SECURED STEGANOGRAPHY TO SEND

SECERET MESSAGE

Project ID: 1029

A Project Report
submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirement for the B.Tech.
under Biju Patnaik University of Technology, Rourkela.

Submitted By
Biswanath Roll No. 2236

NOVEMBER - 2012

Under the guidance of

Mrs. T ,f,f

COLLEGE NAME -- TECHNOLOGY

Bhubaneswar, Odisha 752101, India

(i)
 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the project work entitled Secured

Steganography to send secret message is a bonafide work being done
by Biswanath bearing Registration No. 1c0 of CSE branch.

This mid-term project report is submitted in partial fulfillment for

the requirement of the B.Tech. degree under Biju Patnaik University of
Technology, Rourkela, Odisha.

(meldl)
Project Guide

(Dr. Pattanaik) (. Das)

BTech. Project Coordinator PRINCIPAL

(i)
 ABSTRACT

Steganography is the art of hiding the fact that communication is taking place, by hiding
information in other information. Many different carrier file formats can be used, but digital
images are the most popular because of their frequency on the internet. For hiding secret
information in images, there exists a large variety of steganography techniques some are more
complex than others and all of them have respective strong and weak points. Different
applications may require absolute invisibility of the secret information, while others require a
large secret message to be hidden. This project report intends to give an overview of image
steganography, its uses and techniques. It also attempts to identify the requirements of a good
steganography algorithm and briefly reflects on which steganographic techniques are more
suitable for which applications.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my immense sense of gratitude to my guide, Mrsmari,

for her valuable instructions, guidance and support throughout my project.

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 I again owe my special thanks to Dr. Pndnk B.Tech. project coordinator for giving
me an opportunity to do this report.

And finally thanks to Profnmdnmndmd, Principal, COLLEGENEME for his

continued drive for better quality in everything that happens at COLLEGENEME. This report
is a dedicated contribution towards that greater goal.

Biswanath
Reg. no.:1KSKJ20

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TABLE OF CONTENT
Abstract...i

Acknowledgement....................................................................................................................ii

List of figure..v

1. Introduction & Scope Of The Project...................................................................................1

1.1 Project Scope..................................................................................................................3

1.2 Objective.........................................................................................................................3

2. Project Description...............................................................................................................4

3. Software Requirement Analysis............................................................................................6

3.1 General Methodology Of Developing Software Project..................................................6

3.1.1 Requirement Analysis Phase....................................................................................6

3.1.2 Design Phase............................................................................................................6

3.1.3 Development Phase..................................................................................................7

3.1.4 Coding Phase...........................................................................................................7

3.1.5 Testing Phase...........................................................................................................7

3.2 Required Software And Hardware For The Development...............................................7

3.2.1 Software And Plug-Ins.............................................................................................7

3.2.2 Hardware / Testing Device.......................................................................................7

3.2.3 Mat Lab....................................................................................................................7

4. Project Logic Description.....................................................................................................9

4.1 Lsb Algorithm:..........................................................................................................10

4.2 Image Steganography And Bitmap Pictures:.............................................................10

4.3 Bitmap Steganography..............................................................................................10

5. System Analysis & Design..................................................................................................12

5.1 Encryption Process........................................................................................................14

5.2 Decryption Process.......................................................................................................15

6. Flow Diagram.....................................................................................................................16

7. Modular View.....................................................................................................................17

(iv)
8. Work Progress.....................................................................................................................18

8.1 Done Requirement Analysis...18

8.1 Designed Flow Diagram & Modular Diagram...18

9. Future Work To Be Done....................................................................................................19

References..............................................................................................................................20

(iv)
LIST OF FIGURES

YFigure 1.1 Graphical representation of Stagenography..........................................................2

Figure 2.1 Basic Model of Stagenography................................................................................4

Figure 5.1 Procedure of Stagenography..................................................................................13

Figure 5.2 Encryption Process................................................................................................14

Figure 5.3 Decryption Process................................................................................................15

Figure 6.1 Flow Diagram of the project..................................................................................16

Figure 7.1 Modular Diagram of Project..................................................................................17

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Secure steganography to send secret message

