Swetha V et al | IJCSET(www.ijcset.

net) | June 2015 | Vol 5, Issue 6,206-213

Data Hiding Using Video Steganography

-A Survey
Swetha V

Prajith V

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Jawaharlal College of Engineering and Technology

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Palakkad Institute of Science and Technology

Kshema V
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Jawaharlal College of Engineering and Technology
AbstractDigital data communication has become an
integral part of infrastructure nowadays. In this tech era, with
the increasing importance of internet and the fast
communication
techniques,
the
security
and
the
confidentiality of the sensitive data has become of prime
concern. This has resulted in an unpredictable growth in the
field of information hiding. Cryptography and steganography
are the two popular methods available to provide security.
One hides the existence of the message and the other distorts
the message itself. Steganography is a technique to hide secret
information in some other media without leaving any
apparent evidence of data alteration. It comes under the
assumption that if the feature is visible, the point of attack is
evident, thus the objective of steganography is always to
conceal the very existence of the secret data. This paper
provides a state-of-the-art review and analysis of the different
existing methods of video steganography and also covers
classification and applications.
Keywords- Cover Media, Cryptography, Data Hiding, LSB,
Security, Steganography

I. INTRODUCTION
The cutting edge of technology and the Internet have made
a breakthrough in the existence of data communication.
Communication is the lifeblood of any organization and is
one of the most important needs of human beings. The
concept of secret communication is as old as
communication itself. It is often thought that
communications can be made secure by using encryption
techniques, but this is not really true in practice. Encryption
provides an obvious approach to information security, and
encryption programs are readily available. However,
encryption clearly marks a message as containing
interesting information, and the encrypted message
becomes subject to attack. Furthermore, in many cases it is
desirable to send information without anyone even noticing
that information has been sent secret information. The
history teaches that is better hiding messages rather than
enciphering them, because it arouses less suspicion. This
preference persists in many operational contexts till up this
day.
Data security basically aims at preserving the
confidentiality and integrity of data and protecting the data
from unauthorized users or hackers. Many techniques such
as digital watermarking, cryptography and steganography
were developed in order to enhance the data security.
Cryptography is an art or science of ciphers that use

mathematics to scramble the original text into a seemingly

unreadable format for others. Steganography is the art of
invisible communication. Its purpose is to hide the very
presence of communication by embedding messages in
such a way that a third person cannot even sense the
presence of the hidden message. While cryptography is a
method to conceal information by encrypting it to cipher
texts using an unknown key and transmitting it to the
intended receiver, steganography provides further security
by hiding the cipher text into another cover medium.
Digital watermarking and fingerprinting related to
steganography are basically used for intellectual property
protection. Watermarking is the practice of imperceptibly
altering work to embed a secret message. A digital
watermarking is a process of covertly embedding into a
noise-tolerant signal such as audio or image data. It is
typically used to identify ownership of the copyright of
such signal. The main aim of digital watermarking is to
protect the integrity and authenticity of digital media. In
fingerprinting; different and specific marks are embedded
in the copies of the work that different customers are
supposed to get. In this case, it becomes easy for the
property owner to find out such customers who give
themselves the right to violate their licensing agreement
when they illegally transmit the property to other groups
To hide secret information in some other source of
information without leaving any apparent evidence of data
alteration steganographic techniques can be used. In
todays digital world, invisible ink and paper have been
replaced by much more versatile and practical covers such
as digital documents, images, video, and audio files are
used for hiding messages. As long as an electronic
document contains perceptually irrelevant or redundant
information, it can be used as a cover for hiding secret
messages. All of the traditional steganographic techniques
have limited information-hiding capacity approximately
10% or less. This is because the principle of those
techniques was either to replace all the least significant bits
of a multivalued image with the secret information or to
replace a special part of the frequency components of the
vessel image. Data containing both the cover signal and the
embedded information is known as stego data.
Occasionally, especially when referring to image
Steganography, the cover image can be called as Vessel or
Container.
Steganographic technologies are a very
important part of the future of Internet security and privacy

