INTERNATIONALJOURNALOFAPPLIEDENGINEERINGRESEARCH,DINDIGUL Volume1,No1,2010 Copyright2010AllrightsreservedIntegratedPublishingAssociation RESEARCHARTICLEISSN09764259

UseofimagetosecuretextmessagewiththehelpofLSBreplacement
SaurabhSingh,GauravAgarwal InvertisInstituteof Engineering andTechnology,Bareilly,India saurabh.iiet@gmail.com

ABSTRACT As the communication increases day by day the value for security over network also increases.Therearemanywaystohideinformationortransmissionofinformationsecretly. Inthissensesteganographyisthebestpartofsendinginformationsecretly.Thisistheartof writingmessageorinformationinsuchawaythatnooneapartsuitablerecipientknowsthe meaning of the message or information. As there are many techniques to perform steganographyonelectronicmedia,mostnotablyaudioandimagefiles.Theoutcomeofthis paper is to generate a crossplatform that can effectively hide a message inside a digital image file. An image is the combination of several pixels and each pixel has three color numbersandanimageconsistofmillionsofnumbers.Sothechangein fewcolornumbers resultingthepicturewhichwouldprobably lookalotlikestheoriginalimage.Inthispaper wearepresenting the technique whichworks by changing a few pixel color value we will use selected pixel value to represent characters instead of a color value. Obviously the resultingimagewillstilllookmostlyliketheoriginalexceptthatafewpointsseemlittleout ofplaceifwelookveryclosely. Keywords:Encryption,Cryptography,Staganography,TextinImage,LSB

1.Introduction
Steganographyistheartofhidingthefactthatcommunicationistakingplace,byhidingthe information in or under information. There are different kinds of steganography used in communicationchannelbutindigitalfileformattheformatthataremoresuitablearethose with a high degree of redundancy. This can bedefined as thebitsof an object thatprovide accuracyfargreaterthannecessaryfortheobjectsuseanddisplay.Theredundantbitsofan object are thosebits that canbe altered without thealteration being detected easily. Hiding information in text is historically the most important method of steganography.an obvious methodwastohideasecretmessageineverynthletterofeverywordofatextmessagetext steganography using digital files is not used very often since text files have a very small amount of redundant data. Given the proliferation of digital images, especially on the network,andgiventhelargeamountofredundantbitspresentinthedigitalrepresentationof animage,imagesarethemostpopularcoverobjectsforsteganography.Thispaperwillfocus onhidinginformationinimagesinthenextsections.Thetermprotocolsteganographyrefers to the techniques of embedding information within message and network control protocol used in network transmission. In the layers of the OSI network model there exist covert channelswheresteganographycanbeused.Anexampleofwhereinformationcanbehidden isintheheaderofaTCP/IPpacketinsomefieldsthatareeitheroptionalorareneverused.

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Inthesystemrequirement.animageisacollectionofnumbersthatconstitutedifferentlight intensities indifferent areas of the image. This numericrepresentationforms a grid and the individualpointsarereferredtoaspixels.Mostoftheimagesconsistofarectangularmapof theimagepixelknownasthebitswhereeachpixelislocatedanditscolor.Thesepixelsare displayedhorizontallyrowbyrow.Thenumberofbitsinacolorscheme,calledthebitdepth, refers to the number of bits used for each pixel. The smallest bit depth in current color schemes is 8, meaning that there are 8 bits used to describe the color of each pixel. Monochrome and grayscale images use 8 bits for each pixel and are able to display 256 differentcolorsorshadesofgray.Digitalcolorimagesaretypicallystoredin24bitfilesand usetheRGBcolormodel,alsoknownastruecolor.allcolorvariationsforthepixelsof24 bitimagearederivedfromthreeprimarycolors:red,greenandblue,andeachprimarycolor isrepresentedby8bits.thusinonegivenpixel,therecanbe256differentquantitiesofred, greenandblue,addinguptomorethan16millioncombinations,resultinginmorethan16 millioncolors.Notsurprisinglythelargeramountofcolorsthatcanbedisplayed,thelarger thefilesize. 3.RelatedWorkintheFieldOfImageSteganography Therearelotsoftechniquesavailablethatimplementsteganographyonavarietyofdifferent electronicmediums.weareusingthetechniquedependonthedigitalimageasdigitalimages oftenhavealargeamountofredundantdataandthisiswhatsteganographyusestohidethe message. On depending this technique, the cover is typically degradedor markedin such a way thatit is easy to tell that it has been changed. Thedata can hide with in the image by changingtheimagecontenti.e.bychangingthecolorofthepixels.bythistechniquewecan hide a large volume of data inside the image. Once implemented, it is not necessarily perceptible to a human eye that the image has been changed, but to a computer simple statistical analysis can pinpoint a changed image from original one. It is so easy for a computertonoticethesechangesarebecausethesetechniquesdonotlookforanyfeaturesof the cover that can suggest areas that are less noticeable when changed. in this scheme the algorithm blindly changes colors but ideally a scheme should first analyze the image and workontheareasidentifiedaswherechangesshouldbe.Thisanalysisschemewillalsohave the difficulty of any information that is used must also be available after the message is embedded, and the stegoimage output, it is possible to measure the stegoimage for any marking that may indicate it has been tampered with. There are many methods that can measure the likelihood of a watermark on a digital image and these processes can also be appliedtoasteganography images,asawatermarkissimplyahighlyrobuststeganography marking. the security of stegoimagesdepend sentirely on their ability togounnoticed, so being able to evaluate characteristics of an image using watermark detection is a clear advantage. Theprevioustechniquesare: F5Algorithm LSBCoding PalettesModification