1.INTRODUCTION & SCOPE OF THE

PROJECT
Steganography is an ancient art. With the advent of computers, we have vast
accessible bodies of data in which to hide information, and increasingly sophisticated
techniques with which to analyze and recover that information. While much of the recent
research in steganography has been centered on hiding data in images, many of the
solutions that work for images are more complicated when applied to natural language
text as a cover medium. Many approaches to steganalysis attempt to detect statistical
anomalies in cover data which predict the presence of hidden information. Natural
language cover texts must not only pass the statistical muster of automatic analysis, but
also the minds of human readers. Linguistically nave approaches to the problem use
statistical frequency of letter combinations or random dictionary words to encode
information. More sophisticated approaches use context-free grammars to generate
syntactically correct cover text which mimics the syntax of natural text. None of these
uses meaning as a basis for generation, and little attention is paid to the semantic
cohesiveness of a whole text as a data point for statistical attack. This paper provides a basic
introduction to steganography and steganalysis, with a particular focus on text
steganography. Text-based information hiding techniques are discussed, providing
motivation for moving toward linguistic steganography and steganalysis. We highlight some
of the problems inherent in text steganography as well as issues with existing solutions, and
describe linguistic problems with character-based, lexical, and syntactic approaches. Finally,
the paper explores how a semantic and rhetorical generation approach suggests solutions for
creating more believable cover texts, presenting some current and future issues in analysis
and generation. The paper is intended to be both general enough that linguists without training
in information security and computer science can understand the material, and specific
enough that the linguistic and computational problems are described in adequate detail to
justify the conclusions suggested.

The growing possibilities of modern communications need the special means of security
especially on computer network. The network security is becoming more important as the
number of data being exchanged on the internet increases. Therefore, the confidentiality and
data integrity are requires to protect against unauthorized access and use. This has resulted in
an explosive growth of the field of information hiding.

Information hiding is an emerging research area, which encompasses applications such as

copyright protection for digital media, watermarking, fingerprinting, and steganography.

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Secure steganography to send secret message

In watermarking applications, the message contains information such as owner identification

and a digital time stamp, which usually applied for copyright protection.
Fingerprint, the owner of the data set embeds a serial number that uniquely identifies the
user of the data set. This adds to copyright information to makes it possible to trace any
unauthorized used of the data set back to the user.
Steganography hide the secrete message within the host data set and presence
imperceptible and is to be reliably communicated to a receiver. The host data set is purposely
corrupted, but in a covert way, designed to be invisible to an information analysis.

Figure 1 .1Graphical representation of Steganography

1.1 Project Scope

This project is developed for hiding information in any image file. The scope of the project is
implementation of steganography tools for hiding information includes any type of
information file and image files and the path where the user wants to save Image and extruded
file.

1.2 Objective
The goal of steganography is covert communication. So, a fundamental requirement of this
steganography system is that the hider message carried by stego-media should not be sensible
to human beings.

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Secure steganography to send secret message

The other goad of steganography is to avoid drawing suspicion to the existence of a hidden
message. This approach of information hiding technique has recently became important in a
number of application area

This project has following objectives:

To product security tool based on steganography techniques.

To explore techniques of hiding data using encryption module of this project

To extract techniques of getting secret data using decryption module.

Steganography sometimes is used when encryption is not permitted. Or, more commonly,
steganography is used to supplement encryption. An encrypted file may still hide information
using steganography, so even if the encrypted file is deciphered, the hidden message is not
seen

2. PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Though the fields of steganography and cryptography are associated with one another, there is
a distinction to be made. Cryptography is the art of jumbling a message so that a would-be
eavesdropper cannot interpret the message. Steganography, on the other hand, is the art of
hiding a message so that a would-be eavesdropper is unaware of the messages presence.

While steganography has been around for centuries, the Digital Revolution has sparked a
renewed interest in the field. For instance, the mass media industry has shown increasing
interest in steganography to fight piracy. It is even rumored that the terrorist organization, Al-
Qaeda, has employed steganography to transmit orders to its operatives over the internet.

All digital file formats can be used to hide secret messages. This paper, however, focuses
specifically on the techniques employed in hiding information in digital image files.

