International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) Volume 4 Issue 7- July 2013

A Review Based Study of Hybrid Security Schemes Based on Compression, Encryption and Steganography
Jyoti Gaba#1, R.C. Mishra#2
#1

M.Tech Scholar, CSE Department, T.I.T&S Bhiwani (M.D.U. Rohtak), Haryana, India #2 Professor, CSE Department, M.D.U. Rohtak, Haryana, India

Abstract Information exchange over the network is no more secure. Intruders and eavesdroppers always try to expose the secret information either to take benefit out of it or just to show their technical expertise. Encryption has been the tool to shelter the text for a long time. Its main downside is that it draws attention of unauthorized people due to the fact that message is incomprehensible. Steganography avoids attention by hiding the information behind some digitally representative media, but, it carries the text as it is. The threats from the attackers have increased tremendously in recent years and neither of these two tools is secure enough in solitary. These two tools can be combined to give the attacker a tough fight in discovering the text. Lossless compression can be used to trim down the information before encoding it. It can be united with encryption and steganography so as to make the task even more complicated for invader. This paper reviews some algorithms uniting these techniques. Keywords Cryptography, Steganography, Compression

the media. Encryption makes the text unintelligible. Steganography thwarts suspicion on the presence of data. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II provides some background on cryptography, steganography and compression techniques. Section III reviews some algorithms that combine these three. Section IV concludes the paper. II. BACKGROUND A. Cryptographic Techniques Three types of algorithms cryptography: are used generally in

1) Symmetric Key Cryptography (SKC): Uses an identical key for both encryption and decryption. These algorithms are fast to implement. But in these techniques data is secure only as long as the key is secure so it must be delivered with utmost security. 2) Asymmetric Key Cryptography (PKC: Uses one key for encryption and a different for decryption. These are drastically slow in operation.

I. INTRODUCTION

Cryptography and steganography are well accepted techniques intended to enable secure data exchange between two parties. These techniques use different approaches to 3) Hash Functions: Uses a mathematical transformation to achieve this objective. The word cryptography is derived from the Greek word kryptos, meaning hidden. So, cryptography irretrievably "encrypt" information. Therefore, once the plain text encrypts the text thus changing its meaning and making it is enciphered to generate the cipher text, the process cannot be unintelligible. reversed to generate plain text back from cipher text. These are The word steganography is derived from the Greek words steganos, meaning covered, and graphy, meaning drawing generally used in password verification. or writing. Steganography is the art and science of hiding information so that its presence cannot be detected [1]. As a B. Steganography Techniques result, steganography hides the existence of text and does not In steganography, information can be hidden behind vast variety raise suspicion in mind of the intruder [2]. If someone of media like images, audio, video, text, or some other digitally suspects the presence of information, steganography has failed representative code. There are quite a lot of appropriate carriers to serve its purpose [3]. Compression is the technique used to compress plain text to generate compressed text in order to that can be used as the cover-object [4]: decrease space utilization. Additionally, it reduces the i) Protocols such as TCP, IP and UDP. ii) Audio files having formats such as midi, avi, mpeg, mpi bandwidth requirements for transmitting the text. and voc. If we follow three steps: Initially, compress the data, then, encrypt iii) Text files such as html and java. it and finally, mask it behind some other media, it can provide iv) File and Disk that can hide and append files by incredible security. Thus, these three techniques, if combinedcan using the slack space can provide unbreakable security of confidential data. v) Image files such as bmp, gif and jpg, including both color Compression reduces storage space and bandwidth requirements to transmit data. Moreover, it requires less data to be hidden behind and gray-scale.

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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) Volume 4 Issue 7- July 2013
Data compression techniques can be grouped into two categories: lossy and lossless. 1) Lossy Compression techniques: Compresses data at the cost that data cannot be exactly recovered as it was before compression. The reason being these techniques remove redundant information that cannot be reinstated. These are generally used to compress images, audio, video etc. But these techniques provide a larger compression ratio than lossless ones. 2) Lossless Compression: These techniques compress data such that it can be retrieved as it is after decompression. Compression ratio achieved by these techniques is usually smaller and more processing power is required to accomplish the operation. Text files are generally compressed by this technique. Various algorithms for lossy compression are run length encoding, Huffman encoding, LZW encoding etc.

Basically Steganography techniques can be characterized as follows [8]

1) Text Steganography: It is one of the toughest types of coding as it involves altering the structure of a text file to hide secret text. In this case, huge amounts of data are required to hide the text. Its prevalent techniques are line-shift coding, word-shift coding, feature coding etc.

