International Journal of Computer Science Trends and Technology (IJCST) – Volume 7 Issue 5, Sep - Oct 2019

RESEARCH ARTICLE OPEN ACCESS

Steganography and Cryptography

An Art of Hiding Data
Tahamina Yesmin
Department of Computer Gaming and Mobile App Development
Haldia Institute of Management, Haldia, Purba
Medinipur – India

ABSTRACT
Transmission of data through internet has become very common now a day so, it is important to have secure
communication over internet. Cryptography and Steganography are two important methods for providing secure
communication. We know cryptography and steganography are two methods used for data protection. The
cryptography distorts the data and steganography hides the existence of data. But both of them have their own
vulnerabilities, in this paper we are focused to combine cryptography and steganography in various ways to
enhance the security of data.
Keywords:- Cryptography, Steganography, Encryption, Decryption, Advance encryption standard (AES), Data
Security, Information Hiding, Information Security, Data hiding.

I. INTRODUCTION
One of the reasons why attackers become
1. The cryptography and steganography are successful in intrusion is that they have an
two widely used techniques for confidentiality of opportunity to read and understand most
data exchange. Cryptography is used to cipher information from system. The most important
information and steganography is used to hide the motive for attacker to benefit from intrusion is
existence of data communication. To manipulate or value of confidential data he can obtain by
hide the existence of a message, cryptography and attacking the system. Hackers may expose the data,
steganography are two best techniques. alter it, distort it or employ it for more difficult
Cryptography scrambles the message so that the attacks. The solution for this problem has led to the
message cannot be understood. And steganography development of cryptography and steganography.
hides the existence of the message so that the By combining cryptography and steganography in
message is not visible. And combination of both one system we can ensure enhanced security [2].
Cryptography and steganography makes the
communication more confidential and secure. A We can use steganography over the cryptography,
cryptographic key was used to decode the message these are very closely related to each other. The use
that was known only by the authorized persons. of cryptography as a way to secure the hidden
The limitation of cryptography was that other message mainly addresses the security requirement
person came to know that the message had a hidden in the Information-Hiding system. For the purpose
text in it and so the probability of message being of steganography, symmetric encryption is
decoded by other person increased. To overcome followed. The symmetric encryption is a method of
this limitation the technique of steganography was encryption that uses the same key to encrypt and
introduced. decrypt a message.
If one person encrypts and decrypts data, that
Information transmission through internet may person must keep the key secret. If the data is
include sensitive personal data which may be transmitted between parties, each party must agree
intercepted. Also, there are many applications on on a shared secret key and find a secure method to
the internet and many web sites require the users to exchange the key. The security of encrypted data
fill forms that include sensitive personal depends on the secrecy of the key.
information such as telephone numbers, addresses,
and credit card information. So, the users may need It is noted that steganography and cryptography
private and secure communications for many alone is insufficient for the security of information,
reasons such as protect their confidential therefore if we combine these systems, we can
information from hackers during it passed over an generate more reliable and strong approach [3].
open channel, so the confidentiality and data The combination these two strategies will improve
integrity are required to protect against the security of the information secret. This
unauthorized access and use. Cryptography and combined will fulfill the prerequisites, for example,
steganography are the common methods to secure memory space, security, and strength for important
communications [1]. information transmission across an open channel.

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International Journal of Computer Science Trends and Technology (IJCST) – Volume 7 Issue 5, Sep - Oct 2019