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4.CurrentWork 4.1.OurApproach As discussed earlier that an image is the combination of several pixels and each pixel has threecolornumberssowecansaythattherearemillionsofnumbersinanimage.inimage steganographyitworksbychangingafewpixelcolorvaluenowwewilluseselectedpixel value to represent characters instead of a color value. Our approach is different from the previouslyusedtechniquei.e.F5algorithm,DCT,patlessmodification.inthispaperwewill discusstwooperationsinimagesteganography. Loadingandsavingbitmapfiles Bitmanipulationoperations Thiswillmakemessagemoresecureaswellaslowerdistortionrate.Forthesamepurpose wehavefourtechniquesi.e.encryption,hidemessage,retrievemessageanddecryption. 5.AlgorithmDescription 5.1 AtSenderSide 5.1.1.Text toByteConversion Thisinvolvesconvertingthemessagetobehiddenintoaciphertext.i.e.dataisconvertedinto the bytes that are each character in message is converted into its ASCII equivalent, which thenconvertedintobytes.Thiscanbedonebypassingasecretkey.Asecretkeycanbeused forencryptionofmessagetobehidden.Itprovidessecuritybyconvertingitintoaciphertext, which will be difficult for hackers to decrypt. Moreover if message is password protected, thenwhileretrievingmessage,theretrieverhastoenterthecorrectpasswordforviewingthe message. for an example if we are taking the character a in the message then a= 01100001isstoredinbytearray.BecauseASCIIvalueforais97andbinaryequivalentis 01100001. 5.1.2Message EmbeddingInDigitalImage Hiding image involves embedding the message in to thedigital image. Each pixel typically hasthreenumbersassociatedwithit,oneeachforred,green,andblueintensities,andthese value often range from0255.in order to hide the message, and data is first converted into byteformatandstoredinabytearray.themessageisthenencryptedandthenembedseach bit into the LSB position of each pixel position. The LSB of each 8bit byte has been co optedtohideatextmessage.Itusesthefirstpixel(atspot0)tohidethelengthofmessage (number of character).Suppose we only change the last three bits these are the bits that determine the one place, the two place and the fours place. We can only alter the originalpixelcolorvalueby7.supposeouroriginalpixelasbits: (r7r6r5r4r3r2r1r0,g7g6g5g4g3g2g1g0,b7b6b5b4b3b2b1b0) Inaddition,ourcharacter(bytes)hassomebits:

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(c7c6c5c4c3c2c1c0). Then we can place three of these character bits in the lowest red pixel, three more in the lowest greenpixel,andthelasttwointhelowestbluepixelasfollows. (r7r6r5r4r3c7c6c5,g7g6g5g4g3c4c3c2,b7b6b5b4b3b2c1c0). Ifwetakeanexampleofpixel(225,100,100)withcharactera,thenwecanobtain: Originlpixel= (11100001,01100100,01100100) a=01100001(ASCIIvalue97) Newpixel=(11100011,01100000,01100101) Newpixel=(227,96,101) Herewecannoticethatthenewpixelof(227,96,101)isalmostthesamevalueastheold pixelof (225,100,100).Sotherewillnotbenoticeablecolordifferenceintheimage.
5.2AtReceiverSide

