FEDERAL POLYTECHNIC NEKEDE OWERRI

P.M.B 1036

OWERRI, IMO STATE

IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY

WRITTEN BY

NAME: ANOSIKE UGOCHI MARGRET

REG. NO: 20EH/0069/CS

LEVEL: HND II EVENING

COURSE: SEMINAR

COURSE CODE: COM 427

DEPT: COMPUTER SCIENCE

SCHOOL: INFORMATION & COMMUNICATION TECH

SUPERVISOR: MR. SUNDAY PRINCE

DECEMBER, 2022.

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 Abstract

The security related to data over the internet has become a major issue. I became motivated by the fact that
when encrypted messages are transmitted, it is easy for unauthorized users to intercept and decipher the
hidden information meant for the intended recipient. The objective of this paper therefore is to introduce
image steganography as a solution that will deceive unauthorized users from knowing that a hidden message
in embedded in a transmitted media.
Keywords: Steganography, Image steganography, information communication technology (ICT).

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1.0 INTRODUCTION

Steganography is simply the art of hiding the fact that communication is taking place. This is
achieved by hiding information in other information. There are many different carrier file formats
which can be used, however the most popular of this carrier formats are digital images, because of
their frequency on the internet.

Theft of information during communication and transmission is currently on the rise. This is often
performed by intruders, most often called hackers. It is often easy for these intruders to access these
information and they can be quite successful because most the information they retrieve from a
system is in a form that they can read and comprehend. Very often, the problem is not just with the
stolen information but what these intruders may likely do with it. They may reveal the information
to others or modify it to misrepresent an individual or organization. The worst thing that can happen
is if these intruders use the stolen information to launch an attack either on the individual or
organization it was stolen from. This problem can be solved through steganography. Steganography
is a technique use to hide information in digital media. It is different from cryptography because it is
used to keep others from knowing that there exists hidden information in a transmitted document.

The importance and relevance of Steganography is evident as more people join the cyberspace
revolution. It is the art of concealing information in ways that prevents the detection of hidden
messages. To achieve this, an array of secret communication methods that hide the message from
being seen or discovered is used.

Major advances in ICT have caused most of information to be kept electronically. In recent times,
the security of information has become a fundamental issue. Apart from cryptography,
steganography can be employed to secure information (Muthulakshmi et al, 2016). Cryptography
secures a message by encryption. The encrypted message is then embedded in a digital host before it
is passed through the network, in which case the existence of the message is unknown. In addition
to hiding data for confidentiality, this approach of information hiding can be extended to copyright
protection for digital media: audio, video and images. (AnkitaSawant, 2015).

Modern communications are faced with vast growing possibilities and these possibilities need
special means of security to secure communications 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 requirements to protect against
unauthorized access and use. This has resulted in an explosive growth of the field of information
hiding.

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1.1 MOTIVATION

The motivation for choosing this paper was due to the following reasons

i. The unfamiliarity of the word steganography which sparked an ambitious interest to learn
something new.
ii. The protection of digital media through steganography such that even if the hacker (or
intruder) gets access to our multimedia data, he still cannot access the actual data which is
still under his nose. This is an aspect that makes it more interesting.
iii. The privacy of information transmitted over the World Wide Web.

iv. The necessity for practical higher dimensional data hiding codes.

v. Adjusting trade-off between robustness and imperceptibility by practical means.

vi. The thrill in designing an end-to-end real-life visual application to hide data covertly.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

There are many techniques for hiding data which generally borders on encryption. The interesting
thing however is that encrypted data arouses suspicions and curiosity and which attracts hackers.
The problem currently is not just on how to hide data and make it impossible to be intercepted and
decrypted, it is on how to hide data in plain sight and make it impossible for hackers or intruders to
identify that there is a secret communication taking place. Using steganography, information can be
hidden in carriers such as images, audio files, text files, videos and data transmission. In this project,
I propose a new technique to hide digital text in an image using image steganography.

1.3 AIM AND OBJECTIVES

The aim of this paper is to identify the different types of steganographic techniques that will reliably
secure data or information sent from one point to another.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

1.4 INTRODUCTION

Data security arose because of the need to secure sensitive information from unauthorized access.
Data security refers to the process of protecting data from unauthorized access and data corruption
throughout its lifecycle. It includes data encryption, tokenization, and key management practices
that protect data across all applications and platforms.

If internet and information technology has made our lives simpler, it has also given birth to a
number of security-based threats. Therefore, it has become equally important to protect your crucial
data and other information with appropriate data security techniques and data privacy. However, the
first task at hand is identifying the confidential data that you want to protect from getting leaked out.
This identification can only be made after you have carefully completed the auditing. Once you
have understood the data security meaning, your next job is to get a methodical understanding of
which portions of your data are vulnerable and needs a definite protection.

The hackers, the phishers, and the pharmers have become quite smart these days and so you need to
be smarter than them to nullify any risk factors that exist. Data security techniques highlight all the
vital steps comprehensively that needs to be taken to keep your information secure and intact.

Hiding data from unauthorized access or making it appear to be unreadable comes from the word
cryptography. Cryptography according to Rivest, Ronald L. (1990), is defined as the practice and
study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties called adversaries. It is
more generally about constructing and analyzing protocols that prevent third parties or the public
from reading private messages. Various aspects of information security such as data confidentiality,
data integrity, authentication and non-repudiation are central to modern cryptography.
Steganography is an aspect of cryptography used for secure communication.