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on open systems such as the Internet. Security, capacity and

robustness are three main aspects of steganography. All
these factors are inversely proportional to each other
creating steganographic dilemma.
II BACKGROUND STUDY
Steganography is a fine art of hiding information in
something else to enable them to pass unobserved and is an
unusual aspect of security that is not commonly known,
despite having a history that dates back thousands of years.
The roots of steganography date back to 440 BC. Although
the term was only coined at the end of 15th century, the use
of steganographic techniques dates back several millennia.
The term is derived from two Greek words, stegano
which means covered or secret and grafia which means
writing or drawing. Despite the Greek origin, the word
Steganography does not appear in the literature until
when Johannes Trithemius uses the word in a trilogy
published in Frankfurt in 1606.
A. Early Evidence of Steganography
The concept of hiding and concealing messages has existed
for thousands of years, even though term steganography is
only few years old. In ancient times, the secret messages
were hidden in different ways such as tattooed on the scalp
of slaves, hidden on tablets covered with wax, or written on
the stomachs of rabbits. The earliest known written account
of steganography being used was quoted by Herodotus
during 484-425 BC. He tells how his master, Histiaeus, sent
a slave to the Ionian city of Miletus with a message
concealed on his body. The messengers or slaves head
was shaved and the secret message was tattooed on his
scalp. After allowing his hair to grow concealing the
message, the slave was sent to the Ionian city of Miletus. In
order to reveal the message, slaves head was shaved once
he reached there. Herodotus also documented how
Demeratus notify Sparta that Xerxes intended to invade
Greece. In ancient Greece, wax covered tablets were used
for writing text. To preserve the messages confidentiality
and avoid capture, he scraped the wax off of the tablets and
on the underlying wood he wrote the message. The tablet
was covered with wax again. As the tablets appeared to be
blank and unused they passed inspection by sentries
without question. The hidden message can be only revealed
by scraping away all of the wax. Another steganographic
technique was proposed by Aeneas Tactician, who was a
Greek writer well-known for his various steganographic
approaches and techniques .His idea was to conceal
information in womens earrings, or using pigeons to
deliver secret messages.
B. Linguistic Steganography
Linguistic steganography is possibly one of the oldest
forms of steganography. Aeneas Tactician, who described
many linguistic techniques, laid the foundation of linguistic
steganography. Some of the techniques he proposed were
to alter the height of letters or mark particular letters with
dots or small holes. Linguistic steganography has been used
prolifically throughout history, and in the modern era,
variants of these techniques still exist. Linguistic
steganography can the considered as the pioneer of text
steganography. In 14th Century a poet named Giovanni

Boccaccio, encoded over 1500 letters taken from three

sonnets, into his acrostic poem, Amorosa Visione. This can
be possibly considered as one of the largest examples of
linguistic steganography. It was Francis Bacon who
proposed the most interesting linguistic technique. Bacons
method allows messages to be encoded using a binary
representation, by using normal or italic font. This scheme
is a precursor to modern steganographic techniques. A
photographic technique was proposed by Brewster in 1857.
The technique would allow text to be shrunk down to a
dirt-sized speck. The message is readable only under very
high levels of magnification. The Germans used this
technique to conceal large messages in the corner of post
cards during World War I. The microdot technique used
by the Germans was capable of hiding entire pages of text
and even photographs, making them a powerful container
of covert information .Null cipher is another variation of
linguistic steganography.
C. Modern Steganography
Steganography is becoming more and more widespread and
relevant with the advent of modern technology and
Internet. Different multimedia files such as image, video
and audio present interesting digital file formats for
concealing secret information. The growth in
communication technology and usage of public domain
channels such as Internet has greatly facilitated transfer of
data. The internet applications demands secure data
transmission. Due to interception and improper
manipulation by eavesdropper, data transmission in public
communication system is not secure. An attractive solution
for this problem is Steganography, which is the art and
science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no
one, apart from the sender and intend recipient, suspects the
existence of the message. Media files are large in size and
facilitate more embedding capacity. There are many criteria
for classifying steganography. One of them is classification
based on the type of cover object and the classification is as
follows:
1) Image Steganography: Images are used as the popular
cover medium for steganography. Hiding information in
image is known as image steganography. Generally, in this
technique pixel intensities are used to hide the information.
The cover image can be called as Vessel or Container. The
image after hiding information is called stego-image. A
message is embedded in a digital image using an
embedding algorithm, using the secret key. The resulting
stego-image is send to the receiver. On the other side, it is
processed by the extraction algorithm using the same key.
During the transmission of stego- image unauthenticated
persons can only notice the transmission of an image but
cant predict the presence of the hidden message. To hide a
message inside an image without changing its visible
properties, the cover source can be altered in noisy areas
with many color variations, so less attention will be drawn
to the modifications. The most common methods to achieve
these modifications involve the usage of the leastsignificant bit or LSB, masking, filtering and
transformations on the cover image. These techniques can
be used on different types of image files with varying
degrees of success.

