International Journal of Innovations & Advancement in Computer Science

IJIACS
ISSN 2347 – 8616
Volume 4, Issue2
February 2015

Comparative Study of Steganography Tools

Vidya V Shoney Sebastian
MCA Student Associate Professor
Department of computer Science Department of Computer Science
Christ University Christ University

Abstract— This paper intends to perform a detailed comparison of different tools that are used for
image steganography. Image steganography, which is the art of hiding secret data within the images,
can be performed using different software tools available. These software tools use different
steganography algorithms to perform the operation. Steganography hides the fact that the
communication is taking place by hiding the secret data within a carrier file whereas cryptography is
a technique that encrypts the secret data during communication. Steganography along with
cryptography is more secured data hiding technique and is thus used in many software tools. The
paper aims at comparing the properties of the stego image of a carrier file produced from different
tools. The steganography methods are experimented and their results are analyzed. Different
measures of the stego images such as peak signal to noise ratio, mean squared error etc. are
compared and are graphically represented. Thus the paper provides comparison of the different
steganography tools.
KEYWORDS:-Carrier file, stego image, steganography, LSB, PSNR, MSE, steganalysis.

I. INTRODUCTION
Security of data can be defined as the major requirement in the modern era of information
technology. Maintaining the secrecy of information is considered to be one of the major challenges
in the process of data communication. Securing the data ensures the security of communication, but
more the security will be if the process of communication itself is hidden. Cryptography and
steganography are the most commonly used two techniques to keep the message secret during
communication [1]. When cryptography encrypts the data to hide the information during
communication, steganography is the technique which hides the fact that the communication itself is
taking place. Steganography is thus the science of hiding data [2]. It can be defined as the process in
which the information that is to be hidden is stored in the redundant bits of the cover medium
(medium within which the data is hidden) and produces the stego medium (the medium produced
after steganography). The different cover mediums used for the process of steganography are text,
images, video etc. One of the commonly used medium for steganography is image. This paper
intends to provide a detailed comparison on the different tools used for image steganography. The
performance of these open source software are compared to find the best image steganography tool
available.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives a review of existing Steganography
algorithms and Steganography tools. Section 3 describes the features of the Steganography tools
selected for comparison. The methodology used in this paper is described in section 4. The
experimental results are discussed in Section 5 and the conclusion of the work is discussed in section
6.

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 International Journal of Innovations & Advancement in Computer Science
IJIACS
ISSN 2347 – 8616
Volume 4, Issue2
February 2015

II. RELATED WORK

In order to analyse the basic features of steganography different papers and websites are referred and
a detailed study of steganography algorithms, tools and measures are done.
STEGANOGRAPHY ALGORITHMS
The study of different steganography tools indicates that it works with different algorithms and the
commonly used steganography algorithms are LSB method, DES, AES, battlesteg, blindhide,
blowfish, SLSB, hideseek, filter first, dynamic filter first, dynamic battlesteg etc.
LSB method: It is a method in which data to be hidden is stored in the LSB of the cover image [3].
The paper [4] discusses a new LSB technique which uses a secret key. In this new technique, the
hidden data is inserted at the least significant bit of the bytes depending on the secret key.
DES: This symmetric encryption technique uses 56 bit key and its converts 64 bit input data to 64 bit
output. This encryption technique is then replaced by AES method. This method is found to be easily
attacked [4].
Blowfish : It is a symmetric encryption method which uses a variable length key [32-448 bit], which
helps in securing the data and it is considered to be secured encryption technique .
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES): It is symmetric cipher method in which a same key is used
for both encryption and decryption. It allows different key lengths 128, 192 or 256 bits and the
encryption process includes 10, 12, 14 rounds respectively for the key lengths [5].
STEGANOGRAPHY TOOLS
Different papers and websites discuss about the various steganography tools. The paper [6] does a
detailed comparative study of various tools used for steganography. Detailed comparison of the tools
invisible secrets, hermit stego, puffer, Stella, revelations, S-tools etc. are done in the paper. Some of
the steganography tools are defined below -:

QuickStego, QuickCrypto :QuickStego is windows based program which lets you hide data within
an image whereas QuickCryptro is advanced software which encrypts the secret data before hiding it
in the image and thus improves the security of secret data [7].
OpenPuff , Open stego :OpenPuff is a portable steganography and marking software with different
data encryption options. It can conceal a text file, image or other files of 256 MB. Open stego is a
very simple software that performs data hiding and water marking [8] [9].
Hide and seek : This is one of the older methods and it is carried out by taking the lower order pit of
each pixel and using it to encode one bit of the character in the secret data [4] [6].
The other tools used for steganography are Stego PNG, Steganography studio, Stella, Revelations, S-
tools .
There are different approaches used for the purpose of hiding data within an image. In order to
identify different measures with which the steganography output images are measured different
papers are referred. In the paper [10] the evaluation measures of stego image is discussed. MSE and
PSNR are the two measures commonly used to compare the image compression quality. PSNR (peak
signal to noise ratio) represents the peak error and MSE (mean squared error) represents the
cumulative squared error. PSNR is calculated from MSE and larger the PSNR value larger will be the
quality of the image and smaller will be the possibility of attack by human eye.
The formula for calculating MSE is

Vidya V, Shoney Sebastian

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 International Journal of Innovations & Advancement in Computer Science
IJIACS
ISSN 2347 – 8616
Volume 4, Issue2
February 2015

PSNR can thus be defined as

III. PROPOSED WORK

There are varieties of software available to perform image steganography and this appear intends to
compare the following given five tools of steganography using the various steganographic measures.
The tools used are QuickStego, QuickCrypto, Open Stego, Stego png, Steganography Studio
QUICKSTEGO
QuickStego [7] is the open source software developed by Cyberscience to perform the concept of
hiding a secret text message within an image. The basic operation performed by QuickStego is image
steganography. The cover medium that can be used in the software is an image file of formats jpeg,
jpg or bmp. User friendly interface of QuickStego provides basic options such as open image file,
hide text, get text from the hidden file etc.

Working of QuickStego :-QuickStego accepts jpeg (.jpg) images as the cover medium (source file).
The output of the steganography process produces a stego medium in the form of a BMP file. As jpeg
files are in the compressed mode, the size of the source file will be small, but since bitmap pictures
are uncompressed the size of the bitmap files are much larger than a jpeg file.
QUICKCRYPTO
QuickCrypto is the software which implements the concept of improving the security of
communication by combining the two techniques called cryptography and steganography. When
cryptography encrypts the data to ensure security, steganography hides the channel with which the
communication is taking place. QuickCrypto is thus a security software product which hides the fact
that communication is taking place as well as encrypts the data to be hidden and so is the name
QuickCrypto. It can be considered as an improved and advanced version of QuickStego. The fact that
the hidden data is as well as encrypted makes the software a perfect tool for covert communication.
OPEN STEGO
Open stego [9] can be defined as a free steganography software that performs image steganography
in the most simple manner. It is the software that is developed purely in java and so is it supported by
all the java platforms. The software uses DES algorithm for password based data encryption and
MD5 hashing technique is used for the derivation of key. The software provides two major tabs in
their interface known as hide data and extract data
As the name implies, the option hide data is used to hide data within a cover file. This process
follows the following simple steps such as selecting message file, selecting cover file ,output stego
file and provide the passwords.
Extract data is the option provided by the software to decrypt the data which is hidden using the
software. The process involves the following steps selecting the input stego file and output folder for
the message file. The software is very user friendly, simple and freeware. It also provides digital
watermarking options.

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 International Journal of Innovations & Advancement in Computer Science
IJIACS
ISSN 2347 – 8616
Volume 4, Issue2
February 2015

STEGANOGRAPHY STUDIO
Steganography studio [6] is the complete steganography software developed in java which helps in
analyzing the best steganography algorithms. The software is usable in any operating system and it
implements variety of steganography algorithms with a variety of filters. The major advantage of this
software is that, it could be used to analyze and compare the best steganography algorithms or
methods. The software provides steganography using the following algorithms:-Battlesteg,
Blindhide, SLSB, Hideseek, Filter first, Dynamic filter firstand Dynamic battlesteg. Steganography
studio also provides the option to encode, decode, simulate, analyse.