Also, it will be a powerful mechanism which stego image. Various methods used for
enables people to communicate without interferes steganography are like LSB, Transform Domain,
of eavesdroppers even knowing there is a style of DFT and many more. All the techniques have some
communication in the first place. [4]. advantages and disadvantages. In this paper
enhanced LSB technique is developed by the
The studies that attack the encrypted message and author who overcomes the limitations of other
detect the hidden messages are called as techniques. LSB technique for color images by
Cryptanalysis and Steganalysis. So, we should embedding the information into three planes of
apply those algorithms that are hard to crack. RGB image in a way that enhances the quality of
image and achieves high embedding capacity. The
II. RELATED WORKS PSNR value of the proposed technique is better
than previous steganography methods.
In [5] authors proposed a method that increase the
security of data transfer by combining In [9], authors proposed a highly-secured
cryptography and steganography. Mp3 file is taken steganography technique by combining DNA
as the cover media and the secret message is sequence with Hyperelliptic Curve Cryptography.
encrypted using AES algorithm using a key that has This approach executes the benefits of both
been processed by MD5 hash function. The secret techniques to afford a high level of security
message was inserted in the homogeneous frame in communication. Also, it uses the benefits of both
mp3 files with addition of a key code. The MD5 DNA cryptography and Steganography. This
algorithm is a widely used cryptographic hash algorithm tries to hide a secret image in another
function used to verify data integrity. cover image by convert them into DNA sequence
using the nucleotide to the binary transformation
In [6] authors presented an enhanced safe data table. On the sender side, the embedding method
transfer scheme in smart Internet of Things (IoT) includes three steps. First, they convert the values
environment. They proposed a technique that of a pixel of both the cover image and secret image
employs an integrated approach of steganography to their respective DNA triplet value utilizing
and cryptography during data transfer between IoT characters to the DNA triplet conversion. Secondly,
device & home server and home server & cloud they convert the triplet values to binary values
server. The sensed data from IoT device is format. In the final stage, apply the XOR logic
encrypted and embedded in the cover image along between binary values of both secret image and
with message digest of sensed data and send to the cover image to generate a new image which called
home server for authentication purpose. At the stego image.
home server the embedded message digests and
encrypted data version is extracted. The received The paper at [10] presented a method based on
digest is compared with newly computed digest to combining both the strong encrypting algorithm
ensure data integrity and authentication. The same and steganographic technique to make the
procedure is carried out between home server and communication of confidential information safe,
cloud server. secure and extremely hard to decode. An
encryption technique is employed for encrypting a
In [7] authors give an example where, secret message before encoding it into a QR code.
Steganography can be used in a lot of useful They used AES-128 key encryption technique.
applications. For example copyright control of They encrypted a message, in UTF-8 format is
materials, to enhance the robustness of an image converted into base64 format to make it compatible
search engines and smart identity cards where the for further processing. The encoded image is
details of individuals are embedded in their scrambled to achieve another security level. The
photographs. Other applications include video- scrambled QR code is finally embedded in a
audio synchronization, TV broadcasting, TCP/IP suitable cover image, which is then transferred
packets where a unique ID is embedded in an securely to deliver the secret information. They
image to analyses the network traffic of particular utilized a least significant bit method to accomplish
users. the digital image steganography. At the receiver’s
side, the secret data is retrieved through the
[8] In this paper the author states that decoding process. Thus, a four-level security has
steganography is a technique which hides the data been rendered for them a secret message to be
in such a way that it is not visible to user. transferred.
Steganography has divided into many types like
Audio, Video, Text, Image. In case of image In [11], proposed an encrypting technique by
steganography data is hidden behind the image. In combining cryptography and steganography
this cover image is used to hide the data. The image techniques to hide the data. In cryptography
obtained after embedding the data is known as process, they proposed an effective technique for

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International Journal of Computer Science Trends and Technology (IJCST) – Volume 7 Issue 5, Sep - Oct 2019

data encryption using one’s complement method,

which we called as SCMACS. It used a symmetric There are a few different ways of characterizing
key method where both sender and receiver share cryptographic calculations. The three sorts of
the same key for encryption and decryption. In calculations are:
steganography part, we used the LSB method that (1) Secret key Cryptography: Uses a single key for
is used and mostly preferred. both encryption and decryption
(2) Public Key Cryptography: Uses one key for
2.1. Proposed System: encryption and another for decryption.
(3) Hash Functions: Uses a mathematical
The point of proposed plan is to make an transformation to irreversibly "encrypt"
increasingly secure and hearty strategy for data information.
trade with the goal that secret and private
information must be ensured against assaults and
2.3. Secret Key Cryptography:
unlawful access. To arrange in accomplish the
necessary vigor and security cryptography and The method of Secret key encryption can likewise
steganography is joined. Picture is taken as a be known as the symmetric-key, shared key, single-
spread mechanism for steganography and RSA key, and in the end private-key encryption. The
calculation is utilized for encryption. procedure of private key uses for all sides'
encryption and decoding mystery information. The
In this proposed technique our progressed LSB bit first data or plaintext is scrambled with a key by the
control strategy is utilized for inserting the message sender side likewise the comparatively key is
in the picture document and the message is itself utilized by the collector to decode a message to get
encoded utilizing the current RSA encryption the plaintext. The key will be known distinctly by a
strategy. For installing the content in picture people who are approved to the
document initially both the content and picture encryption/unscrambling [13].
record are changed over into twofold proportional
and afterward content is scrambled utilizing RSA. Nonetheless, the system bears the great security for
The scrambled content is then installed into the transmission however there is a trouble with the
picture record utilizing our progressed LSB appropriation of the key. In the event that one took
calculation. or investigate the key he can get entire information
with no trouble. A case of Symmetric-Key is DES
2.2. Cryptography: Algorithm [13].
Cryptography is one of the conventional techniques
used to ensure the protection of correspondence 2.4. Public Key Cryptography
between parties. This strategy is the specialty of
We can call this procedure as deviated
mystery composing, which is utilized to encode the
cryptosystem or open key cryptosystem, this
plaintext with a key into ciphertext to be moved
system utilize two keys which are scientifically
between parties on a shaky channel. Utilizing a
related, use independently for scrambling and
substantial key, the ciphertext can be unscrambled
unscrambling the data.
to the first plaintext. Without the learning of the
key, it's not possible for anyone to recover the
In this method, when we utilize the private key,
plaintext. Cryptography assumes a basic job in
there are no potential outcomes to get the
numerous variables required for secure
information or basically find the other key. All
correspondence over a shaky channel, similar to:
keys are required for the strategy to run. The key
classification, protection, non-renouncement, key
utilized for encryption is put away open along these
trade, and confirmation. Figure 1 shows the
lines its called open key, and the unscrambling key
cryptography system [12].
is put away mystery and called private key. A case
of Asymmetric-Key Algorithms is RSA [12].