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Secure steganography to send secret message

Steganography is the art of sending hidden or invisible messages. The name is taken from a
work by Trithemus (1462-1516) entitled Steganographia and comes from the Greek
-, - meaning covered writing (Petitcolas et al 1999: 1062, Petitcolas 2000:
2, etc.). The practice of sending secret messages is nothing new, and attempts to cover the
messages by hiding them in something else (or by making them look like something else)
have been made fpr millennia. Many of the standard examples used by modern researchers to
explain steganography, in fact, come from the writings of Herodotus. For example, in around
440 BC, Herodotus writes
about Histus, who was being held captive and wanted to send a message without being
detected. He shaved the head of his favorite slave, tattooed a message on his scalp, and waited
for the hair to regrow, obscuring the message from guards (Petitcolas 2000: 3). Petitcolas
mentions that this method was in fact still used by Germans in the early 20th century.
Modern steganography is generally understood to deal with electronic media rather than
physical objects and texts. This makes sense for a number of reasons. First of all, because the
size of the information is generally (necessarily) quite small compared to the size of the data
in which it must be hidden (the cover text), electronic media is much easier to manipulate in
order to hide data and extract messages. Secondly, extraction itself can be automated when
the data is electronic, since computers can efficiently manipulate the data and execute the
algorithms necessary to retrieve the messages. Also, because there is simply so much
electronic information available, there are a huge number of potential cover texts available in
which to hide information, and there is a gargantuan amount of data an adversary attempting
to find
steganographically hidden messages must process. Electronic data also often includes
redundant, unnecessary, and unnoticed data spaces which can be manipulated in order to hide
messages. In a sense, these data spaces provide a sort of conceptual hidden compartment
into which secret messages can be inserted and sent off to the receiver.
This work provides an introduction to steganography in general, and discusses inguistic
steganography in particular. While much of modern steganography focuses on images, audio
signals, and other digital data, there is also a wealth of text sources in which information can
be hidden. While there are various ways in which one may hide information in text, there is a
specific set of techniques which uses the linguistic structure of a text as the space in which
information is hidden. We will discuss text methods, and provide justification for linguistic
solutions. Additionally, we will analyze the state-of-the-art in linguistic steganography, and
discuss both problems with these solutions, and a suggested vector for future solutions.

Steganography is an art of science in which one can send secure messages.

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Secure steganography to send secret message

It is the art and science of hiding information such its presence cannot be detected and a
communication is happening. A secrete information is encoding in a manner such that the
very existence of the information is concealed. Paired with existing communication methods,
steganography can be used to carry out hidden exchanges.

The main goal of this projects it to communicate securely in a completely undetectable

manner and to avoid drawing suspicion to the transmission of a hider data. There has been a
rapid growth of interest in steganography for two reasons:

The publishing and broadcasting industries have become interested in techniques for hiding
encrypted copyright marks and serial numbers in digital films, audio recordings, books and
multimedia products

Moves by various governments to restrict the availability of encryption services have

motivated people to study methods by which private messages can be embedded in seemingly
innocuous cover messages.

Steganography, Steganalysis, and Mimicking

Because the focus of this text is on linguistic steganography, it is important to understand just
what we mean by this term. Chapman et al define linguistic steganography as the art of using
written natural language to conceal secret messages (Chapman et al 2001: 156). Our
definition is somewhat more specific that this, requiring not only that the steganographic
cover be composed of natural language text or some sort, but that the text itself is either
generated to have
a cohesive linguistic structure, or that the cover text is natural language text to begin with. To
further elaborate, we will first introduce steganography as a field and discuss current
techniques in information hiding. We then show how these are applied to texts, differentiating
between nonlinguistic and linguistic methods. Section 1.1 describes modern steganography
with some examples of steganographic techniques, and defines linguistic steganography
within the context of text steganography in general. Section 1.2 introduces steganalysis and
adversarial models, which are, in a sense, the driving force behind the creation of new
steganographic methods.
Finally, section 1.3 discusses mimicking, which is an encapsulation of the idea of using the
statistical properties of a normal data object as the basis for generating a steganographic
cover. These are intended as background information in order to motivate the discussion of
text steganography

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Secure steganography to send secret message

