A Comparative Study and Literature Review of Image Steganography Techniques
A Comparative Study and Literature Review of Image Steganography Techniques
A Comparative Study and Literature Review of Image Steganography Techniques
Yogita Gulati
Research Guide
Department of Computer Science & Engineering
PIET, Panipat, India
Abstract
In the era of modern technology, there is a need of safe and secure communication. The art of impregnable communication
through a safe medium like images is known as steganography. The process that detects the embedded data in the medium is
called as Steganalysis. In this review paper, we have studied various methodologies proposed by the researchers in the field of
steganography. The main objective of image steganography is to hide the existence of data from unauthorized action. Image
steganography is a technique that provides a safe way to the secret embedded data to the target user. To hide the secret data in
the images various techniques are proposed by the researchers, some are complex and other produce good results. Each
methodology has good and bad points, so techniques are compared as well.
Keywords: Image steganography, steganography, stego image, cover image, Embedding, PSNR
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I. INTRODUCTION
In the field of Information technology, Steganography referred to cover writing which is derived from Greek language.
Steganography is defined by Markus Khan [1] as follows, "Steganography is the art and science of communicating in a way
which hides the existence of the communication. In contrast to Cryptography, where the enemy is allowed to detect, intercept
and modify messages without being able to violate certain security premises guaranteed by a cryptosystem, the goal of
Steganography is to hide messages inside other harmless messages in a way that does not allow any enemy to even detect that
there is a second message present". The main goal of steganography is to provide secure and robust communication. There are
two more concepts which are often mixed with steganography: Cryptography and watermarking. Cryptography is the technique
through which plain text is converted in to cipher text, but the data cannot be hidden from malicious intention even if the cipher
text is in unreadable form. "Watermarking" is the process of hiding digital information in a carrier signal; the hidden information
should, [2] but does not need to, contain a relation to the carrier signal. Digital watermarks may be used to verify the authenticity
or integrity of the carrier signal or to show the identity of its owners.
The steganography can be done through different carriers i.e. we can classify steganography in to four types:
A. Text Steganography:
In this technique of steganography, the secret data is embedded in text form by altering certain properties of the text document.
This technique is not widely used.
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B. Image Steganography:
In this technique of steganography, the secret data is embedded in the image. This is achieved by adjusting the pixels values.
C. Audio Steganography:
In this technique of steganography, the secret data is embedded in the audio form.
Various audio formats which can be used to create a stego image are MPEG, AVI, etc
D. Protocol Steganography:
In this technique of steganography, communication protocol control elements are used to hide the secret data. This domain is
referred to as the network steganography.
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In [9], author has used various techniques like LSB, layout management schemes, only 0s and 1s are replaced from lower
nibble from the byte and are considered for hiding secret message in an image. Author has also proposed various methods of data
hiding based on the random bits of random pixels like replacing Intermediate bit, raster scan principle, random Scan principle,
Color based data hiding, shape based data hiding. So, the techniques are analysed and it showed that the parameters responsible
for noise in a cover image due to the hidden data depends on amount of data to hide , size of cover image, frequency of pixels
available in an image, physical location of pixels.
Image Steganography
technique
Integer wavelength
transform
[6]
Wavelet transform
coefficients
[7]
[8]
[9]
Spatial domain
Description
Advantage
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, different image steganography techniques and their comparison were discussed, so that one can find the best
technique for hiding the data. In literature review section, various proposed techniques are discussed. By analysing all the
techniques , we have found that the combination of DCT, Arnold transform and chaotic sequence can produce a secure system
and is more robust technique, hence can enhance the performance .
REFERENCES
Johnson, Neil F., Steganography, 2000, URL: http://www.jjtc.com/stegdoc/index2.html
Ingemar J. Cox: Digital watermarking and steganography. Morgan Kaufmann, Burlington, MA, USA, 2008
Akhtar, N.; Johri, P.; Khan, S., "Enhancing the Security and Quality of LSB Based Image Steganography," Computational Intelligence and Communication
Networks (CICN), 2013 5th International Conference on, vol., no., pp.385,390, 27-29 Sept. 2013.
[4] T. Morkel J.H.P Eloff, M.S. Olivier, An overview of Image Steganography, information and computer Security architecture research group department of
computer science, 2005.
[5] Hemalatha S, U Dinesh Acharya, Renuka A, Priya R. Kamath, a secure and high capacity image Steganography technique Signal & Image Processing:
An International Journal (SIPIJ) Vol.4, No.1, February 2013
[6] gowtham dhanarasi and Dr .A. Mallikarjuna Prasad, image steganography using block complexity analysis , International Journal of Engineering Science
and Technology (IJEST) Vol. 4 No.07 July 2012
[7] Rahul Jain and Naresh kumar, Efficient data hiding scheme using lossless data compression and image steganography , International Journal of
Engineering Science and Technology (IJEST) , Vol. 4 No.08 August 2012
[8] Siddharth Singh and Tanveer J. Siddiqui, A Security Enhanced Robust Steganography Algorithm for Data Hiding IJCSI International Journal of
Computer Science Issues, Vol. 9, Issue 3, No 1, May 2012
[9] Dipesh Agrawal, Samidha Diwedi Sharma, Analysis of Random Bit Image Steganography Techniques International Journal of Computer Applications
(0975 8887) International Conference on Recent Trends in engineering & Technology - 2013(ICRTET'2013).
[10] http://prateekvjoshi.com/2013/03/20/image-steganography/
[1]
[2]
[3]
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