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2) Network Steganography: The term protocol

steganography refers to embedding information within
network protocols such as TCP/IP, UDP, ICMP etc... The
network steganography is also known as protocol
steganography. In the OSI network layer model there exist
covert channels where steganography can be achieved by
hiding information in optional or unused header bits of
TCP/IP fields.
3) Video Steganography: Video Steganography is a
technique to hide any kind of files in any extension or
information into digital video format. Video which is the
combination of pictures is used as carrier for hidden
information. Video steganography uses video formats such
as H.264, Mp4, MPEG, AVI, etc.
4) Audio Steganography: When taking audio as a carrier
for information hiding it is called audio steganography.
Due to popularity of voice over IP (VOIP), audio has
become a significant cover medium. Audio steganography
uses digital audio formats such as WAVE, MIDI, AVI
MPEG or etc. for hiding secret message.
5) Text Steganography: The text steganography is a method
of using written natural language to conceal a secret
message. It can be achieved by altering the text formatting,
or by altering certain characteristics of textual elements.
The objective of designing coding methods was to develop
alterations that are largely indiscernible to the reader and
reliably decodable even in the presence of noise. General
technique in text steganography is to use number of tabs,
white spaces, capital letters, just like Morse code and etc to
achieve information hiding. After the introduction of
Internet and different type of digital file formats text
steganography has decreased its importance. Text
steganography lost its importance due to the fact that the
text files have very small amount of redundant data.
Examples for coding techniques are given below. The
techniques can be used either jointly or separately. Each
technique enjoys certain advantages or applicability of its
own.
Line-Shift Coding
Word-Shift Coding
Feature Coding
III VIDEO STEGANOGRAPHY
As a video container file has numerous advantages not
exhibited by other container formats, video steganography
is now a growing area of research. Video Steganography is
a technique to hide any kind of files into a video file. The
Alteration in the video file is significantly more difficult to
detect by the human visual system, as frames are displayed
on screen in an extremely faster rate. Furthermore, since
video frames are not sharply focused images or crisp,
variations in pixel color induced by steganography will
blend into the frame very easily. Use of the video based
steganography can be more eligible than other multimedia
files, because of its size and memory requirements. The
video has 2 components and they are an audio stream and a
picture stream. Therefore most of the existing techniques
on images and audio can be applied to video files too.

IV IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY
Image steganography techniques can be divided into
following domains.
Spatial Domain Methods
Transform Domain Technique
Distortion Techniques
Masking and Filtering
A. Spatial Domain Methods
There are many versions of spatial steganography, all
directly change some bits in the image pixel values in
hiding data. Least significant bit (LSB)-based
steganography is one of the simplest techniques that hides a
secret message in the LSBs of pixel values without
introducing many perceptible distortions. Changes in the
value of the LSB are imperceptible for human eyes. Spatial
domain techniques are broadly classified as follows based
on the techniques used for hiding data.
1. Least significant bit (LSB)
2. Pixel value differencing (PVD)
3. Edges based data embedding (EBE)
4. Quantization index modulation(QIM)
5. Random pixel embedding (RPE)
6. Pixel Mapping method
7. Multiple-Based Notational System
8. Difference Expansion Technique
9. Gray level modification (GLM)
10. Labelling or connectivity method
11. Pixel intensity based method
12. Texture based method
13. Histogram shifting methods
1) Least Significant Bit (LSB)
The simplest approach for embedding information in cover
image is using Least Significant Bits (LSB). The idea of the
LSB algorithm is to insert the bits of the hidden message
directly into the least significant bit plane of the cover
image in a deterministic sequence. As the LSB method is
designed by taking the advantage of human vision system
and as the amplitude of the change is small, modulating the
least significant bit does not result in human-perceptible
difference. Because this method uses bits of each pixel in
the image, it is necessary to use a lossless compression
format, otherwise the hidden information will get lost in the
transformations of a lossy compression algorithm. The
Least Significant Bit insertion varies according to the type
of image. For an 8 bit image, the 8th bit of each byte of the
image is replaced with the bit of secret message. For 24 bit
image, the LSB bit of each of the red, green and blue color
components are changed.
Since the compression in BMP is lossless, LSB is effective
in using BMP images. But for hiding the secret message
inside BMP image using LSB algorithm it requires a large
cover image. GIF formats also supports LSB substitution,
but the problem with the GIF image is that whenever the
least significant bit is changed the whole color palette will
be changed. This problem can be solved by using the gray
scale GIF images since the gray scale image contains 256
shades and the changes will be done gradually so that it
will be very hard to detect. Since JPEG uses lossy
compression, the direct substitution of steganographic
techniques is not possible in JPEG images. So it uses LSB

