of perceptual
quality of the cover.
Robustness: the ability of embedded data to remain intact if the
stego-image undergoes transformations.
Tamper Resistance: refers to the difficulty for an attacker to
alter or forge a message once it has been embedded.
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private/public key pair doesn.t work since the eavesdropper
can use the public key to sabotage the whole affair.
4. Transform domain based embedding:
Transform Embedding Techniques embed the data by
modulating coefficients in a transform domain, such as
Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), Discrete Cosine Transform
(DCT) (used in JPEG compression), or Discrete Wavelet
Transform (DWT). Modifying the transform coefficients
provides more robustness to the compression (especially to
lossy), cropping, or some image processing, than LSB
techniques. The Spread-Spectrum Image Steganography
(SSIS) hides the data within noise which is then added to the
cover. The noise is of the type usually incurred during the
image acquisition process. Such a
noise is imperceptible to humans if kept to limited extent. The
decoding process involves image restoration techniques and
error control coding.
5. Masking and filtering techniques:
This techniques embed information to perceptually significant
areas of the image. The use of significant parts make these
techniques very robust. Masking refers to the phenomenon
were a signal can be imperceptible to an observer in the
presence of another signal - referred to as the masker (Lin &
Delp, 1999). The phenomenon of camouflage is manifestation
of this human weakness. The image must be analyzed in
advance for the information to determine appropriate regions to
place the message data so that it is camouflaged in the
environment.
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CHAPTER 3
Flow Diagram-
Image
(Embedded within the
text message file)
Transmission
Channel
Decoding
Program
Message
(Text file)
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Probably the most popular, LSB embedding techniques embed
data bits in the least significant bits of the image under the
assumption that the resultant change would be highly imperceptible
due to obvious limitations of HVS. A significant amount of information
can be embedded without visible loss of quality of the cover image.
The overall change to the image is so minor that it can't be seen by
the human eye.
LSB insertion algorithm can be applied in two ways:
First LSB algorithm
1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
Here only the last bit of the pixel is modified to hide the data. It is
implemented highly because of its simplicity and good picture quality.
Second LSB algorithm
1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
Here last two bits are subjected to change to increase the amount of
data to be hidden. Eventually the picture quality is less than our first
LSB algorithm.
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well as containing methods for accessing the raster and buffer
of the image, which makes image editing much easier.
ImageIO: A useful class to handle IO operations on images.
This class has much to offer, but as far as this program is
concerned, the read() and write() methods will be sufficient.
Graphics2D: A class which has been around for a long time
as far as Java is concerned, and allows access to some of the
more in depth aspects of graphics/images. Allows for creating
editable areas in a new image or an image which already
exists. As well as allowing a way to reach the renderable area
of the image. This class also allows for an easy switch from
image space to user space, which is necessary when
modifying or reading certain bytes of an image.
WritableRaster: This by definition is the process of rendering
an image pixel by pixel, which comes in handy when you need
to access the bytes of an image, that are representing pixels.
WritableRaster is a sub-class of Raster itself, which has
methods to access the buffer of an image more directly.
DataBufferByte: The form of a byte array buffer for an image.
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Step 2:
The secret message text file called the stego object is read
and its characters/ bytes are converted to ascii values and then
to array of bits.
For reading the file it uses StringBuffer, BufferedReader and
FileReader classes.
After reading the file, the file is stored in a String.
The String is converted array of bits by converting all
characters to ascii value and doing some bit operations.
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The decimal value changes to 107. This change will affect a
little bit in some of the colour of a pixel which cannot be
marked with human eye.
But if we change some bits other than LSB, there will be a
significant chane in value and can be marked with human eye.
That’s why we are replacing the LSB of the image byte with the
secret data bytes.
One bit of the secret data bit is inserted to the LSB of the
image byte. So one byte of the secret data requires 8 bytes of
the image.
The length of the text in binary form is calculated beforehand,
and hidden in the image before the text. In other words, the
steganographic information (the stego) has two parts: the size
of the binary message, followed by the message itself.
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Figure 6: Inserting the Text Bits into the Image.
Step 4:
The message de-embedded/ extracted from the image.
Extracting the text from the modified image involves copying
the LSB of the modified image’s bytes and recombining them
into bytes in a text file as shown in the figure.
After that hidden bytes are constructed by shift left operation
and inserting hidden bytes.
All those hidden bytes are collected and finally written to a new
text file and saved.
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Figure 7: Extracting text from modified image
Here we can see two images. The first image is original image
dolphin.png and the second one is outputImage.png which contains
the text information. The change in picture cannot be detected with
human eye.
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Original image- Dolphin.png
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More and more commercial software available which follow this
approach. Examples are WebStego, Stego, S-Tools etc.