2.5. RSA Algorithm:

RSA is one of the most punctual open key
cryptosystems and it is generally utilized for
verifying information transmission. RSA was first
depicted in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and
Leonard Adleman of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. Here encryption key is open and
decoding key is private, it stayed quiet. RSA
depends on factorizing two enormous prime
Fig. 1 numbers. People in general and the private key-

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International Journal of Computer Science Trends and Technology (IJCST) – Volume 7 Issue 5, Sep - Oct 2019

age calculation is the most unpredictable piece of

RSA cryptography. We can create two huge prime
numbers, x and y, utilizing the Rabin-Miller
primality test calculation. A modulus is
determined by increasing x and y. This number is
utilized by both people in general and private keys
and gives the connection between them. Its length
is known as the key length.

RSA calculation method can be shown in brief as

follows:

1. Pick two huge prime no. p and q.

2. Figure N=p*q
3. Figure f (z) = (p-1)*(q-1) Find an irregular
number e fulfilling 1 < e < f (n) and moderately
prime to f (n) i.e., gcd (e, f (z)) = 1.
4. Figure a number d with the end goal that d = e-1
mod f (n).
Fig. 2
5. Encryption: Enter message to get figure content.
Ciphertext c= mod ((message. ^e), N).
Steganography can be part into two kinds:
6. Decoding: The figure content is unscrambled by:
a) Fragile: This steganography includes installing
Message=mod ((c. ^d), N) [14]
data into a record which is devastated if the
. document is changed.
b) Robust: Robust checking expects to install data
2.6. Steganography: into a record which can only with significant effort
Steganography is disguised composition and is the be obliterated.
logical methodology of embeddings the mystery
information inside a spread media with the end goal 2.6.1. LSB Technique:
that the unapproved watchers don't get a thought of In Least Significant Bit (LSB) steganography insert
any data covered up in it. Steganography is an the instant message in least noteworthy bits of
option in contrast to cryptography where the emit computerized picture. In which information is
information is inserted into the transporter so that installed by supplanting the LSB of spread bearer
lone bearer is unmistakable which is sent from with the information to be send.ie first perused the
transmitter to beneficiary without scrambling. spread picture and instant message which is to be
Steganography is the craft of concealing the covered up in the spread picture, at that point
presence of information in another transmission convert instant message in double. Ascertain LSB
medium to accomplish mystery correspondence. It of every pixel of spread picture. Supplant LSB of
doesn't supplant cryptography yet it very well may spread picture with each piece of mystery message
be utilized to improve the security of cryptography individually so we get a picture wherein
[15]. information is covered up [16].
The secret data can be embedded into the For instance, the accompanying network can be
spread media by the stego framework encoder with considered as 3 pixels of a 24-piece shading
utilizing certain calculation. A mystery message picture, utilizing 9 bytes of memory
can be plaintext, a picture, ciphertext , or anything
which can be spoken to in type of a bitstream. After (00100111 11101001 11001000)
the mystery date is installed in the spread article, (00100111 11001000 11101001)
the spread item will be called as a stego object (11001000 00100111 11101001)
additionally the stego article sends to the
beneficiary by choosing the reasonable channel, When the character A, which binary value equals
where decoder framework is utilized with the 10000001, is inserted, the following grid results:
equivalent stego strategy for getting unique data as
the sender might want to move. There are different (00100111 11101000 11001000)
sorts of steganography [15]. Figure 2 shows the (00100110 11001000 11101000)
steganography system. (11001000 00100111 11101001)

For this situation, just three bits should have been

changed to embed the character effectively. By and

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International Journal of Computer Science Trends and Technology (IJCST) – Volume 7 Issue 5, Sep - Oct 2019

large, just 50% of the bits in a picture should be Steganography Using AES Encryption and
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Processing and Networking (WiSPNET),
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