CONCOCTION OF STEGANOGRAPHY AND

CRYPTOGRAPHY
1 1;* 1 1
A Karthikeyan.B , Pavan Sai.K , Nischel .K , and Sree Nanda Sai.D

1
SCHOOL OF COMPUTING,

SASTRA DEEMDED TO BE UNIVERSITY,THANJAVUR,INDIA.

*
Pavan Sai.K-pavansai.komara@gmail.com

Abstract. With the increase of users and usage of applications security

plays the vital role, with the increase of technology it has become easy to
steal the sensitive information. This paper describes how the data is
encrypted and hidden in an image. Initially the data is taken and encrypted
it with Burrows Wheeler Transform Algorithm and then modified Double
Advanced Encryption Standard encryption is applied and the encrypted data
is hidden in image. Each character of the data is represented as 8-bit binary
format obtained from its ASCII value out of which first three bits is
replaced with last three bits of pixel value in R Matrix and the next three
bits are replaced with last three bits of pixel value(in binary format) in the G
matrix and the last two bits are replaced with last two bits of pixel value in
the B matrix of the image. Here hiding is achieved by process of replacing
bits in image matrix .After hiding the data in the image, Mean Square Error
(MSE), Peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) values of original image and the
stego image(data hidden image) are tabulated and the graph is plotted for
them.
Keywords: Burrows Wheeler Transform (BWT), Steganography,
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) , Mean Square Error(MSE), peak
signal to noise ratio(PSNR), stego image.

1 Introduction

The security has been enhanced with the combination of cryptography and
steganography. For encryption burrows wheeler transform is used and modified
double Advanced encryption standard i.e. AES encryption is applied once with a
key and the keys first half characters are interchanged with the last half and AES
encryption is applied with the new key. Then the message is hid in the image, first
three bits is replaced with last three bits of pixel value in R Matrix and the next
three bits are replaced with last three bits of pixel value(in binary format) in the G
matrix and the last two bits are replaced with last two bits of pixel value in the B
matrix of the image. Data is hidden in image and known as stego image.. MSE and
PSNR values are calculated and tabulated. The behavior of MSE and PSNR values
is inferred with the increase in the length of the message. From stego image, en-
crypted data is extracted. Inverse burrow wheeler transform is applied and Mod-
ified double AES decryption is applied to get plain text .Even if someone tries to
sneak into the data, even if he extracted the message from the image he can't be
able to understand the data since it is encrypted.

2 Literature Survey

Information security has became the most important concern in Networks.

[1]Combination of classical and quantum cryptography can produce powerful
techniques which can provide security and reliability for the data. But, each technique
has its own advantages and disadvantages. So, select a technique which suits our
necessities in a better way.

Visual cryptography is a cryptographic technique which encrypts the data in the

form of images.[2] In this data is encrypted into n transparencies and shared to
participants. Decryption follows superimposition technique and it is simple
because it follows the same pattern followed by human visual system.

The important purpose of a cryptographic technique is to maintain the secrecy of

data and to share it only to authenticated individuals. [3]Inherent cardinal is used
in the encryption so that it will be wearisome for the unauthorized person to
decrypt the message which makes this technique powerful.

Information security has become the most important concern in networks.

Advanced [4]Encryption Standard, a block cipher method is used to transform the
text into another form. Decryption can also be done in this system. This method is
used to prevent the hackers from accessing the data.

Advanced Encryption Standard is a block cipher method used for encryption and
decryption of data. To maintain[5] Interoperability structure of AES should
remain intact. Advanced Encryption Standard is key dependent which makes it
dynamic in nature.

[6]Advanced Encryption Standard has become a vital cryptographic technique

which can be used for many applications like encrypting data, electronic
banking,i.e exchange along various fields because of its less memory requirements
and less power consumption.

Improvement of any algorithm is necessary [7] to improve Burrow Wheeler

Transform can sometimes generate similarity measure, if more the intermixed symbols
are present the more similar strings are formed. In this article two new algorithms are
generated to calculate similarity measure.

Optimization improves the processing time[8] traditional AES takes more time to
compute. So instead of mix columns ,shift rows and changed S Box is used which
is reconstructed that is used to optimize the algorithm.

To improve the statistical properties pseudo random numbers can be used as

cryptographic keys. [9] Chen Chaotic system is used to design an algorithm to create
pseudo random number generator which can be used to generate keys.

Medical images have images with the pixels of less potency so hiding a data in
this might cause underflow problems. [10] The risk of underflow is minimized as
it has huge embedding rate in the medical images.

Cryptography is a study which is used to encrypt a data such as message or an

image, [11] Coupled map Lattice (CML), sub key based substitution, private key
and confusion algorithm is used to secure image. Control parameters of initial
chaotic system and CML are derived using 280 bit key.

The art of hiding a data in an image is known as steganography. [12] provides the
information to design best system such that it is more secure than the existing
models.

The data which is being transmitted by any electronic way is at high risk of attack.
In such cases security plays a major role to safeguard the information. [13] AES is
modified, these changes enhance the security of the information when it is
compared to classic AES algorithm. In this sequence repeater is used .

Algorithms in cryptography are present to safeguard the private data but these
algorithms are affected by noise. In the case of AES even the small change can
affect the data and the original message is destroyed and cannot be retained. [14]
mean variance method and global variance method is used to rectify it.

