CS591 – Project

Osama Khaleel.

Introduction:

In today’s society where information is rapidly available through the Internet, Companies have the ability to communicate with a worldwide audience, and have access to the World Wide Web. Information hiding techniques are received increasing attention due to the availability of multimedia content in digital form and the need to present solutions to the following problems:

· Criminal copying and distribution.

· Wide spread patent and copyright violation.

· Difficult verification.

Motivation:

All of us know that cryptography and steganography existed many years ago. We can encrypt data, but it will be exposed while transferring. On the other hand, we can hide data into a common object, but if someone extracts it, he/she gets that information easily. Therefore, my idea is to apply both of them, so in case one gets the embedded data, it will be encrypted.

Project description:

This project is a kind of Secure Information hiding system. It combines two security techniques; Cryptography and Steganography. I am trying to get both techniques’ benefits in this project; So encrypting the data first, then hiding it in a common object.

Cryptography is the science of using mathematics to encrypt and decrypt data. It enables you to store sensitive information or to transmit it across insecure networks (like the internet) so that it cannot be read by anyone except the intended recipient. [1]

Steganography is: ”Hiding a secret message within a larger one in such a way that others can not discern the presence or contents of the hidden message” [2].

Steganography vs. Cryptography

Encryption protects contents during the transmission of the data from the sender to receiver. Steganography hides messages in plain display rather than encrypting that message, it is embedded in popular object and doesn’t require secret transmission. Steganography is therefore broader than cryptography.

Approaches used:

For cryptography I will use the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to build the encryption and decryption processes; it has been considered an indecipherable cryptography algorithm so far. And the Least Significant Bit (LSB) [4] method will be used to embed a secret message in a cover object for steganography. Finally, I am using PNG image as a cover object.

I am also trying to develop new additions on the simple LSB method to make it “really impossible!” to be broken. (Depends on time).

References:

-William Stallings,” Cryptography and Network Security “, Prentice Hall, (2003).

[1] http://www.pgpi.org/doc/pgpintro/

[2]http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=steganography

[3] http://www.jjtc.com/Steganography/

[4] http://www.infosyssec.com/infosyssec/Steganography/techniques.htm

[5] http://java.sun.com/

[6] www.javaworld.com