STEGANOGRAPHY - HIDING MESSAGES IN THE NOISE OF A PICTURE

Introduction: Steganography is the art and science of communicating in a way which hides the existence of the communication. The goal of Steganography is to hide messages inside other harmless messages in a way that does not allow any enemy to even detect that there is a second message present. In a digital world, Steganography and cryptography are both intended to protect information from unwanted parties. Both Steganography and Cryptography are excellent means by which to accomplish this but neither technology alone is perfect and both can be broken. It is for this reason that most experts would suggest using both to add multiple layers of security.

Existing System& its drawbacks: While both are symmetric ciphers, stream ciphers are based on generating an "infinite" cryptographic key stream, and using that to encrypt one bit or byte at a time (similar to the one-time pad), whereas block ciphers work on larger chunks of data (i.e. blocks) at a time, often combining blocks for additional security (e.g. AES in CBC mode).

Stream ciphers are typically faster than block, but that has its own price. Block ciphers typically require more memory, since they work on larger chunks of data and often have "carry over" from previous blocks, whereas since stream ciphers work on only a few bits at a time they have relatively low memory requirements (and therefore cheaper to implement in limited scenarios such as embedded devices, firmware, and esp. hardware).

Stream ciphers are more difficult to implement correctly, and prone to weaknesses based on usage - since the principles are similar to one-time pad, the key stream has very strict requirements. On the other hand, that's usually the tricky part, and can be offloaded to e.g. and external box. Because block ciphers encrypt a whole block at a time (and furthermore have "feedback" modes which are most recommended), they are more susceptible to noise in transmission, that is if you mess up one part of the data, all the rest is probably unrecoverable. Whereas with stream ciphers are bytes are individually encrypted with no connection to other chunks of data (in most ciphers/modes), and often have support for interruptions on the line. Also, stream ciphers do not provide integrity protection or authentication, whereas some block ciphers (depending on mode) can provide integrity protection, in addition to confidentiality. Because of all the above, stream ciphers are usually best for cases where the amount of data is either unknown, or continuous - such as network streams. Block ciphers, on the other hand, or more useful when the amount of data is pre-known such as a file, data fields, or request/response protocols, such as HTTP where the length of the total message is known already at the beginning

Proposed System& its advantages: It does not attract attention: Encrypting a message gives away that there is something of value and this will attract unwanted attention. Packet sniffing barrier: Encrypted PGP email messages start with a line identifying them as an encrypted PGP message, making it easy for a packet sniffer on an ISP to flag encrypted PGP emails by just scanning for the word PGP or GnuPG, this cannot be used against steganography. Makes Internet surveillance difficult: If someones Internet activities are being monitored visiting Flickr and uploading personal family photos with hidden messages will not trigger any alarm but sending encrypted messages and visiting a political discussion forum will. Difficult to prove it exists: In some countries like the United Kingdom you can be required by the police to provide the password to your encrypted files, refusing to do so carries a prison sentence, if the data has been hidden inside a photograph the police would first have to show beyond reasonable doubt that there is definitely something hidden inside the file.

Hardware Requirements: CPU RAM HDD Network

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Intel Pentium 4 Processor 512 MB 80 GB NIC Card Required

Software Requirements: Programming Language Database Backend Technologies Operating System pack 2

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C# SQL server C#.NET Windows XP Professional with Service