2) Image steganography: In this, the secret text is hidden behind a cover image by modifying some bits of its pixels. It is an effective technique because of the limitations of human III. ALGORITHMS COMBINING CRYPTOGRAPHY, STEGANOGRAPHY AND eye to identify minute change of colours. Its prevalent COMPRESSION techniques are Least Significant Bits, Masking and filtering, A. CCS (Compressed Crypto Stegno) Scheme transformations etc. To meet the ever increasing security needs G. Manikandan, N. Sairam and M. Kamarasan proposed CCSM[6] (Compressed Crypto Stegno Model) that unites three practices described above. This proposal uses LZW lossless compression algorithm to compress the data at the initial step. The data can be perfectly reproduced at the other end due to the lossless behavior of this algorithm. After compressing the C. Comparing Cryptography with Steganography data, it is encoded by BlowFish algorithm. BlowFish is a Basically, both serve the same purpose. However, they fiestel based symmetric block cipher that comprises of 16 differ significantly. Cryptography hides the contents of a iterative rounds. This approach uses a modified F-function secret message from malicious people, whereas steganography that substitutes 2 addition operations and one XOR operation even conceals the existence of the message. Both can be by 2 XOR operations, one addition operation and one circular shift operation. After enciphering the compressed text, the contrasted as follows [5] resultant data is masked behind an image using the LSB (Least Significant Bit) approach which is a relatively simple 1) Known vs. unknown: Cryptography passes the message technique. It substitutes the LSB of some selected pixels by a consciously whereas steganography unsuspectingly. bit from the cipher text. Thus this technique hides 3 bits in every 24 bits value of a pixel. This results in a very 2) Detection vs. discovery: Cryptography conceal the contents of insignificant alteration of the cover image that is communication thus preventing its discovery whereas imperceptible to human eye. After performing these three steps at the sender side, exactly mirror image of these steps is steganography hides the detection of the communication performed by the other party. Thus, first extracting the masked message from the cover image, then, decoding it and 3) Structure of message: Cryptography scrambels the structure ultimately decompressing it to get the intended plain text. The of confidential message whereas steganography does not. following diagram depicts the sender side operations 4) Technology: Cryptography has a huge range of performed in this model algorithms and common technology whereas for steganography technology is still being developed. 3) Audio steganography: In this technique, secret text is masked behind an audio file. It is also a complex technique as humans can determine a slight variation in audio quality. Common techniques under this category are LSB coding, phase coding, spread spectrum, echo hiding etc. D. Compression Techniques

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C. Information Hiding Using LSB Steganography and Cryptography This scheme proposed by S. Gupta, A. Goyal and B. Bhushan combines public key cryptosystems such as RSA and Diffie Hellman with LSB steganographic method [9]. The scheme first encrypts the message with either RSA or Diffie Hellman and then hides the binary equivalent of the encrypted message behind Least Significant Bits of the carrier image. The transmitted image when received at other side is used to extract the embedded bits of the message from Least Significant Bits. The same algorithm used for encryption at the sender side is used at the receiver side to decrypt the extracted bits. The authors have experimented by hiding varying number of bits in each pixel of the carrier image. The results indicate that as the size of the image increases, time complexity increases proportionally. Moreover, with the increase in number of bits hidden behind the image, complexity also increases. RSA provides more security when united with steganography but increases the time complexity as compared to Diffie Hellman. B. CrypSteg Algorithm This scheme proposed by P. Bharti and R. Soni combines both cryptography and steganography to satisfy the needs of secure communication such as security, capacity and robustness [7]. D. Twelve Square Substitution Cipher And Index Variable Based Steganography This approach proposes a new encryption algorithm namely twelve square [10]. It can be used to encipher alphabets, digits and special characters too. It uses two different tables comprising of 6 squares each.

In the encryption process, the key value is concatenated 8 times and first 8 characters are selected. ASCII values of these chosen characters are added together and the resultant is divided by 1000 to achieve a three digit number. Let it be denoted by N1N2N3. 1st ,4th ,7th characters of the plain text are shifted by N1, 2nd ,5th ,8th characters are shifted by N2 and 3rd ,6th ,9th characters are shifted by N3. In the steganography process, the image is partitioned into 4*4 pixel blocks. The enciphered data is converted to binary and masked behind Least Significant bits (LSB) of the diagonal pixels. Thus, 4 bits are hidden behind 4*4 pixel block. This algorithm is very competent for little amount of data and for the cases where cover image has its pixels homogenously scattered.