5.2.1. RetrieveMessage Inthissectionwewilldiscusstheretrieving themessagefromtheimageindependentofthe file format. once a message has been retrieved it has to be converted in to the original message. This process can be done by reading the embedded data from the file. The read datawillbeinbytesformat.Thiscanbedonebyextractthepixelsofoutputimageinone array. Decoding in same manner as the reversal of encoding process i.e. first pixel value givesnumberofcharacterinthemessage.Aftereverypixel givesthemessagecharacters ASCIIvalue,whichthenstoredinbytearray.
5.2.2 BytetoTextConversion:

Inthissection,bytearrayobtainedbytheprocessofretrieving messageisnowconverted intotext/messagebyreadingoneonebytetogeteachcharacterinthemessagei.e.original hiddenmessage. 6.BenefitstoApproach: 6.1MessageSecurity: As LSB techniques uses BMP images, since they use lossless compression. in a BMP image for hiding the data there is the need of very large cover image. But here the input messageisconvertedindigitalimageintobytebeforeembeddingitindigitalimage.Sothe approachissecure,preventfromvulnerability.

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6.2ReduceDistortionRate Images are the most popular cover objects for steganography.As it involves the conversion of message into the digital image. In order to hide the message, it is first convertedintobyteformatandthenstoredinbytearray.Thenthemessageisencryptedand then embeds each bit into the LSB position of each pixel position. Proposed approach involves change in LSB of each pixel byte i.e. RGB instead of only in green byte. Hence reducesthedistortionratethatislookoforiginalimage. 7.Resultandconclusion As the result we can find the out come of the paper is to create across platform that can effectivelyhideamessageinsideadigitalimagefile.Astherearemanyapplicationofimage steganography like it allows for two parties to communicate secretly and covertly. Image steganography allows for some morallyconsciouspeople to safely whistle blowon internal actions.Oneoftheothermainusesforimagesteganographyisforthetransportationofhigh levelortopsecretdocumentsbetweeninternationalgovernmentsalsoitallowsforcopyright protectionondigitalfilesusingthemessageasadigitalwatermark.Imagesteganographyhas manylegitimateusesasitcanbeusedbyhackerstosendvirusesandTrojanstocompromise machines.Soinconclusion,asmoreemphasisisplacedontheareasofcopyrightprotection, privacyprotection,andsurveillance,webelievethatsteganographywillcontinuetogrowin importanceasaprotectionmechanism.Currentelectronicsteganographicmethodsarenotas necessarilysecureduetothesizeofthedatatheyhideandthelackofconcernforthecontent ofthemessagecover.Takingthecoverintoaccountislikelytoincreasethesecurityofthe message by hiding it in a less obviouslocation.This paper has investigated whether taking theimageasthecoverintoaccountincreasesthe securityofthemessagebycreatingcross platformselfevaluatingtool.Aalsodescribethebenefitsfromtheapproachlikethesecurity ofmessageincreasesanddistortionratehasreduced. 8.References 1. F 5 algorithm implementation: 2009, Fridrich, J.R.Du, M. Long: Steganalysis In ColorImages,Binghamton,2007 2. Guillermito.Steganography: A Few Tools to Discover Hidden Data, 2006 http://guillermito2.net/stegno/tools 3. Moreland, T., Steganography and steganalysis, Leiden Institute Of Advanced ComputingScience,www.liacs.nl/home/tmoerl/privtech.pdf 4. Silman,J.,Steganographyandsteganalysis:AnOverview,SANSInstitute,2001 5. MohammadAliBaniYounes1andAmanJantan2,SchoolofComputerSciences, UniversitySainsMalaysia,Penang,11800,Malaysia

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6. MAB.Younes,A.Jantan,"ImageencryptionUsingBlockBasedTransformation Algorithm,"AENGInternationalJournalofComputerScience,Vol.35,Issue.1, 2008, pp.1523. 7. Chandramouli,R.,Kharrazi,M.&Memon,N.,Imagesteganographyand steganalysis: ConceptsAndPractice,Proceedingsofthe2ndInternationalWorkshop onDigital Watermarking,October2003.

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