1.1 Steganography
Steganographic information can be hidden in almost anything, and some cover objects are
more suitable for information hiding than others. This section will simply detail a few
common steganographic methods applied to various kinds of electronic media, along with an
explanation of the steganographic techniques used. Techniques can be grouped in many
different ways; Johnson and Katzenbeisser group steganographic techniques into six
categories by how the algorithm encodes information in the cover object: substitution
systems, transform domain techniques, spread spectrum techniques, statistical methods,
distortion techniques, and cover generation methods (2000: 43-44). In terms of linguistic
steganography, we will be mainly concerned with cover generation methods, although some
statistical methods and substitution systems will be described. Substitution systems insert the
hidden message into redundant areas of the cover object, statistical methods use the statistical
profile of the cover text in order to encode information, and cover generation texts encode
information in the way the cover object itself is generated (44). The descriptions that follow
are not supposed to be an exhaustive survey, but merely an introduction to some of the
existing methods; for a much more comprehensive description of modern steganographic
techniques, see Katzenbeisser and Petitcolas (2000) or Wayner (2002). One further comment
should be made; Kerkhoffs principle, which states that one must assume that an attacker has
knowledge of the protocol used and that all security must thus lie in the key used in the
protocol, is not to be ignored (Anderson and Petitcolas 1998, Petitcolas 2000). While we do
not specifically discuss secret keys here, it should be stated that we assume that the hidden
message is encrypted before being hidden in the cover text. While this does not protect a
protocol from being attacked if the introduction of random-looking data is inappropriate in the
context of the cover data, but it does prevent the message from being read. In many cases, the
fact that encrypted data looks like random data is intentionally used in spaces where such
random noise could realistically occur. In any event, we assume that the message itself is
cryptographically secure, and we therefore focus the protocols intended to hide such
messages.

Image steganography
Image steganography has gotten more popular press in recent years than other kinds of
steganography, possibly because of the flood of electronic image information available with
the advent of digital cameras and high-speed internet distribution. Image steganography often
involves hiding information in the naturally occurring noise within the image, and provides
a good illustration for such techniques.

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Secure steganography to send secret message

Most kinds of information contain some kind of noise. Noise can be described as unwanted
distortion of information within the signal. Within an audio signal, the concept of noise is
obvious. For images, however, noise generally refers to the imperfections inherent in the
process of rendering an analog picture as a digital image. For example, the values of colors in
the palette for a digital image will not only not be the exact colors in the real image, and the
distribution of these colors will be also be imperfect. As Wayner mentions, the instantaneous
measurement of photons made by a digital camera also captures the randomness inherent in
their behavior, leading to a set of imperfect measurements which balance out to become a
digital image
(Wayner 2002: 152). By changing the least significant bit (LSB) in the color representation
for selected pixels, information can be hidden while often not significantly changing the
visual appearance of the image; this is known as image downgrading (Katzenbeisser 2000:
29,Johnson and Katzenbeisser 2000: 49). The greater the number of bits used to represent
colors, the less obvious the changes in palette values are in the visual representation of the
final image. While changing the LSB in order to hide information is a widely used
steganographic method,
Petitcolas et al note that it is trivial for a capable opponent to remove such information
(1999: 1065). Furthermore, lossy compression and other image transformations can easily
destroy hidden messages (Johnson and Jajodia 1998: 30).
There are many other methods for image steganography, however. For the images below, an
algorithm was used that attempts to avoid statistical distortion by taking advantage of the
discrete cosine transforms that are used to compress and approximate a digital image. The F5
algorithm improves upon previous methods for steganographic JPEGs by not only modifying
the compression coefficients, but by attempting to spread the modifications through the file in
such a way that their statistical profile still approximates a non-steganographic JPEG image
(Westfeld
2001; Wayner 2002: 181). The image below is a bitmap image which is compressed to a
JPEG image by the tool as the secret message is embedded. The basic model of
steganography consists of Carrier, Message and password. Carrier is also known as cover-
object, which the message is embedded and serves to hide the presence of the message.
Basically, the model for steganography is shown on following figure:

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Secure steganography to send secret message

Cover-object C

F(C,M,K)

Message, M Stego Object, Z

Stego-key, K

Figure 2.1 Basic Model of Steganography

Message is the data that the sender wishes to remain it confidential. It can be plain text,
ciphertext, other image, or anything that can be embedded in a bit stream such as a copyright
mark, a covert communication, or a serial number. Password is known as stego-key, which
ensures that only recipient who know the corresponding decoding key will be able to extract
the message from a cover-object. The cover-object with the secretly embedded message is
then called the Stego-object.

Recovering message from a stego-object requires the cover-object itself and a corresponding
decoding key if a stego-key was used during the encoding process. The original image may or
may not be required in most applications to extract the message.

There are several suitable carriers below to be the cover-object:

Network protocols such as TCP, IP and UDP

Audio that using digital audio formats such as wav, midi, avi, mpeg, mpi and
voc

File and Disk that can hides and append files by using the slack space

Text such as null characters, just alike morse code including html and java

Images file such as bmp, gif and jpg, where they can be both color and gray-
scale.

