Steganography :
Steganography is an art of hiding the information within the files sensitive messages and information are hidden into the multimedia files without being detected by the process of steganography. It allow anonymous and secure interchange of information without being detected easily. The hidden information is not visible with naked eyes and hence the chance of being detected just by seeing the files containing the hidden information is near to impossible. Steganography can be done with media, files and folders
Steganography is sometimes used as an authentication watermark by the digital music and movie companies which is invisible to the users but useful to keep the authencity. Steganography is also used by the terrorist for the secret information exchanging. Many big terrorist organizations use this technique to carry out their information exchange. Steganography is also popular from the forensics point of view and widely coverd under cyber forensic,
For ex : an attacker hides some confidential information within a picture using the steganography. The new image which contains the information hidden within will be now infected image, attacker use a brand new car’s picture and upload it over the social media to secretly without suspicioness and the receiver will download the picture and extract the information using the tools. Now the attacker will remove the picture from social media. In this whole process, attacker pretended to share the pictures of his new car but actually the secret information was shared without knowledge of anyone.
The information hidden can be retrieved with the help steganography analysis tool which is not a difficult task but in case of complex steganography, the process of retrieving the information might harder. There are many tools and command line script are available for the steganography. It is one of the most important and required techniques to be learnd. An attacker can even hide a Trojan or any exploiting script within a file and make it undetectable by the scanner and can exploit the target system.
Steganography process :
1. The target message is first encrypted and them combined with the target file by the means of special tools which have permissions to modify the files.
2. The encrypted data is appended with the target file by using special algotithms which makes the data hidden into the file and makes it invisible to naked eyes.
3. The information is visible to the some special exceptional programs which are designed for steganography analysis.
Terms associated with steganography :
1. Cover- medium :
The medium in which the information or the target message is to be hidden is known as cover medium. Cover medium is intial phase of deciding where the information should be hidden in the medium.
2. Stego-medium :
The medium in which the information or the target message is hidden is known as the stego medium. In the stego medium, the information has been already hidden somewhere into the medium and this is the next phase after cover medium.
3. Information :
The plain text or data which is to be hidden within any particular data type is known as information. Everything is performed for the security and confidentiality of information.
Watermarking :
Watermarking is a similar process to the steganography ,which is used for the protection of the documents by keeping a copyright of the owner. Its primary goal is not be destroyed or extracted watermarking is generally used with multimedia files to protect the intenllctual property rights. Watermarks. It may be used to make information temper proof by using as fingerprint to the information for detection of change.
Steganography methods
1. Traditional methods
a. Hidden tattoos
b. Using wax paper
c. Usig the news articles by highlighted text method
d. Microdots and symbolic communication
2. Moder methods
a. Plain text
b. Hyper text
c. Image
d. Video
e. Audio
f. Executable
g. Network packets
Modern methods are widely used for the steganography and secure information exchange. In this book, we will discuss about basic of some modern methods.
1. Plain text
One of the common methods of steganography is by using plain text. Plain text steganography can be done by using the letters present in a paragraph or sentence. Special hover or text highlighted is used for this method.
For ex : He Is Good Illusionist and Recon Lover if the first letter of each word I taken, it will look like : HIGHIRL and after careful observation it is clear that the message is “HIGIRL”.
Sometime some special symbolic or white charecters are used which are generally not decoded by normal text viewers and hence are used for steganography.
2. Hyper text :
Steganography based on hyper text is similar to plain text generally the message is hidden whithin the file using the comments which is generally not visible to a normal user and hence can be viewed by the inspection of source code and hence might be used for steganography. In this case the method Is not much secure because an advanced user can easily detect this steganography, sometimes it may present settings.
3. Audio :
Audio steganography is one of the most commonly used techniques. It can be done by digitally embedding a file into audio files or hiding any information directly within the audio file which can be extracted directly. It can be done by creating some additional music notes or additional music sequence on the sheet.
Digital embedding is a process of embedding a message into audio files. redundant bits are used for embedding the message into the files. since the audio is one of the inaccurate data formats. Slight changes in the bits can’t be easily detected. Generally least significant bits are used for redundant bits.
4. Video :
Message and information can be hidden inside the videos by the help of steganography. Video steganography is widely used for the secret information interchange. It is somewhat similar to the hypertext steganography. Unlike the audio and video steganography , messages can also be hidden using slight different colours which can’t be detected easily by visual looup.
5. Image :
Most common and widely used technique is image steganography an image is used to hide the data and information whithin it. Form the close inspection or naked eye inspection, the hidden information can’t detected.
Just like audio and video steganography, some reduntant bits are used for the steganography. The original image and the infected image (steganography performed image )
Are exactly same in looking with naked eyes or visual lookup.it can only be detected using the technique named steganalysis.
6. Executable files :
Steganography can be done with the help of executable files. Some specially designed tools are used to hide information within the executable files. It also uses redundant bits for the steganography. The executable file is not affected by the hidden data and also there is no visual detection of steganography in it.
Steganalysis
Steganalysis is the process of analyzing and detecting steganography some special techniques and tools are used for steganalysis. Generally the statistical analysis Is used for the steganography detection.
Steganalysis attacks
1. Stego – only attack :
In this type of attack onl the stego fles is available to the attacker. It means that an attacker can only access the stego file to retrieve the hidden message.
2. Civer attack :
In cover attack an attacker compares the original file with stego files to detect the pattern differences. For ex : an original and stego image is compared to know the pattern variance in that to find whether the steganography is done or not.
3. Visual detections :
Steganography can also be detected by using visual lookup. Sometimes the unusual variance and patterns can lead to the failure and detection of the steganography. Generally due to lack of proper encrypting within the image, it is detected by viewing the image. specially, in case when the steganography is done using colour variance.
Steganography using quick stego
Follow these steps :
1. Fiestly download & run quickstego. It is very simple to use & have user –friendly interface.
2. Click on open image to open the image in which you want to hide a message or text file . click on open text to open the hide a message or text file. Click on open text to open the text file you want to hide or type new message in message box.
3. Click on save image to save. It will contain secret message hidden in it
4. Now to extract message, load image and click on extract message. If the image contains nay hidden message, it will be extracted.
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