Steganography – An overview of Image Steganography using

LSB Methodology
S. Kaviseshan1, M. Thushitharan
1
Faculty of Computing, Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology, Malabe; 2 Faculty of Computing, Sri Lanka Institute of Information
Technology, Malabe

ABSTRACT
Steganography is a new growing technology in cyber security to protect secret or sensitive information from malicious
users. Early days we used encryptions and decryptions to protect sensitive information. Now a days steganography is
the latest technology to hide information. We can hide the secret information in the non-secret or ordinary files. And
this secret message will be got in the destination. By using steganography without any idea, we can send the secret
message to the receiver. We can send the secret messages in normal files like word or excel files or we can attach our
secret message in picture, and we can send it to the destination, and he also can get the secret message from that image.
We have developed a steganography tool for Information Security Project module. By using this tool, we can hide the
secret message within the “.png” type digital images and we can send that image with secret message, and we can use
this tool and we can separately find the secret message by using that tool. To hide secret message inside the image we
use a function call Encode and we have used a function call Decode to get the secret message from the image in that
tool. When we decode the secret message from the image it will show the base 64 encoded form and we can use online
decode tools and we can get the original form and this tool will run on both Linux and Windows environments.

INDEX TERMS:
Steganography, encryption, decryption, encode, decode, base64, security, LSB, Pixel, value, binary.

1. INTRODUCTION
and protection for sending secret message than using only
Now a days cyber security is the most talking topic in
steganography and using Cryptography alone.
the world. And Information is the most valuable asset in
To develop this Steganography tool, we have use
everywhere. To protect information from cyber threats,
python language and Linux operating System Environment
cyber security specialists are working on it. The basic of
and later on it we have applied it in Windows
information protection is came from the encryptions and
environments, and it succussed in Windows environment
decryptions. Here we changed our clear text to cipher text
also. Now this tool will work on both Linux and Windows
(encrypted text) by using encryption key then send it to the
environment. By using this tool, we can hide the secret
receiver and then they will decrypt the cipher text by using
message in the particular image or picture, and we can get
the key. This methodology developed and now it is in its
the secr3et message in the base 64 format by decode the
new evolution that is Steganography.
picture. After getting the secret message in the base 64
Steganography is a new technology to transfer or hide
format we can decode the message by using the online
secret message inside the non-secret files or ordinary files.
tools. After hide the message in the picture in this tool and
By hiding secret or sensitive information in non-secret or
we can send the image through Email, WhatsApp and
ordinary file attackers or others do not get doubt, or they do
Receiver can decode the secret message by using this tool.
not get any idea of it. We can send our secret message by
When it comes to WhatsApp, we have to send the image as
using this steganography technology. For the ordinary file
document file only it will work. If we send as image
we can use a simple picture or images or video file or audio
WhatsApp will remove the meta data from it because of its
file. We hide the secret message, and we can send the
security architecture. So, if we send in WhatsApp as image,
picture to the particular person and that person can get the
we can get the secret message. We can develop this tool
secret message from that image. By using steganography
more secure in feature with cryptographical functions. It
tools and we can hide the secret message in the ordinary
will provide more security to the secret message
files and send to the receiver and receiver can get the secret
transactions.
message from that steganography tools. Cryptography and
steganography are different functions and when we
combined both Cryptography and steganography it will A. Cryptography
give more security Cryptography is the technology that is used to
protect information from the cyber-attacks. Basically, it
changes the information or data to another format, and
it is help to
2 M. THUSHITHARAN, S. KAVISESHAN: STEGANOGRAPHY – AN OVERVIEW OF IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY USING LSB METHODOLOGY.