In general, the information hiding process extracts redundant bits from cover-object. The
process consists of two steps:

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Secure steganography to send secret message

Identification of redundant bits in a cover-object. Redundant bits are those

bits that can be modified without corrupting the quality or destroying the
integrity of the cover-object.

Embedding process then selects the subset of the redundant bits to be

replaced with data from a secret message. The stego-object is created by
replacing the selected redundant bits with message bits

3.SOFTWARE REQUIREMENT ANALYSIS

3.1 General Methodology of Developing Software

Project
The general methodology in developing a system in involved in different phases, which
describe the systems life cycle model for developing software project. The concept includes
not only forward motion but also have the possibility to return that is cycle back to an activity
previously completed. This cycle back or feedback may occur as a result of the failure with
the system to meet a performance objective or as a result of changes in redefinition of system
activities. Like most systems that life cycle of the computer-based system also exhibits
distinct phases.

Those are,

1. Requirement Analysis Phase

2. Design Phase
3. Development Phase
4. Coding Phase
5. Testing Phase

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Secure steganography to send secret message

3.1.1 Requirement Analysis Phase

This phase includes the identification of the problem, in order to identify the problem; we
have to know information about the problem, the purpose of the evaluation for problem to be
known. We have to clearly know about the clients requirements and the objectives of the
project.

3.1.2 Design Phase

Software design is a process through which the requirements are translated into a
representation of software. One of the software requirements have been analyzed and
specified, the software design involves three technical activities: design, coding generation
and testing. The design of the system is in modular form i.e. the software is logically
partitioned into components that perform specific functions and sub functions. The design
phase leads to modules that exhibit independent functional characteristics.

It even leads to interfaces that reduce the complexity of the connections between
modules and with the external environment. The design phase is of main importance because
in this activity, decisions ultimately affect the success of software implementation and
maintenance.

3.1.3 Development Phase

The development phase includes choosing of suitable software to solve the particular problem
given. The various facilities and the sophistication in the selected software give a better
development of the problem.

3.1.4 Coding Phase

The coding phase is for translating the design of the system-produced during the design phase
into code in a given programming language, which can be executed by a computer and which
performs the computation specified by the design.

3.1.5 Testing Phase

Testing is done in various ways such as testing the algorithm, programming code; sample data
debugging is also one of following the above testing. We are using the virtual android device
to test the android application. Same tool is used to debug the application. Otherwise we can
user a portable android smart phone to test the application.

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Secure steganography to send secret message

3.2 Required Software and hardware for the

development
We need the following software as well as hardware for developing and testing the android
application.

3.2.1 Software and Plug-ins

MATLAB R2009 b

3.2.2 Hardware / Testing Device

Processor: Preferably 1.0 GHz or Greater.

RAM : 512 MB or Greater.

3.2.3 MatLab
MATLAB (matrix laboratory) is a numerical computing environment and fourth-generation
programming language. Developed by MathWorks, MATLAB allows matrix manipulations,
plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creation of user interfaces, and
interfacing with programs written in other languages, including C, C++, Java, and Fortran.

Although MATLAB is intended primarily for numerical computing, an optional toolbox uses
the MuPAD symbolic engine, allowing access to symbolic computing capabilities. An
additional package, Simulink, adds graphical multi-domain simulation and Model-Based
Design for dynamic and embedded systems.

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Secure steganography to send secret message

4.PROJECT LOGIC DESCRIPTION

Over the past few years, numerous steganography techniques that embed hidden messages in
multimedia objects have been proposed. There have been many techniques for hiding
information or messages in images in such a manner that alteration made to the image is
perceptually indiscernible. Commonly approaches are include LSB, Masking and filtering and
Transform techniques.

Least significant bit (LSB) insertion is a simple approach to embedding information

in image file. The simplest steganography techniques embed the bits of the message directly
into least significant bit plane of the cover-image in a deterministic sequence. Modulating the
least significant bit does not result in human perceptible difference because the amplitude of
the change is small. In this technique, the embedding capacity can be increased by using two
or more least significant bits. At the same time, not only the risk of making the embedded
message statistically detectable increase but also the image fidelity degrades. Hence a variable
size LSB embedding schema is presented, in which the number of LSBs used for message
embedding/extracting depends on the local characteristics of the pixel. The advantage of
LSB-based method is easy to implement and high message pay-load.