A feature that differentiates this software from the rest of the software discussed in the paper is the
fact that it provides different tools to compare the original file and the stego file. The following
analysis methods can be performed using the software.
Steganalysis : Steganalysis performs a RS analysis where in the pixels of the image is statistically
analyzed to detect the hidden image. The percentage of RGB in the overlapping and non-overlapping
group is analyzed statistically in the method and the average is computed.
Benchmark : Benchmarking technique used in the software analyses the average absolute
difference, mean squared error, peak signal noise, correlation value etc. of the original and the cover
image.
Histogram : The ratio of the RGB components, saturation, brightness etc. of the original and cover
image is generated in the form of histogram.
STEGO PNG
Stego png [11] is the software that is used to encrypt and hide data in png or bmp file. It is a very
simple windows program which helps to hide data within an image, and the file could be a ext file,
MS word document or an excel spreadsheet. The algorithm used for developing the software is
considered to be more secured than other steganography programs due to the reason that data is
inserted in the image in random way. Insertion of data is basically dependant on a key (same key is
used for encryption process as well). Bits of image file are modified to insert the data within the
image file. In order to compensate this modification, other bits of the image files are also changed
accordingly and thus the properties of the image are not altered. The randomized data insertion using
key increases the security of the steganography. The software also provides option to add
‘watermark’ to the images.The encryption key must be of length 16 to 64 characters and the
checksum value of the key is displayed immediately. It helps the user to check the error while typing
the encryption key. If same key is used for many encryptions it generates the same checksum value
and thus helps the user to ensure the key value while typing.
IV. METHODOLOGY USED
In order to compare the performance and efficiency of different steganography tools, a particular
data is hidden within an image using different tools. The steganography software QuickStego,
QuickCrypto, Open stego, Stego png and Steganography studio are installed and image
steganography is performed in each of these software.
An input file (image file) of specified format is selected and the data (text, image) is hidden within
the image. The output files obtained from each of the software are studied and analysed to compare
the performance of the software.The size of the output file, means squared error, average absolute
difference, peak signal to noise ratio etc. are the various measures used to perform steganalysis. The

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 International Journal of Innovations & Advancement in Computer Science
IJIACS
ISSN 2347 – 8616
Volume 4, Issue2
February 2015

steganography studio provides an option to compare the original image with the stego image. Using
steganography studio, a detailed comparison is performed.
An input file (image file) of specified format is selected and the data (text, image) is hidden within
the image. The output files obtained from each of the software are studied and analyzed to compare
the performance of the software.The size of the output file, means squared error, average absolute
difference, peak signal to noise ratio etc. are the various measures used to perform steganalysis. The
steganography studio provides an option to compare the original image with the stego image. Using
steganography studio, a detailed comparison is performed.
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULT
Consider the image given below:

Fig 1 : m1.jpg
Image size: 8.99 KB
Format : .jpg file
Secret text: Steganography is the technique of hiding private or sensitive information within
something that appears to be nothing out of the usual.
Original image + secret text = stego image
The image (Fig 1) is used as the cover image and the secret text is stored within it using different
algorithms.
Software 1 : QuickStego
Output Features:-
Size : 147 KB
Format : .bmp file
Avg Absolute Difference : 0.015476001271455818
Mean Squared Error : 0.03176652892561983
Peak Signal to Noise Ratio : 72.34142960843042 dB
Correlation Quality : 150.90888948447636
Software 2 : QuickCrypto
Output Features:-
Size : 13.4 KB
Format : .jpg file
Avg Absolute Difference : 0.0
Mean Squared Error : 0.0
Peak Signal to Noise Ratio : 0.0 dB
Correlation Quality : 150.90898579324713
Software 3 : Openstego
Output Features:-
Size : 70.3 KB
Format : .bmp file
Avg Absolute Difference : 0.012396694214876033
Mean Squared Error : 0.012436427209154482

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 International Journal of Innovations & Advancement in Computer Science
IJIACS
ISSN 2347 – 8616
Volume 4, Issue2
February 2015

Peak Signal to Noise Ratio : 76.41417091378847 dB

Correlation Quality : 150.90841220836722
Software 4 : Steganography studio
Output Features:-
Size : 70.3 KB
Format : .bmp file
Avg Absolute Difference : 0.011224570883661793
Mean Squared Error : 0.01333041958041958
Peak Signal to Noise Ratio : 76.11268904420284 dB
Correlation Quality : 150.90821133985273

GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION
The following are the graphical representations of the comparison results.

Fig 2 shows the difference in the size of stego file generated in different software.

Fig 2: Size comparison grap

The size of stego image produced from Quickstego is much larger than other stego images and the
least sized stego image is produced by Quickcrypto.
Fig 3 shows the difference in Mean squared error value in different output files

Fig 3: MSE comparison graph

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 International Journal of Innovations & Advancement in Computer Science
IJIACS
ISSN 2347 – 8616
Volume 4, Issue2
February 2015

Fig 4 shows the difference in peak signal to noise ratio in different output files.

