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Lecture 7 Steganography

The document discusses steganography, which is hiding secret information within other information in a way that prevents detection. It covers the history and types of steganography, including hiding messages in text, images, audio, and video files using techniques like least significant bit encoding. The document also discusses steganalysis, which is detecting and decoding hidden data within a medium, and the future applications of steganography, particularly in digital watermarking.

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Subhan Ch
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35 views19 pages

Lecture 7 Steganography

The document discusses steganography, which is hiding secret information within other information in a way that prevents detection. It covers the history and types of steganography, including hiding messages in text, images, audio, and video files using techniques like least significant bit encoding. The document also discusses steganalysis, which is detecting and decoding hidden data within a medium, and the future applications of steganography, particularly in digital watermarking.

Uploaded by

Subhan Ch
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Information Privacy and Security

Lecture 7
Steganography

Areesha Sajjad
NBCA&E
Steganography
What is Steganography?

• Origin of the term: steganos: secret – graphy: writing


Steganography in Ancient Greece
History of Steganography

• Ancient Rome - 1499, Steganographia, the first book about


steganography
• World War II Germany – microdots (1mm)
• Modern Steganography - 1985, with the development of
personal computers
• Digital Steganography – with internet (e.g.digital
watermarking)
Steganography & Cryptography

• Steganography and Cryptography are closely related


• The difference is in their goals...
– Cryptography: although encypted and unreadable, the existence
of data is not hidden
– Steganography: no knowledge of the existence of the data
• Steganography and Cryptography can be used together to
produce better protection
Uses of Steganography

• Governments

• Businesses: Digital Watermarking

• Individuals
Digital Watermarking

Image “painted” with the watermark: “Invisible Man” © 1997, Neil F. Johnson
Digital Watermarking

• Used primarily for identification (i.e., original)


• Embedding a unique piece of information within a medium
(typically an image) without noticeably altering the medium
• Almost impossible to remove without seriously degrading an
image
Digital Steganogaphy & Watermarking

• Digital watermarking hides data in a file, and the act of


hiding data makes it a form of steganography
• The key difference is their goals...
– Steganography: hiding information
– Watermarking: extending the file with extra information
• Steganographic information must never be apparent to a
viewer unaware of its presence.
Objectives of Steganography

• Confidentiality: any unauthorized person does not know


that sensitive data exists
• Survivability: verifying that the data does not get
destroyed in the transmission
• No detection: cannot be easily found out that the data is
hidden in a given file
• Visibility: people cannot see any visible changes to the
file in which the data is hidden
Types of Digital Steganography

• Hiding a Message inside Text


• Hiding a Message inside Images
– Most popular technique
• Hiding a Message inside Audio and Video Files
Hiding a Message inside Text

• Partially effective
randoM capitalosis is a rarE disEase ofTen
contrAcTed by careless inTernet users. tHis sad
illnEss causes the aFfected peRsON To randomly
capitalize letters in a bOdy oF texT. please
do not confuse this disease witH a blatant
attEmpt aT steganogRAPhy.

Reveals: MEET AT THE FRONT OF THE TRAP


Hiding a Message inside Text

• First-letter algorithm
• Every n-th character
• Altering the amount of whitespace
• Using a publicly available cover source
Hiding a Message inside Images

• The most popular medium!

• Least-significant bit (LSB) modifications


– 24-bit vs. 8-bit images
– Tools to implement LSB: EzStego and S-Tools
• Masking and Filtering (e.g., eluminating the secret data
portion in an image)
• Algorithms and Transformations ( embedding alog and
extraction algo)
Hiding an Image within an Image
 Removing all but the two least significant bits of each color
component produces an almost completely black image. Making that
image 85 times brighter produces the image below

 source: wikipedia.org
Hiding a Message inside Audio or Videos Files
• Advantages
– Human limitations – 20.000 Hz.
– Large amount of data that can be hidden inside
– Hard to recognize because of the continuous flow of information
(moving stream of images and sound)
Steganalysis

• Detecting and decoding the hidden data within a given


medium
• Even if secret content is not revealed, modifying the cover
medium changes the medium’s statistical properties
• Distributed Dictionary Attack
Future of Steganography

• The most important use of steganographic techniques will


probably lie in the field of digital watermarking
• Might become limited under laws - governments claimed
that criminals use steganography to communicate

Credits:
• Pelin Gul
• Sankar Das

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