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substitution for embedding the data into images. General

advantages of spatial domain LSB technique are:
Simple
More embedding capacity
Less chance for degradation of the original
image.
Disadvantages of LSB technique are:
Image manipulation can distort the hidden
data .Hence less robust.
Easy steganalysis
Hidden data can be easily destroyed using
simple attacks.
2) Pixel Value Differencing (PVD)
The pixel-value differencing (PVD) method was proposed
by Wu and Tsai. . In this technique, for embedding a secret
message, the original cover image is partitioned into non
overlapping blocks of two pixels. A difference value is
calculated from the values of the two consecutive pixels in
each block. All possible difference values are classified
into a number of ranges. The selection of the range
intervals is done by taking the advantage of the
characteristics of human visions sensitivity to gray value
variations from smoothness to contrast. A larger difference
in the original pixel values allows a greater modification.
The block with large difference value is considered in edge
area and with small difference value is considered in
smooth area where the small or large values are taken
depending upon some pre-specified threshold value. The
human eyes are more sensitive to noise in smooth area than
in the edge area. The difference value then is replaced by a
new value to embed the value of a sub-stream of the secret
message. The number of bits which can be embedded in a
pixel pair is decided by the width of the range that the
difference value belongs to. The advantages of this
technique are: High embedding capacity
Outstanding imperceptibility
The pixel-value differencing (PVD) scheme uses the
difference value between two consecutive pixels in a block
to determine how many secret bits should be embedded.
There are two types of the quantization range table in Wu
and Tasi's method. The first was based on selecting the
range widths of [8, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128], to provide large
capacity. The second was based on selecting the range
widths of [2, 2, 4, 4, 4, 8, 8, 16, 16, 32, 32, 64, 64], to
provide high imperceptibility.
3) Quantization Index Modulation (QIM)
Quantization index modulation (QIM) is a commonly used
data embedding technique in digital watermarking and it
can be employed for steganography. Because of its
information-theoretic optimality against a large class of
attacks and robustness, QIM techniques have been gaining
popularity in the data hiding community. It quantizes the
input signal x to the output y with a set of quantizers, i.e.,
Qm (.). Using which quantizer for quantization is
determined by the message bit m.
4) Random Pixel Embedding Method (RPE)
Least Significant Bits (LSB) is the simplest and most
straight forward approach to spatial domain steganography.
But, LSB hides the message in a way that the humans do