Fig 4: PSNR comparison graph

It can be analysed that the largest PSNR value is generated from the software open stego(76.41 db)
and so larger is the quality of stego image produced.
Fig 5 shows the difference in average absolute difference in different output files.
Average absolute difference is the mean difference of two independent values drawn from a
distribution. It can be analysed from the graph that the avg absolute difference between the original
and cover image is maximum for the software Quickstego (0.0154)
Fig 6 shows the difference in correlation quality.

Fig 6: Correlation quality comparison graph

Fig 5: Avg absolute difference comparison graph

Correlation quality values of the output files falls in the same range ( approximately 150.9 ).

Vidya V, Shoney Sebastian

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 International Journal of Innovations & Advancement in Computer Science
IJIACS
ISSN 2347 – 8616
Volume 4, Issue2
February 2015

COMPARISON TABLE
The Table - 1 provides detailed comparison of the software based on the various features.
TABLE-1

Features QuickSte QuickCryp Openste Steganography Steg png

go to go studio
Operating Windows Windows Windows Windows, Linux Windows
system XP,Vista,7 XP,Vista,7, ,Linux
,8 8
Source files bmp, jpeg, bmp, jpeg,
bmp, gif, Bmp, png, gif Bmp, png
gif gif, jpg, jpeg,
pdf, png,
doc,
text wbmp
Technology Steganogr Cryptograp
Steganog steganography Steganography,
used aphy hy and
raphy cryptography and
steganograp
and watermarking
hy watermar
king
Availability Freeware Not free Freeware Freeware Not free
Algorithms Alters the AES, Triple DES Battlesteg, Encryption using key
used to hide pixels of DES, algorith Blindhide, SLSB,
data the image, Blowfish m,MD5 Hideseek,
encodes hashing Filter first, Dynamic
secret data techniqu filter first, Dynamic
by adding e battlesteg
small
color
variations.
Features Hides text Encrypts Hides Hides data within an Hides files(txt, image)
within text, files, text image within an image
image folders. within an
image
Output file Bitmap Overwrites Bitmap file Bitmap or png file
file the same
file
VI. CONCLUSION
The paper presented a comparative study on the various tools used for image steganography. The
experiment result shows that depending on the algorithm used for image steganography the efficiency,
quality and noise rate of the stego image varies. Each of the software discussed above uses different
algorithm and the efficiency of the algorithm determines the efficiency of the software. MSE and
PSNR are used as a measure to determine the quality of the stego image and the value of PSNR
analysed reveals that the software that are discussed above have a similar performance level. The
quality of the image measured defines the level of security ensured by the steganography methods and
it succeeds in the process of hiding the fact that communication is taking place.

Vidya V, Shoney Sebastian

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 International Journal of Innovations & Advancement in Computer Science
IJIACS
ISSN 2347 – 8616
Volume 4, Issue2
February 2015

References
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IJCSNS International 18 Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, April 2011.
[2] F. Hartung and M. Kutte "Information hiding-a survey, "Proceedings of the IEEE: Special Issue
on Identification and Protection of Multimedia Content, Volume: 87 Issue:7, pp. I062-I078, July.
1999.
[3] Namita Tiwari and Dr.Madhu Shandilya “Evaluation of Various LSB based Methods of Image
Steganography on GIF File Format” International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887).
[4] S. M. Masud Karim, Md. Saifur Rahman and Md. Ismail Hossain “A New Approach for LSB
Based Image Steganography using Secret Key” International Conference on Computer and
Information Technology (ICCIT 201 I).
[5] Jawahar Thakur and Nagesh Kumar “DES, AES and Blowfish: Symmetric Key Cryptography
Algorithms Simulation Based Performance Analysis” International Journal of Emerging Technology
and Advanced Engineering
[6] Akram M. Zeki , Adamu A. Ibrahim Azizah A. Manaf and shahidan M. Abdullah “Comparative
Study of Different Steganographic Techniques”
[7]“Quickstegosoftware”http://www.QuickCrypto.com/free-steganography-software.html
[8] “Openpuff v4.00 steganography & watermarking “ http:// embeddedsw.net /doc/
OpenPuff_Help_EN.pdf
[9]”Openstego features” http://www.openstego.info/features.html
[10]Naitik P Kamdar, Dipesh G. Kamdar and Dharmesh N.khandhar “Performance Evaluation of
LSB based Steganography for optimization of PSNR and MSE” Journal of information, knowledge
and research in electronics and communication engineering.
[11]“Stego png” http://www.hermetic.ch/stpng/stpng.h

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