protect the Confidentiality, Integrity and the Reputation of

the information. Cryptography use many methods to protect C. Disadvantages of LSB Steganography
information like Symmetric encryption, Asymmetric Less Robust, there are high chance to loss the hidden
encryptions, Hashing and it using Steganography is the data with a minor image manipulation. Hidden message can
latest methodology to protect secret information that used be easily destroyed by simple attacks.
to hide secret message in non-secret files or in the ordinary
files. D. How LSB Steganography works
We can describe a digital image as a finite set of digital
B. Steganography values, called pixels. Pixels are the smallest individual
Steganography is the lattes trend in Cryptography element of an image, holding values that represent the
which needs to be hide secret information in the non-secret brightness of a given color at any specific point. So we can
files or ordinary files. And get the message back to the think of an image as a matrix (or a two-dimensional array)
users. Here we can embed secret message in the non-secret of pixels which contains a fixed number of rows and
file, or it can hide scripts and it can make harm to the columns. Least Significant Bit (LSB) is a technique in
receiver also. which the last bit of each pixel is modified and replaced
The importance of steganography is to hide the secret with the secret message’s data bit.
message in the normal or ordinary files or non-secret files.
This is a type of covert communication, and this can
involve with the use of medium of hiding secret message in
files. And this is not using a function of cryptography
because it does not change the form of the secret message
which is hided inside the files. And this is not using any
keys or functions for encryptions. This a data hiding, and it
can be executed in cleaver ways.
Figure 1: Alignment of LSB and MSB values
C. What is SDN
SDN is stands for Software-Defined Networking. SDN the above image it is clear that, if we change MSB it
is a network architectural technique that allows networks to will have a larger impact on the final value but if we change
be smartly and centrally managed or programmed using the LSB the impact on the final value is minimal, thus we
software applications. use least significant bit steganography.

D. IoT integrated SDN in Healthcare

The amount of IoMT systems and data transferred
through these networks is steadily expanding as IoT
applications become more prominent in the healthcare
business.

2. RESEARCH STATEMENT / OBJECTIVES

Figure 2 : Digital image and Pixels Values
As a conclusion of this review, the viewer of this article
should have. Each pixel contains three values which are Red, Green,
Blue. These of them are 8-bit values and they are range
3. REVIEW OF PRODUCT - STEGURITY from 0 to 255. Let’s take an example of how this technique
A. Methodology – LSB Steganography works, suppose you want to hide the message “hi” into a
There are various methodologies available to hide 4x4 image which has the following pixel values.
messages into images. All of them change some bits in the
image pixel values while hiding data directly. Least
Significant Bit (LSB) based steganography is one of the
Using the ASCII Table, we can convert the secret
simplest techniques that hides a secret message in the LSB
message into decimal values and then into binary: 0110100
values of pixels without introducing many identifiable
0110101.Now, we iterate over the pixel values one by one,
distortions. Changes in the LSB value are unidentifiable for
after converting them to binary, we replace each least
human eyes.
significant bit with that message bits sequentially (e.g : 225
is 11100001, we replace the last bit, the bit in the right (1)
B. Advantages of LSB Steganography with the first data bit (0) and so on).This will only modify
When we are using LSB Steganography, there are very the pixel values by +1 or -1 which is not noticeable at all.
less changes of degradation of the image. More information The resulting pixel values after performing LSBs is as
can be stored within the Image. shown below:
3 M. THUSHITHARAN, S. KAVISESHAN: STEGANOGRAPHY – AN OVERVIEW OF IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY USING LSB METHODOLOGY.

o Platform - The Platform module is used to retrieve

as much possible information about the platform on
which the program is being currently executed.
So, this is how the LSB steganography works with the help
of modifying the LSB values of the image pixel values.

E. Novelty of the Product

Regular steganography tools are used to hide messages
and decode messages within a digital image. Our product
will have one more extra security functionality which is
encoded messages are only store within the image as
base64 encoded formatted message. When we decode the This snippet of code is just to print the following output in
image, it will create a .txt file with the name of encoded colored format.
image and it contains the base64 encoded message. The
user will decode the base64 message using online decoder
tools available on the internet for free. We added a user
friend functionality which is non- security purpose. It uses
to list the .png image files within the same location.
Usually, the command line tools are developed only to
run within the linux environment. We went one more step
and developed this tool for windows and linux environment
friendly. So, this tool can be run within any windows or
linux platform which contains python interpreter.

F. Product Implementation and Code Review

Now we are going to analyze every function of the code
and going to explain how they works.

This imgData2Binary() function is created to convert image

or text data to binary format. If the data input is string, it
will first convert to ascii, then the ascii value converted in
to 8-bit binary value. If the data input is bytes or multi-
dimensional array (image pixel value - ndarray), it will
directly convert to 8-bit binary value.