not distinguish it, and still possible for the opponent to

retrieve the message due to the simplicity of the technique.
Therefore, LSB technique must be enhanced. In random
pixel embedding method, the message is inserted in the
images in random manner in the pixels of a cover image.
RPE can be considered as improvement of LSB scheme in
which message bits are inserted into a set of random in
each pixel within the image, not in the least significant bit.
The least significant bit sign to extract data from the image.
In this method message bit is not only inserted to least bit
but also to other bits in the pixel in the random manner.
This can be done by comparing the message bit to the pixel
bit randomly chosen from second to the last bit. Based on
this comparison, 1 is inserted in the least significant bit if
the message bit identical to that of the image, whereas, 0 is
inserted if the message bit didnt match with the chosen bit
from the image.
5) Pixel Mapping Method (PMM)
Pixel mapping is a new method to map data into image
proposed by Bhattacharyya, synal et.al.It uses concept of
pixel intensity and no of 1s in pixel to map data. The
advantages of this approach are:
Produces better embedding capacity
Better PSNR Value over PVD and GLM
6) Multiple-Based Notational System (MBNS)
Zhang and Wang proposed an adaptive steganographic
scheme with the Multiple-Based Notational System
(MBNS) based on human vision sensitivity (HVS). The
scheme, converts secret data into symbols by representing
variable bases in a notational system .The hiding capacity
of each image pixel is determined by its so called local
variation. In the MBNS based scheme, a secret message is
embedded into the cover image by modifying pixel values
in a particular order derived from a key. A rule of thumb is
that the more the variation of pixel-values in the vicinity of
a pixel, the more the pixel can tolerate steganographic
modification, allowing a greater change to be introduced.
As such, we let each pixel carry one symbol of the secret
message in a multiple-base notational system, with the
corresponding base being proportional to the degree of
variation in the pixels immediate neighbourhood. Thus,
pixels in busy areas carry more information and statistically
undergo more modification than those in smooth areas. A
secret key, which is shared by the message hider and the
receiver, determines a specific path of pseudorandom walk
over the pixels.
7) Difference Expansion Technique (DE)
Difference Expansion (DE) is a simple and efficient
reversible data-embedding method used for digital images.
Here the redundancy in the digital content is explored to
achieve reversibility. In this method, one bit can be
embedded into two consecutive pixels. So the maximum
embedding capacity will be 0.5 bpp. The difference
expansion technique was later generalized so that n -1 bits
can be embedded into n pixels, resulting the maximum
embedding capacity (n-1)/n bpp. However, the difference
expansion based reversible data hiding methods could not
gain much popularity as the method double the differences
between pixels in successive iteration. The distortions were
larger and hence DE was vulnerable to statistical attacks.

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DE based technique had low payload capacity. The

technique could not be used for applications demanding
high visual quality. The advantages of the steganography
method based on difference expansion are:
It discovers extra storage space by exploring
the redundancy in the image content.
Better payload capacity limit.
Better visual quality of embedded images.
Low computational complexity
8) Gray Level Modification (GLM)
GLM (Gray level modification) steganographic technique
was proposed by Potdar et al. Gray level modification
Steganography is a technique to map data by modifying the
gray level values of the image pixels. The technique does
not hide or embed data. GLM technique uses the concept of
odd and even numbers to map data within an image. It is a
one-to-one mapping between the binary data and the
selected pixels in an image. From a given image, based on
a mathematical function, a set of pixels are selected. The
gray level values of those pixels are examined and
compared with the bit stream that is to be mapped in the
image.
B. Transform Domain Technique
This is a more complex way of hiding information in an
image. The spatial domain steganography techniques allow
greater amount of data to be hidden but they are less
resistant to steganalysis attacks. Transform domain
steganography techniques do not hide the information
behind image pixels directly rather they transform the
image before masking data. These techniques are more
resistant to steganalysis attacks when compared to those
embedding principles that operate in the time domain.
Various algorithms and transformations are used on the
image to hide information in it. Most of the strong
steganographic systems today operate within the transform
domain. Transform domain methods hide messages
significant areas of cover image which makes them robust
against various image processing operations like
compression, cropping, enhancement etc... The basic
approach to hiding information with DCT, FFT or Wavelet
is to transform the cover image, tweak the coefficients, and
then invert the transformation. Some transform domain
techniques do not seem dependent on the image format and
they may outrun lossless and lossy format conversions. If
the choice of coefficients is good and the size of the
changes is manageable, then the result is pretty close to the
original. Transform domain techniques are broadly
classified into:
Discrete Fourier transformation (DFT).
Discrete cosine transformation (DCT).
Fast Fourier transformation (FFT).
Discrete Wavelet transforms (DWT).
Lossless or reversible method (DCT)
Embedding in coefficient bits
1) Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT)
In DCT based technique insertion of secret information in
carrier depends on the DCT coefficients. Any DCT
coefficient value above proper threshold is a potential place
for insertion of secret information. Here the Most
Significant Bits of secret image are hidden in Least

Significant bits of only those pixels of cover image whose

DCT coefficient value is greater than a certain threshold
value. The Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) transforms
the image from spatial domain to frequency domain. It
separates the image into spectral sub-bands with respect to
its visual quality, i.e. high, middle and low frequency
components. DCT is a mechanism to transform successive
88-pixel blocks of the image from spatial domain to 64
DCT coefficients each in frequency domain. The least
significant bits of the quantized DCT coefficients are used
as redundant bits into which the hidden message is
embedded. The modification of a single DCT coefficient
affects all 64 image pixels. Because this modification
happens in the frequency domain and not the spatial
domain, there are no noticeable visual differences. The
advantage DCT has over other transforms is the ability to
minimize the block-like appearance resulting when the
boundaries between the 8x8 sub-images become visible
(known as blocking artifact).
2) Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT)
DFT gives the better approximation of Fourier transform on
discrete set of frequencies. The Discrete Fourier Transform
is used to get frequency component for each pixel value.
The Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) of spatial value f(x,
y) for the image of size M x N is represented as F(u,v)
which is given by the equation:

The inverse Fourier transform is thus given by,

In DFT steganography, all insertion is done in frequency

domain. DFT is applied on source image to convert from
spatial domain to frequency domain. Each 8 bit pixel in
spatial domain is transformed into two parts one part is real
and another is imaginary part. The authenticating bits are
inserted in real part of frequency domain .The process is
repeated for whole image matrix in the same manner. After
embedding IDFT (Inverse DFT) is performed to convert
from frequency domain to spatial domain. Fast Fourier
Transform (FFT) is the fastest method of DFT. FFT is a
high speed and efficient technique.
3) Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT)
Any wavelet transform for which the wavelets are
discretely sample are called discrete wavelet transform
(DWT). The key advantage DWT has over Fourier
transforms is temporal resolution. A 2-dimensional HaarDWT consists of two operations: One is the horizontal
operation and the other is the vertical one. At first, scan the
pixels from left to right in horizontal direction. Then,
perform the addition and subtraction operations on
neighboring pixels. Store the sum on the left and the
difference on the right .Repeat this operation until all the
rows are processed. The pixel sums represent the low
frequency part denoted as symbol L while the pixel
differences represent the high frequency part of the original

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image denoted as symbol H. Secondly; scan the pixels from

top to bottom in vertical direction. Perform the addition and
subtraction operations on neighboring pixels and then store
the sum on the top and the difference on the bottom. Repeat
this operation until all the columns are processed. Finally
we will obtain 4 sub-bands denoted as LL, HL, LH, and
HH respectively. The LL sub-band is the low frequency
portion and hence looks very similar to the original image.
C. Distortion Techniques
Distortion techniques need knowledge of the original cover
image during the decoding process where the decoder
functions to check for differences between the original
cover image and the distorted cover image in order to
restore the secret message. The encoder adds a sequence of
changes to the cover image. So, information is described as
being stored by signal distortion. In this technique, a stegoimage is created by applying a sequence of modifications to
the cover image. This sequence of modifications is use to
match the secret message required to transmit. The message
is encoded at pseudo-randomly chosen pixels. If the stegoimage is different from the cover image at the given
message pixel, the message bit is a 1. otherwise, the
message bit is a 0. The encoder can modify the 1 value
pixels in such a manner that the statistical properties of the
image are not affected. However, the need for sending the
cover image limits the benefits of this technique. In any
steganographic technique, the cover image should never be
used more than once. If an attacker tampers with the stegoimage by cropping, scaling or rotating, the receiver can
easily detect it. In some cases, if the message is encoded
with error correcting information, the change can even be
reversed and the original message can be recovered.
D. Masking and Filtering
Masking and filtering techniques is a steganographic
method that takes a different approach to hiding a message.
These techniques hide information by marking an image, in
the same way as to paper watermarks, creating markings in
an image. This can be achieved by modifying the
luminance of parts of the image. Even if masking changes
the visible properties of an image, it is done in such a way
that the human eye will not notice the anomalies. Since
masking uses visible aspects of the image, it is more robust
than LSB modification with respect to compression,
cropping and different kinds of image processing. The
information is embedded in the more significant areas than
just hiding it into the noise level, which makes it more
suitable than LSB modifications in case a lossy
compression algorithm like JPEG. The hidden message is
more integral to the cover image. Masking and filtering
technique is usually restricted to 24 bits or grayscale
images. Advantages of Masking and filtering techniques
are:
Since the information is hidden in the visible
parts of the image, with respect to
compression this method is much more robust
than LSB replacement.
Disadvantages of Masking and filtering techniques are:
Technique is only applicable to gray scale images
and restricted to 24 bits.