Steganography is the practice of hiding private or sensitive information within something that
appears to be nothing out to the usual. Steganography is often confused with cryptology because the
two are similar in the way that they both are used to protect important information. The difference
between two is that steganography involves hiding information so it appears that no information is
hidden at all. If a person or persons views the object that the information is hidden inside of he or
she will have no idea that there is any hidden information, therefore the person will not attempt to
decrypt the information.

What steganography essentially does is exploit human perception, human senses are not trained to
look for files that have information inside of them, although this software is available that can do
what is called Steganography. The most common use of steganography is to hide a file inside
another file.

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1.4.1 History of Steganography:

Throughout history Steganography has been used to secretly communicate information between
people. The term was first introduced by Johannes Trithemiu in 1499. It is a combination of two
words Stegano and Graptos. Stegano meaning “covered” and Graptos meaning “writing” which
when summed up means “covered writing”. (Er. Munish and Reenu, 2016). Some examples of use
of Steganography in past times are:

1. During World War 2 invisible ink was used to write information on pieces of paper so that the
paper appeared to the average person as just being blank pieces of paper. Liquids such as milk,
vinegar and fruit juices were used, because when each one of these substances are heated they
darken and become visible to the human eye.
2. In Ancient Greece they used to select messengers and shave their head, they would then write a
message on their head. Once the message had been written the hair was allowed to grow back.
After the hair grew back the messenger was sent to deliver the message, the recipient would
shave off the messengers hair to see the secrete message.
3. Another method used in Greece was where someone would peel wax off a tablet that was
covered with beeswax. Information is written directly on the wooden backing of a wax tablet
before applying the beeswax to the surface. (Wikipedia).

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.

Because steganography involves covert communication, it will be out of place to discuss this topic
without talking about communication and data communication. According to N. C Anumihe, 2007,
communication is defined as a social interaction that is actualized through the exchange of messages
and their ascribed meanings. By this definition, exchange of imformation should be accompanied by
its meaning. Therefore the communication must make sense to its intended recipient. In data
communication, digital messages are transmitted to devices external to the message source
(Aguboshim, F.C, 2008). It involves the use of known elements of communication like the source,
channel, message, receiver and feedback. The intended message transmitted by the source will have
to be transmitted through any of the following ways:

i. Through a physical wire that connects the communicating devices

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1.4.2 TYPES OF STEGANOGRAPHIC METHODS

In steganography, two materials which are of paramount importance exist. They are message and
carrier. The message is the secret information which should be protected from unauthorized access
in which case is the hidden data while the carrier is the material used to transmit the hidden
message. The carrier is actually the medium in which the message is hidden for transmission.

Steganographic methods are classified according to the carrier used. Text, image, audio and video
carriers are steganographic methods which can be used to achieve steganography. Below is a figure
that shows a category of file formats which were mentioned earlier as steganographic methods.

Steganography

Text Audio Image

Fig.1 Stegnographic methods

1.5 SYSTEMMETHODOLOGY

The methodology that will be used to develop the aim stated in this paper is the structured
systems analysis and design methodology (SSADM). It is a set of standards for systems analysis
and application design. It uses a formal methodical approach to the analysis and design of
information systems.

1.5.1 TECHNIQUES OF SSADM

There are three most important techniques that are used in SSADM. These techniques are:

i. Logical Data Modeling: This technique involves the process of identifying, modeling and
documenting the data requirements of the system being designed. The data are separated into
entities and relationships.

ii. Data Flow Modeling: This SSADM technique handles activities which involves the process
of identifying, modeling and documenting how data moves around from one form to another. It
clearly analyzes the processes, data stores, external entities and data environment.

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iii. Entity Behaviour Modeling: This technique handles all events that affect each entity and the
sequence in which these events occur.

1.5.2 CHARACTERISTICS OF SSADM

Some of the characteristics of SSADM are

i. Dividing a project into small modules with well defined objectives

ii. Diagrammatic representation and other useful modeling techniques

iii. It is simple and easily understood by clients and developers

iv. It allows activities to be performed in sequence.

1.5.3 WHY I CHOOSE SSADM

I choose SSADM because it builds each step of the work that is prescribed from the previous
step with no deviation from the model. Because of its rigid structure, it maintains control over
projects and makes for the ability to develop better quality systems.

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1.6 CONCLUSION

At the end of this paper work, I intend to develop working software using the waterfall model of
structured software development life cycle that will achieve the goal of covert communication
using image steganography.

1.7 RECOMMENDATION

My recommendation is that this software should be solely used for the purpose for which it was
produced. Not to perpetrate evil and to cause injury or to commit crime but to achieve secret
communication only when the information is sensitive. I equally recommend that this software
be used for educational purpose to teach Computer Science and Information Communication
Technology (ICT) students how to implement image steganography.

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 REFERENCES

Aguboshim, Felix C. (2008). Data Communication and Network Technology.

AnkitaSawant, VishakhaDarji, AnishaShetty (2015). Data hiding in encrypted images.

Aqsa Rashid and Muhammad Khurrum R., (2016). Critical analysis of steganography “an art of
writing”.pdf

Data Security (2019).Retrieved from https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/what-is/data-security.

Er. Munish K., and Reenu J, (2016). Image Steganography review.pdf

Muthulakshmi P, Shathvi K, Aarthi M, Seethalakshmi V. (2016). Encrypted image with hidden data
using AES Algorithm.

Nnamdi, Anumihe (2007). Communication theories and practice.

Steganography (2019).Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography. Accessed

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