[15] S-box gyration for key independent is introduced. S-box is key-dependent

and it makes AES strong. Classic AES features and Cipher architecture are same,
only S-box is made dependent on the key.
3 Discussion

3.1 Encryption

In Fig .1, a detailed flow of data or message is processed from original message to
stego image. Initially the plain text is taken, if the total number of characters is not
multiple of 16, add some padding characters to it so that it becomes multiple of 16
since AES works with 16 bytes(128 bits) . Then burrows wheeler transform is
applied to it. Result from burrow wheeler transform is divided into blocks such
that each block consists of 16bytes(each character is considered as byte).Then
modified double Advanced Encryption Standard encryption is applied to each
block. 16 bytes key(k1) is taken for AES encryption and decryption. In modified
double AES, encryption and decryption process is done twice. For first encryption
process, key generation is done with actual 16 bytes key but for second encryption
process key generation is done with 16 bytes key(k2) that is obtained by
interchanging first 8 bytes and last 8 bytes of actual 16 bytes key. Now, the
resultant cipher blocks, that is obtained after applying modified AES encryption
to each block, are combined to give cipher text. An image is used to hide the
resultant cipher text. During hiding each character of cipher text is first converted
to 8-bit binary format from its ASCII value. The first three bits and the next three
bits and the next two bits are replaced in last three bits of each pixel value (in
binary format) in R matrix and last three bits of each pixel value in G matrix and
last two bits of pixel value in B matrix respectively . The resultant image is the
stego image.

3.2 Decryption

According to Fig .2,from stego image, cipher text should be extracted. Each
character of cipher text can be extracted by taking last three bits from each pixel in
R matrix and last three bits from each pixel in G matrix and two bits from each
pixel in B matrix .All 8 bits extracted is in binary format, decimal value of 8-bit
binary format is ASCII value of character, thereby extracting a single character.
Likewise all characters are extracted and put together as cipher text .After
extracting the complete cipher text , modified double AES decryption is applied to
cipher text .For first decryption process k2 key is used for key generation and for
second decryption k1 key is used for key generation. After AES decryption is
applied inverse Burrow Wheeler Transform is applied to get the plain text . Hence
plain text is obtained from stego image. The plain text is obtained with padding
characters. Fig .3 , Fig .5 are the sample images,Fig .4 , Fig .6 are the stego
images that are obtained after the encryption process. From these stego images,
the decryption process is done to get the data that is hidden.
 PLAIN TEXT STEGO IMAGE

BURROWS WHEELER EXTRACT DATA FROM

TRANSFORM IMAGE

MODIFIED DOUBLE AES CIPHER TEXT

ENCRYPTION

CIPHER TEXT MODIFIED DOUBLE AES

DECRYPTION

HIDE THE CIPHER TEXT INVERESE BURROWS

INTO IMAGE WHEELER TRANFORM

STEGO IMAGE PLAIN TEXT

Fig .1. Encryption Process Fig .2. Decryption Process

4 Figures and Tables

Fig .3. Image 1 Fig .4. Image 1 after 300 characters are
hidden

Fig .6. Image 2 after 1000 characters are

Fig .5. Image 2 hidden
 Fig .7. Image 3

Table 1. The table represents the MSE and PSNR values of each image with different
length of strings

Filename length MSE PSNR

100.txt (image1) 100 0.005 70.478
100.txt (image2) 100 0.006 70.001
100.txt (image3) 100 0.003 72.933
300.txt (image1) 298 0.030 63.344
300.txt (image2) 298 0.031 63.129
300.txt (image3) 298 0.012 67.242
1000.txt (image1) 1000 0.112 57.600
1000.txt (image2) 1000 0.115 57.499
1000.txt (image3) 1000 0.041 61.979

FIG .8.Graph
Graph for Image1 (Length vs PSNR vs MSE)

FIG .9.Graph
Graph for Image2 (Length vs PSNR vs MSE)
 FIG .10.Graph for Image3 (Length vs PSNR vs MSE)

5 Conclusion

Hence with the integration of cryptography and steganography the security for a
data can be increased. The more data is hidden into an image ,the more will be the
mean square error(MSE) value . As MSE value increases ,the noise increases
thereby decreasing peak signal to noise ratio(PSNR) value. Therefore, size of the
message or data to be hidden is directly proportional to mean square error(MSE)
and inversely proportional to peak signal to noise ratio(PSNR) i.e. if the size of the
data is increased the MSE value increases and PSNR value decreases which can
be illustrated with the scatter 3D plots drawn for length vs PSNR vs MSE for each
image. Fig .8, Fig .9, Fig .10 shows the 3D graphs plotted for Image 1(Fig
.3),Image2(Fig .5) and Image3(Fig .7) respectively for different length of data. All
the 3D plots clearly illustrates that MSE value increases and PSNR value
decreases as size of data increases .All the MSE and PSNR values for three
sample images with different lengths of data are tabulated in Table 1. During the
process of encryption, stego image is obtained which is almost as same as original
image and cannot be easily identified with naked eye. The data(plain text) that is
initially hidden in original image is same as data obtained from stego image(but
with some padding characters). Since the last bits of each pixel are replaced, there
is less probability to find the difference between the original images and stego
images with the naked eye. Security is enhanced as multiple encryption algorithms
are applied(i.e burrow wheeler transform and modified double AES) in encryption
and decryption process along with steganography.

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