Although LSB hides the message in such way that the humans do not perceive it, it is
still possible for the opponent to retrieve the message due to the simplicity of the technique.
Therefore, malicious people can easily try to extract the message from the beginning of the
image if they are suspicious that there exists secret information that was embedded in the
image.

Therefore, a system named Secure Information Hiding System (SIHS) is proposed to

improve the LSB scheme. It overcomes the sequence-mapping problem by embedding the
massage into a set of random pixels, which are scattered on the cover-image.

Masking and filtering techniques, usually restricted to 24 bits and gray scale image,
hide information by marking an image, in a manner similar to paper watermarks. The
technique perform analysis of the image, thus embed the information in significant areas so
that the hidden message is more integral to cover image than just hiding it in the noise level.

Transform techniques embed the message by modulating coefficient in a transform

domain, such as the Discrete Fourier Transform, or Wavelet Transform. These methods hide
messages in significant areas of the cover image, which make them more robust to attack.
Transformations can be applied over the entire image, to block throughout the image, or other
variant.

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Secure steganography to send secret message

4.1 LSB Algorithm:

Step 1: Convert the data from decimal to binary.

Step 2: Read Cover Image

Step 3: Convert the Cover Image from decimal to binary.

Step 4: Break the byte to be hidden into bits.

Step 5: Take first 8 byte of original data from the Cover Image.

Step 6: Replace the least significant bit by one bit of the data to be hidden.

4.2 Image Steganography and bitmap pictures:

Using bitmap pictures for hiding secret information is one of most popular choices for
Steganography. Many types of software built for this purpose, some of these software use
password protection to encrypting information on picture. To use these software you must
have a BMP format of a pictures to use it, but using other type of pictures like JPEG,
GIF or any other types is rather or never used, because of algorithm of BMP pictures for
Steganography is simple. Also we know that in the web most popular of image types are
JPEG and other types not BPM, so we should have a solution for this problem.

This software provide the solution of this problem, it can accept any type of image to hide
information file, but finally it give the only BMP image as an output that has hidden file
inside it.

4.3 Bitmap Steganography

Bitmap type is the simplest type of picture because that it doesnt have any technology for
decreasing file size. Structure of these files is that a bitmap image created from pixels that any
pixel created from three colors ( red, green and blue said RGB) each color of a pixel is one
byte information that shows the density of that color. Merging these three color makes every
color that we see in these pictures.

As with any other science, steganography has its own set of terminology. The term
cover is used to describe the original message in which we will hide our secret message.
Once we embed our secret message into the cover, the new message is known as the stego
data. The stego data is analogous the cipher text of cryptography.

A generic steganographic system, or stegosystem, works thusly. A secret message is

embedded into the cover data using some sort of embedding algorithm. The cover data may
be a single file, but that is not necessarily the case. The embedding algorithm then outputs the
stego data. There is, however, a minor detail that needs to be added to the system. Recall

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Secure steganography to send secret message

Kerckhoffs principle, which states that the security of a system should not be based on the
obscurity of the algorithm, but on the strength of its key. Therefore the embedding algorithm
should require a key as an input. Additionally it is advisable to encrypt the secret message
prior to embedding it.

Though embedding algorithms may take many forms, there are some requirements
that all embedding algorithms should meet. Firstly, the distortion of the cover data as a result
of the embedding algorithm should be as imperceptible as possible. Secondly, no part of the
secret message should be contained in the header of the stego data file. The message must
become part of the cover data and should be immune to manipulation attacks such as re-
sampling or filtering. Ideally, it would also be a good idea to include error correcting codes
into the message so that if the stego data is damaged, the message can still be recovered.
Finally, it is imperative that the original cover data never fall into the hands of an
eavesdropper or be used twice. Since the embedding process is additive, the secret message
can be recovered if an eavesdropper has different stego files which utilize the same cover
data.

We will now explore some of the more popular techniques for embedding messages into
cover.

LSB modification is perhaps the most popular method to embed a message into cover data.
As its name suggests, this method works by modifying the least significant bit of one of the
RGB values of the pixel data. The secret message data is then scattered pseudo-randomly
across the image. This technique is analogous to the spread spectrum communication
technique of frequency hopping.