V AUDIO STEGANOGRAPHY
In audio steganography, secret message is embedded into
digitized audio signal as noise at a frequency out of human
hearing range. The embedding process will result a slight
alteration of binary sequence of the corresponding audio
file but the alterations made to the audio file are
perceptually indiscemible. The characteristics of audio
signal such as unpredictable nature and characteristic
redundancy make them ideal candidate to be used as a
cover for covert communications to conceal secret
messages. The audio steganographic process mainly
consists of following two steps:
1) Identification of redundant bits in the audio file:Redundant bits are those bits that can be modulated without
destroying the integrity or corrupting the quality of the
cover media. Hence those redundant bits are chosen as the
candidate for holding secret information.
2) Embedding the secret information in the audio file:- The
redundant bits in the cover file is replaced by the bits of the
secret information.
Due to the existence of advanced audio steganography
schemes and the very nature of audio signals to be highcapacity data streams, audio steganalysis is very difficult
and requires scientifically challenging statistical analysis.
There have been many techniques for hiding information or
messages in audio some of the common approaches
include
A. Low-Bit Encoding
It is also known as LSB encoding. The low-bit encoding
replaces the least significant bit in some bytes of the
digitized audio file to hide a sequence of bytes containing
the secret data. Since the LSB substitution doesn't cause
significant quality degradation, such as in 24-bit bitmaps,
this is usually an effective technique. In computing, the
least significant bit (LSB) is the bit position in a binary
integer giving the units value, that is, determining whether
the number is even or odd. The LSB is sometimes referred
to as the right-most bit, due to the convention in positional
notation of writing less significant digit further to the right.
Though this method is simple and have greater embedding
capacity, the method cannot provide protection to the
hidden message against small modifications that can arise
as a result of format conversion or lossy compression.
B. Phase Coding
In phase coding technique, the phase of a cover audio
segment is replaced with a reference phase that represents
the secret information. In order to preserve the relative
phase between segments, the remaining segments phase is
adjusted. In terms of signal to noise ratio, Phase coding is
one of the most effective coding methods. This method
relies on the fact that the phase components of sound are
not as perceptible to the human ear as noise is. Message
bits are encoded as phase shifts in the phase spectrum of a
digital signal. This leads to inaudible encoding in terms of
the Signal-to-Perceived Noise Ratio (SPNR) and the secret
message gets camouflaged in the audio signal, not
detectable by the steganalysis methods based on SPNR.
Thus, phase coding addresses the disadvantages of the
noise-inducing methods of audio steganography. When
there is a drastic change in the phase relation between each

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frequency component, noticeable phase dispersion will

occur. However, as long as the modification of the phase is
sufficiently small, an inaudible coding can be achieved.
Phase coding is explained in the following procedure:
1) Decompose the original audio signal into smaller
segments such that lengths are of the same size as the
size of the message to be encoded.
2) Matrix of the phases is created by applying Discrete
Fourier Transform (DFT).
3) Compute the phase differences between every pair of
consecutive segments.
4) Phase shifts between adjacent segments are easily
detectable. Although, we can change the absolute
phases of the segments, the relative phase differences
between adjacent segments must be preserved. So the
secret information is embedded only in the phase
vector of the first signal segment.
5) Create a new phase matrix using the new phase of the
first segment and set of the original phase differences.
6) Reconstruct the sound signal by applying the inverse
Discrete Fourier Transform using the new phase matrix
and original magnitude matrix and then concatenating
the sound segments back together.
The receiver must know the segment length to extract the
secret information from the sound file. Then the receiver
can use the DFT to get the phases and extract the secret
information. The disadvantages of phase coding are: Low data transmission rate owing to the fact that
the secret message is encoded only in the first
segment of the audio signal.
The phase coding method is normally used only
when a small amount of data as an increase in the
length of the segment would have a ripple effect
by altering the phase relations between the
frequency components of the segment; thereby
making detection easier.

Figure 1: Phase Coding

C. Spread Spectrum Coding

In audio steganography, the basic spread spectrum (SS)
method attempts to randomly spread bits of the secret
message across the frequency spectrum of the audio signal.
This is similar to a system which uses an implementation of
the LSB that spreads the message bits randomly over the
entire sound file. However, unlike LSB coding, the spread
spectrum method spreads the secret information over the
frequency spectrum of the sound file using a code which is
independent of the actual signal. As a result, the final signal
occupies a bandwidth which is more than what is actually
required for transmission. The spread spectrum method is
capable of contributing a better performance than LSB