First table is used to encrypt alphabets and second table for digits and special characters. For first character square 1st & 4th are used. The position of the character in 1st square is located and the corresponding character at the same location in 4th square is substituted for it. For 2nd character, 2nd and 5th

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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) Volume 4 Issue 7- July 2013
squares and for 3rd character, 3rd and 6th squares are used, wounding to 1st and 4th square for the next character and so on. After encrypting the text, both the cipher text and the carrier image are converted to binary form. The number of bytes in the cipher text is divided by 3 to calculate an index variable denoted by p. This index variable determines the particular bits in the pixel behind which the bits of cipher text will be masked. For p=0, 6th and 7th bits, for p=1, 7th and 8th bits and for p=2, 6th and 8th bits of the pixel are used to hide the bits of the cipher text. The value of p is incremented with every pixel. This method is very much preventive against frequency analysis attack due to the nature of the twelve square substitution cipher. E. Transmitting Cryptographic Data Through Steganography This technique[11] combines the cryptography and steganography approaches. To begin with the data is enciphered with the assistance of a secret key and cipher text is produced as a result. The encoded text is then embedded and covered behind the cover-image. Finally, the stego-image is transmitted to the other party. The other side performs the reverse process. It first filters the received image and restores the pixels so as not to alter the original cipher text. Then it retrieves the plain text by decrypting the cipher text. F. A New Horizon in Data Security by Combining Cryptography And Steganography This paper designs a new system that comprises of four sub components[12] 1) Compression component: It compresses the input text by Huffman encoding scheme 2) Crypto component: This unit enciphers the compressed text by using the AES symmetric encryption scheme using 128 bit key. The resultant is converted to hexadecimal form. 3) Security module: This unit hides the first 7 hex values and uses the rest of them to produce a key. It adds additional security to the system 4) Stego-module: To begin with, capture 7 hex values from above component and jumble these values using 64 bit key. Now take a gray scale image and calculate its DCT. Hide the coded text by modifying DCTs. To find stego-image apply inverse DCT.

IV. CONCLUSIONS Looking at the ever growing security requirement, the cryptography and the steganography techniques are not sufficient single-handedly to protect the secret data. Cryptography draws attention towards the incomprehensible text and attracts the malicious users to break it. Steganography, though do not arise suspicion but, if compromised, may reveal the secret data in its original form. These can be treated as one entity to enhance the protection. They can further be supplemented with compression to remove redundant data before hiding the text which will also reduce storage requirements. This paper provides a review of some common algorithms and schemes that combine two or all three of these techniques. Future work may encompass different combinations of cryptography and steganography techniques so as to decrease the time complexity and to boost the security. REFERENCES
[1] C . Cachin, An Information-Theoretic Model for Steganography, in proceeding 2nd Information Hiding Workshop, vol. 1525, pp. 306-318, 1998 N.F. Johnson, S. Jajodia, Staganalysis: The Investigation of Hiding Information, IEEE, pp. 113-116, 1998. D. Artz, Digital Steganography: Hiding Data within Data, IEEE Internet Computing, pp. 75-80, May-Jun 2001. RA Isbell, Steganography: Hidden Menace or Hidden Saviour, Steganography White Paper, IO May 2002. M. M Amin, M. Salleh, S . Ibrahim, M.R.K atmin, and M.Z.I. Shamsuddin, Information Hiding using Steganography , in proceeding 4th National Conference on Telecommunication Technology Proceedings, Shah Alam, Malaysia, IEEE, pp. 21-25, 2003 G. Manikandan, N. Sairam and M. Kamarasan, A Hybrid Approach for Security Enhancement by Compressed Crypto-Stegno Scheme, Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology, pp. 608-614, 2012 P. Bharti, R. Soni, A New Approach of Data Hiding in Images using Cryptography and Steganography, International Journal of Computer Applications, Volume 58 No.18, pp. 1-4, Nov 2012 M. Nosrati, R. Karimi, M. Hariri, World Applied Programming, Vol (1), No (3),pp. 191-195, Aug 2011 S. Gupta, A. Goyal, B. Bhushan, Information Hiding Using Least Significant Bit Steganography and Cryptography, I.J. Modern Education and Computer Science, pp. 27-34, june 2012 G.Swain, S.K Lenka, Steganography Using the Twelve Square Substitution Cipher and an Index Variable, IEEE ,pp. 84-88, Nov. 2011 M.A.Mufti, A. Khan, M.S.H. Khiyal, A. Munir, Transmitting Cryptographic data through Steganography, IJCSI, pp. 283-286 Vol. 9, Issue 2, No 3, March 2012 D.K. Sarmah, N. Bajpai, A new horizon in data security by Cryptography & Steganography, IJCSIT, pp.212-220, Vol. 1 (4), 2010

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