3.2 DISADVANTAGES
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CHAPTER 4
SCREENSHOTS
1. Start Page
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2. Main Interface
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3. ENCODE INTERFACE
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4. Successful encoding information
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5. DECODE INTERFACE
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6. Successful decode message
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7. About Us screen shot
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CHAPTER 5
STEGANOGRAPHY APPLICATIONS
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"sending-and-receiving" action that could be noticed by a third party.
So, e-mailing is not a completely secret communication method.
(A) Choose a large vessel, larger the better, compared with the
embedding data.
(B) Discard the original vessel after embedding.
For example, in the case of Qtech Hide & View, it leaves some latent
embedding evidence even if the vessel has a very large embedding
capacity. You are recommended to embed only 25% or less (for PNG
/ BMP output) of the maximum capacity, or only 3% of the vessel size
(for JPEG output).
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that "no authentication bureau is needed." If it is implemented, people
can send their "digital certificate data" to any place in the world
through Internet. No one can forge, alter, nor tamper such certificate
data. If forged, altered, or tampered, it is easily detected by the
extraction program.
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(1) A content owner classify his/her digital contents in a folder-
by-folder manner, and embed the whole folders in some large
vessel according to a steganographic method using folder
access keys, and upload the embedded vessel (stego data) on
his/her own Webpage.
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(1) The title of the picture and some physical object information
(2) The date and the time when the picture was taken
(3) The camera and the photographer's information
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friend to extract your memory on his/her PC, or you may keep it silent
in your own PC to enjoy extracting the memory ten years after.
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records based on bi-polar multiple-base data hiding. A pixel value
difference between an original image and its JPEG version is taken to
be a number conversion base.
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Figure 9: Fujitsu exploitation of steganography (BBC News, 2007)
shows a sketch representing the concept
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This application can be used for “doctor’s prescriptions, food
wrappers, billboards, business cards and printed media such as
magazines and pamphlets” (Frith, 2007), or to replace barcodes.
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CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSION
Steganography is the art and science of hiding information
such that its presence cannot be detected and a communication is
happening. Secret information is encoding in a manner such that the
very existence of the information is concealed.
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CHAPTER 7
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We mainly dealt with PNG picture as these were not specifically
investigated in any of the works at least known to us. The
technique we employed was a sort of worst case, i.e. LSB
technique with sequential embedding. Hence the worst-case limit
has been set. The future research on the robustness of PNG
images should be extended to the more robust embedding
techniques like, masking, SSIS, patchwork techniques etc so that
the best case is identified.
One interesting java API, the JAI, has made image manipulation
a lot easier. The dyadic and monadic image operations are now a
lot easier and binary operations of addition subtraction,
multiplication and division etc can now be applied to images.
Similarly magnifier can now be employed on images
conveniently. All these give rise to scores of new ideas to develop
novel steganographic and steganalytic methods. These need to
be explored.
We have to compress the image so as to decrease the suspect
and also for easy send and receive operation. The operations will
be faster if we will compress the image without the loss of data
and also the quality.
We have used only LSB insertion technique in our algorithm. In
future the other techniques will be using to enhance security.
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CHAPTER 8
REFERENCES
[1]. Java Prog. Techniques for Games. Java Art Chapter 6. Stego
Draft #1 (7th June 09)
[2]. Steganoflage: A New Image Steganography Algorithm by Abbas
Cheddad.
[3]. SLSB: Improving the Steganographic Algorithm LSB by Juan Jose
Roque, Jesus Maria Minguet, Universidad Nacional de Educación
a Distancia (Spain).
[4]. Information hiding Using steganography by Muhalim Mohamed
Amin, Subariah Ibrahim , Mazleena Salleh , Mohd Rozi Katmin.
[5]. Image Steganography: Concepts and Practice by Mehdi Kharrazi,
Husrev T. Sencar, and Nasir Memon.
[6]. New approach in steganography by integrating different LSB
algorithms and applying randomization concept to enhance Data
security A.Karthic , III CSE Kalasalingam university Krishnankoil.
[7]. Investigation of inherent robustness of png images for lsb
steganography by Khizar Hayat Khan.
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CHAPTER 9
APPENDIX
List of Figures
Figure 1 General scheme of steganography 4
Figure 2 Different steganography fields 7
Figure 3 Matrix and bits representation of an image file 9
Figure 4 Flow Diagram of PDS Steganography 15
Figure 5 Accessing bits of an image 17
Figure 6 Accessing the Bits of a Text File 17
Figure 7 Inserting the Text Bits into the Image 19
Figure 8 Extracting text from modified image 21
Figure 9 Constructing hidden Bytes array by shift left 21
operation
Figure 10 Fujitsu exploitation of steganography (BBC News, 39
2007) shows a sketch representing the concept
Figure 11 Displays the application of deployment into a 39
mobile phone
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