coding and phase coding techniques by virtue of a

moderate data transmission rate coupled with a high level
of robustness against steganalysis techniques. The one
main disadvantage of the spread spectrum method is: It introduces noise into a sound file like LSB
coding method. This vulnerability can be
tapped for steganalysis.
D. Echo Hiding
Echo hiding technique embeds secret information by
introducing an echo into the discrete audio signal. To
successfully hide the secret message, three parameters of
the echo need to be altered. They are, amplitude, decay rate
and offset or delay time from the original signal. As all the
three parameters are set below the human audible threshold
limit, the echo cannot be easily resolved. Also, the offset is
altered to represent the binary message to be hidden. The
first offset value represents a binary one, and the second
offset value represents a binary zero. If only one echo was
produced from the original signal, only one bit of secret
information could be encoded. Hence, before the encoding
process begins the original signal is broken down into
blocks. Once the encoding process is done, all blocks are
concatenated back together to create the final signal. The
advantages of echo hiding are: High data transmission rate.
Superior robustness.
E. Parity Coding
Parity coding is one of the robust audio steganographic
techniques. Instead of breaking a signal down into
individual samples, this method breaks a signal into
separate regions samples and encodes each bit of the secret
message in a sample regions parity bit. The process inverts
the LSB of one of the samples in the region, if the parity bit
of a selected region does not match the secret bit to be
encoded. Thus, the sender has more of a choice in encoding
the secret bit. The decoding process extracts the secret
message by calculating and lining up the parity bits of the
regions used in the encoding process. The sender and
receiver can use a shared secret key as a seed in a
pseudorandom number generator to produce the same set of
sample regions. Even parity is desired. There are two main
disadvantages associated with the use of methods like LSB
coding or parity coding. There are two main disadvantages
associated with the use of parity coding. They are: The human ear is very sensitive and can often
detect even the slightest bit of noise
introduced into a sound file, although the
parity coding method does come much closer
to making the introduced noise inaudible.
Less robust. If the audio file embedded with a
secret message using parity coding was
resampled, the embedded information would
be lost.
VI STEGANOGRAPHIC APPLICATIONS
Steganographic technique can be used anytime one wants
to hide data. The most important reason to hide data is to
prevent unauthorized persons from becoming aware of the
existence of a message. Steganography is employed in
various useful applications such as copyright control of

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materials, enhancing robustness of image search engines

and smart IDs where individuals details are embedded in
their photographs. Other applications are TV broadcasting,
video-audio synchronization, TCP/IP packets and
checksum embedding and safe circulation of secret data.
Steganography would provide an ultimate guarantee of
authentication that no other security tool may ensure.
In the business world, data hiding can be used to hide a
secret chemical formula or plans for a new invention.
Steganography can also be used in the non-commercial
sector to hide information that someone wants to keep
private. It can be used in forensic applications for inserting
hidden data into media files for the authentication of
spoken words and other sounds, and in the music business
for the monitoring of the songs over broadcast radio.
Steganography also have some contemporary applications,
one of which was in Medical Imaging Systems where a
separation is considered necessary for confidentiality
between patients image data or DNA sequences and their
captions, e.g., physician, patients name, address and other
particulars A link however, must be maintained between
the two. Thus, embedding the patients information in the
image could be a useful safety measure and helps in solving
such problems.
Inspired by the notion that steganography can be embedded
as part of the normal printing process, the Japanese firm
Fujitsu3 has developed a technology to encode data into a
printed picture that is invisible to the human eye, but can be
decoded by a mobile phone with a camera. The process
takes less than one second as the embedded data is merely
12 bytes. Hence, users will be able to use their cellular
phones to capture encoded data. This application can be
used for doctors prescriptions, food wrappers, billboards,
business cards and printed media such as magazines and
pamphlets or to replace barcodes. Protecting scanned
documents from forgery using self-embedding techniques
is also an important application of data hiding. The method
not only points out forgery but also allows legal or
forensics experts to gain access to the original document
despite being manipulated.
VII CONCLUSION
In the era of fast information interchange using internet and
World Wide Web, steganography has become essential tool
for information security. Steganography can be classified
based on many criteria and one among them is based on the
type of cover media. This paper presented a review work in
video steganography methods its major types and
classification which have been proposed in the literature
during last few years. As video is a bunch of images
combined with audio, all existing image and audio
steganographic techniques are applicable to video
steganography. Pros and cons of different steganography
algorithm were also discussed.

[1]

[2].

[3]

[4]
[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

[16]

[17]

[18]
[19]

[20]

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