These are the python libraries which required to develop the

tool.
o Cv2 - This library is used to perform image processing
and computer vision related tasks.
o Numpy - This library is used to perform a wide variety
of mathematical operations on arrays.
o Pyfiglet - This module is used to enhance our
programming experience as well as to enhance the
overall look and structure of the texts used in electronic
communication.
o Termcolor - This library is used for ANSII Color
formatting for output in the terminal.
o Base64 - This module provides functions for encoding
binary data to printable ASCII characters and decoding
such encodings back to binary data.
o Os - The OS module in Python provides functions for
creating and removing a directory (folder), fetching its
contents, changing and identifying the current
directory, etc. This hideData() function is created to hide the secret
message data into the image. Firstly, it will get the pixel
values of the image separately. Then the imgData2Binary()
4 M. THUSHITHARAN, S. KAVISESHAN: STEGANOGRAPHY – AN OVERVIEW OF IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY USING LSB METHODOLOGY.

function called and the RGB values of the pixel assigned to

encoded text value. For a security purpose we didn’t want
the r,g,b variables as binary format. Then the function
to print the secret message directly in a plain text. So, we
removes the LSBs of every pixel value of the color until the
added an extra protection base64 encoding facility. It will
secret message’s binary value’s count.
give the base64 encoded output of the secret message.
And it will create an extra .txt file with the name of the
encoded image.

This listPngFiles() function has written for list the .png files
This encodeText() function get the image, secret message, from the same folder. This doesn’t concern about the
encoded image name from the user and it will create a new security part of the product. This function has written for
image file. find the OS platform and execute the listing command of
the operating system. First it will check whether the system
is windows or not. If it is windows, it will execute the “dir
*.png” command which is used to list the png files in
windows platform. Or else if it is linux platform, it will
execute the “ls -a *.png” command which is used to list the
png files in linux platforms.

This showData() function is used to extract the hidden

binary values of the secret message in the pixel values.

This steganography() it the main function of this program.

This function contains the encode, decode, list, quit the
This decodeText() function created to decode the binary
program options. If we give the input as 1, it will take us to
value of the secret message within the encoded image. Then
image encode function. If we give the input as 2, it will take
when we will decode the image, it will throw a base64
us to image decode function. If we give the input as 3, it
will list the .png files within the same folder. If we give the
input
5 M. THUSHITHARAN, S. KAVISESHAN: STEGANOGRAPHY – AN OVERVIEW OF IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY USING LSB METHODOLOGY.

as 4, the program will be quit. Further more this function India., 22 February 2019.
contains some validations. If we give any number than
1,2,3,4 , it will throw a warning that tells us to enter the 3. CIOReview, “How SDN and IoT are impacting the
correct value. If we give alphabet or non-number value, it Healthcare Sector” [Online]. Available:
will throe a warning to enter the correct option value. https://www.cioreview.com/news/how-sdn-and-iot-are-
impacting-the-healthcare-sector-nid-33576-cid-147.html.
G. Best Security Practices for IoT in Healthcare [Accessed: 03- April- 2022].
Maybe the most difficult aspect of modernizing
historical technologies is ensuring that the infrastructure is
secure and impermeable
8. AUTHOR
1. Complete Security Assessment
Every well-known company must maintain an Thushitharan .M is currently a student at
accurate and complete inventory of all assets in their Sri Lanka Institute of Information
Technology, pursuing his bachelor’s degree
facility. However. in Information Technology Specializing in
Cyber Security. His current research
2. Secure IoT technology implementations. interests include the Cyber Security threats
As a few of these ecosystems become linked to and mitigations in the Healthcare Sector
with emphasis on Medical Internet of
corporate servers and vulnerable to online threats, the Things and
demand. SDN.

H. Healthcare Data Protection Legislation

Regulatory concerns, civil rights, and social norms all
depend on the deployment of IoT data privacy legislation.
IoT data.

4. FUTURE RESEARCH
The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is predicted to grow
rapidly in the coming years due to its ability to enhance
patient.

5. CONCLUSION
Usage of IoT devices is very important for current digital
era. Nowadays, many systems have become smarter with
the use of IoT devices.

6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
A researcher can get a lot of understandings about the usage
of IoT in healthcare with the emphasis of SDN and the
cyber security threats on healthcare in IoT by making a
review article. I would like to express my gratitude to my
Applied Information Assurance module lecturers and
instructors, senior students, and friends for guiding and
encouraging me in finishing this review paper within the
given time. In addition, I would like to thank for the tech
youtubers and tech bloggers and external security
researchers for the help they offered through their videos,
articles, and blogs.

7. REFERENCE
1. “Internet of Things” [Online]. Available:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_things.
[Accessed: 03- April- 2022].

2. Srilakshmi A., Mohanapriya P., Harini D., and Geetha K.,

“IoT based Smart Health Care System to Prevent Security
Attacks in SDN” Sastra Deemed to be University
Thanjavur,