This method is quite effective against human detection because it is difficult for the
human eye to discern an LSB modified pixel. Also, any modifications that are made could
easily be attributed to noise that may already be contained in the image. However,
computer generated images, such as those generated by vector drawing applications like
Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Flash, do not contain much noise and would therefore make
a poor choice as cover data.

While 24-bit true-color RGB data formats are best suited for LSB modification, it is possible
to use this method with 8-bit color-index data formats. This can be tricky, however, because
the palette is much smaller and pixel luminescence variation may be much greater and more
easily detected. Therefore, it is wise to attempt LSB modification with a grayscale or
monochromatic cover image.

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Secure steganography to send secret message

There are, however, problems with LSB modification. For one, this method will only work
with raw image data. Lossy image compression formats, such as JPEG, do not store images
in an RGB format and are therefore not as forgiving to simple bit manipulation. Another
problem with LSB manipulation is that if the stego data is compressed with a lossy
compression algorithm, the secret message may be destroyed.

Steganography is the science of hiding secret messages within an otherwise normal, innocent
medium. Steganography has long been in use, even before the invention of the computer. For
example, warring nations used invisible ink and microdots to communicate messages
covertly. However, computer technology has taken steganography to the next level.
Nowadays, messages are typically hidden within digital images, video and audio. This paper
focuses on one particular popular technique, Least Significant Bit (LSB) Embedding, using
digital images as the medium. The terminology is that a message is hidden within a cover
image to produce a stego-image. First, the choice of a good cover image is discussed. Then,
variations of LSB Embedding are detailed. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of LSB
Embedding are summarized.

The concept of LSB Embedding is simple. It exploits the fact that the level of
precision in many image formats is far greater than that perceivable by average human vision.
Therefore, an altered image with slight variations in its colors will be indistinguishable from
the original by a human being, just by looking at it. By using the least significant bits of the
pixels color data to store the hidden message, the image itself will seem unaltered.

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Secure steganography to send secret message

5. SYSTEM ANALYSIS & DESIGN

Steganography system requires any type of image file and the information or message that is
to be hidden. It has two modules encrypt and decrypt.

The algorithm used for Encryption and Decryption in this application provides using
several layers lieu of using only LSB layer of image. Writing data starts from last layer (8st or
LSB layer); because significant of this layer is least and every upper layer has doubled
significant from its down layer. So every step we go to upper layer image quality decreases
and image retouching transpires.

The encrypt module is used to hide information into the image; no one can see that
information or file. This module requires any type of image and message and gives the only
one image file in destination.

The decrypt module is used to get the hidden information in an image file. It take the image
file as an output, and give two file at destination folder, one is the same image file and another
is the message file that is hidden it that.

Before encrypting file inside image we must save name and size of file in a definite place of
image. We could save file name before file information in LSB layer and save file size and
file name size in most right-down pixels of image. Writing this information is needed to
retrieve file from encrypted image in decryption state.

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Secure steganography to send secret message

The graphical representation of this system is as follows:

Start Application

Encryption Decryption

Image Message file Image file

BMP image file

Figure 5 .1Procedure of Steganography

In the encryption process the system will do the following process:

Combine the image file and the message file.

The combined image will then further compressed and converted to

Bitmap image or bitmap file.

Then the encrypted image will be sent to the receiver.

In the decryption process the system will do the following steps:

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Secure steganography to send secret message

The receiver will collect the encrypted Bitmap image and decrypt it.

After decryption there are two files biz image file and text(message
file)

Then the reader will get the full message.

5.1 Encryption Process

IMAGE FILE INFORMATION FILE

BMP FILE

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Secure steganography to send secret message

Figure 5.2 Encryption Process

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Secure steganography to send secret message

5.2 Decryption Process

BMP FILE

INFORMATION FILE IMAGE

FILE

Figure 5.3 Decryption Process

6.FLOW DIAGRAM

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Secure steganography to send secret message

Figure 6.1 Flow Diagram of the project

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 Secure steganography to send secret message

7. MODULAR VIEW

Secure Steganography

Encryption Decryption

Select the cover image

file Load the encrypted image
file
Select the text file or
write the message Decrypt image file

Construct encrypted Save the text / read the

image file message

Save image file

Figure 7.1 Modular Diagram of Project

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Secure steganography to send secret message

8.FUTURE WORK TO BE DONE

Design the interface user interface of the software

Implement the coding part

Testing and debugging of the software

Publishing of the software

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Secure steganography to send secret message

9. References

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Digital
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