STEGANOGRAPHY

AGENDA

Etymology What Is Steganography? History Evolution Live Cyber Case Study Some Terminologies Of Steganography Basic Principle in Steganography Live Demonstration Steganography Vs Crptography Steganography Tools Steganalysis Conclusion References

STEGANOGRAPHY
Etymology: The word steganos means "covered or protected", and graphy means "writing. Thus steganography means "concealed writing".

WHAT IS STEGANOGRAPHY?

Steganography is the art and science of hiding a message in a medium, such as a digital picture or audio file, so as to defy detection. Messages are hidden in such a way that no one, apart from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message.

CONTD..

For an example, a message might be hidden within an image by changing the least significant bits to be the message bits.

EVOLUTION

Cryptography

Steganography

Watermarking

STEGANOGRAPHY
History:

Greek history warning of invasion by scrawling it on the wood underneath a wax tablet. To casual observers, the tablet appeared blank. Both Axis and Allied spies during World War II used such measures as invisible inks -- using milk, fruit juice or urine which darken when heated. Invisible Ink is also a form of Steganography.

LIVE CYBER CASE STUDY

SOME TERMINOLOGIES

Cover medium (Example-Image) Embedded message (Message to be hidden) Stego-key (Key to extract hidden message) Stego-Object (Seen by casual observer)

Therefore, Cover-medium + embedded-message = stego-object

BASIC PRINCIPLE IN STEGANOGRAPHY

Secret Msg Cover Image Encoder Stego Object

Key

Decoder
Communication Channel

Secret Msg

Original Image

LIVE DEMONSTRATION

CONTD

STEGANOGRAPHY CARRIER FILES

Jpeg Bmp Gif Audio

Wav MP3

Other Types

STEGANOGRAPHY TOOLS

Steganos S-Tools StegHide Invisible Secrets JPHide Camouflage Hiderman Many others

STEGANOGRAPHY VS CRYPTOGRAPHY
Steganography
(hide existence of the secret message, but do not use encryption) Ideally nobody can see both parties are secretly communicating.

Cryptography
(encrypt the message,but do not hide the message) Anybody can see both parties are communicating in secret. Suspicious.

Innocent.

STEGANALYSIS
Identification of hidden files :
Identifying the existence of a message. Not extracting the message.

Technically, Steganography deals with the concealment of a message, not the encryption of it.
Steganalysis essentially deals with the detection of hidden content. How is this meaningful???

HOW TO IDENTIFY?

By identifying the existence of a hidden message, perhaps we can identify the tools used to hide it. If we identify the tool, perhaps we can use that tool to extract the original message.

STEGANALYSIS:METHODS OF DETECTION
Visual Detection (JPEG, BMP, GIF, etc.) Audible Detection (WAV, MPEG, etc.) Statistical Detection (changes in patterns of the pixels or LSB Least Significant Bit) or Histogram Analysis Structural Detection - View file properties/contents Size difference Date/time difference Contents modifications Checksum

ANOMALY VISUAL DETECTION

Detecting steganography by just viewing the Stegoobject.

Can you see any difference between the two??

ANOMALY KURTOSIS

Kurtosis The degree of flatness and peakedness of describing a frequency distribution: Random house dictionary.

ANOMALY HISTOGRAM ANALYSIS

Histogram analysis can be used to identify a file with a hidden message.

Histogram of Original file.

CONTD
Histogram of file with embedded message.

Here it can be seen that this histogram has a noticeable repetitive trend unlike the original one.

ANOMALY ANALYSIS - COMPARE FILE

PROPERTIES
Compare the properties of the files Checksum C:\GNUTools>cksum a:\before\helmetprototype.jpg 3241690497 240759 a:\before\helmetprototype.jpg C:\GNUTools>cksum a:\after\helmetprototype.jpg 3749290633 235750 a:\after\helmetprototype.jpg

Properties
04/04/2003 05:25p 240,759 helmetprototype.jpg 04/04/2003 05:26p 235,750 helmetprototype.jpg

FILE EXTENSION:
Hex Signature File Extension ASCII Signature

SUMMERY

Steganography is used for data hiding to provide security to confidential infromation. Its a technique which is used to hide the message within some medium. To further improve the security of the secret message in the cover image, we have used encryption to encrypt the secret message before it is embedded. While Steganography deals with hiding the message, Steganalysis deals with identifying the existence of any hidden message within file. Using steganalysis if we identify the existence of any hidden message then we can easily identify how to extract it.

REFERENCES:
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography StrangeHorizons http://strangehorizons.com/steganography.shtml TIFR http://www.tifr.res.in/~sanyal/papers/Soumyendu_Steganogr aphy_Steganalysis_different_approaches.html

QUERIES