Literature review research

Image steganography is a covert communication method that uses an image as the

cover to hide the truth from potential attackers that some secret message hidden in
the image is being transported. When we appreciate the astonishing beauty of a
world famous picture in its digital form on the computer, it is hard to imagine that
the picture might actually be working as a messenger, carrying some invisible
important secret message along with it. In other words, steganography is a
collection of cryptographic techniques that provide protection to the secret message
by oering it the appearance of an image
In fact, there might be tons of secret information being transmitted and exchanged
on the Internet at this particular point of time. However, important secret messages
may run high risks of leaking out while they are being transmitted or exchanged
over some public communication channel. Therefore, how to achieve safe secret
communication is an important eld of research.
Though modern cryptographic systems oer quite high a security level to the secret
information transmitted and exchanged on the Net, the secret informations
appearances as ciphertexts readily draw hackers attention as though proclaiming
that some secret messages of especially high value could be obtained if the
ciphertexts could only be in one way or another decrypted. Under such
circumstances, even though chances are that the hackers are probably not able to
decrypt the ciphertexts due to the strong security the cryptographic system oers,
at least the irritated attackers can easily destroy the ciphertexts and make the
transmissions fail. As a result, it seems that the best policy of ensuring the security
of secret information traveling on the Internet is to avoid any attention and
suspicion of the hacker. That is to say, the safest method to keep messages
transmitted through open channels from leaking out is to encrypt them into a
meaningful content (i.e. plaintext), and this is where steganography/data hiding
comes into play.
The basic structure of Steganography is made up of three components: the
carrier, the message, and the key. The carrier can be a painting, a digital image,
an mp3, even a TCP/IP packet among other things. It is the object that will carry
the hidden message. A key is used to decode/decipher/discover the hidden
message. This can be anything from a password, a pattern, a black-light, or even
lemon juice
Steganography and cryptography can be combined to produce a hidden encrypted
message which are two levels of protection from prying eyes

Journal 4