AN EFFICIENT DATA SECURITY SYSTEM USING RNS

AND DATA HIDING TECHNIQUE

A RESEARCH PROPOSAL
BY

DAMILOLA DAVID POPOOLA

17/27/MCS014

SUBMITTED TO:
DR. R.M ISIAKA
PG CO-ORDINATOR

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 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

Any data that can be seen and understood easily without the need for further understanding is

called plain text. The means of changing the representation of such data with the purpose of

hiding its substance is referred to as encryption. Encrypting a plaintext leads to an unreadable

and difficult to understand representation called cipher text. Encryption is utilized to

guarantee that data escapes anybody for whom it isn't planned, even the individuals who can

see the encrypted data. The process of reverting cipher text to its original plaintext is called

decryption.

Cryptography is the science of using the mathematics to encrypt and decrypt data.

Cryptography enables you to store sensitive information or transmit it across the insecure

networks (like the internet) such that it cannot be read by anyone except the intend recipient.

A cryptographic algorithm, or cipher, is a mathematical function used in the encryption and

decryption process. A cryptographic algorithm works in combination with a key a word,

number, or phrase to encrypt the plaintext. The security of encrypted data is entirely

dependent on two things; the strength of the cryptographic algorithm and the secrecy of the

key.

Furthermore, in network security, cryptography has a long history of providing a way to store

sensitive information or transmit it across insecure networks (i.e. the Internet) so that it

cannot be read by anyone except the intended recipient, where the cryptosystem is a set of

algorithms combined with keys to convert the original message (Plain-text) to encrypted

message (Cipher-text) and convert it back in the intended recipient side to the original

message. In computer systems, the process consists of complex mathematical formulas that

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dictate the rules of conversion process from plain text to cipher text and vice versa combined

with the key. However, some of encryption and decryption algorithms use the same key (i.e.

sender, and receiver). And in other encryption and decryption algorithms they use different

keys but these keys must be related.

Steganography is the art and science of invisible communication. This is accomplished

through hiding information in other information, thus hiding the existence of the

communicated information. The word steganography is derived from the Greek words

“stegos” meaning “cover” and “grafia” meaning “writing” defining it as “covered writing”. In

image steganography the information is hidden exclusively in images. Steganography differs

from cryptography in the sense that where cryptography focuses on keeping the contents of a

message secret, steganography focuses on keeping the existence of a message secret.

Steganography and cryptography are both ways to protect information from unwanted parties

but neither technology alone is perfect and can be compromised. Once the presence of hidden

information is revealed or even suspected, the purpose of steganography is partly defeated.

The strength of steganography can thus be amplified by combining it with cryptography.

The major issue to design any encryption and decryption algorithm is to improve the security

level. Therefore, this paper aims to propose an enhanced approach to improve the security

level and increase the performance by minimizing a significant amount of delay time to

maintain the security.

1.2 Statement of Problem

Although various approaches have been implemented towards the course of ensuring data

security, which has proved to be effective and a bit efficient. It is to be noted that all

information sent across from the sender to the receiver passes through a communication line

which is monitored by the server administrator. With the disparity that occurs between a plain

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text and cipher text, the cipher text can be noticed easily by the administrator, making it

accessible by the administrator. This therefore calls for a huge task of proffering a means

through which cipher text can be sent across to the receiver without the knowledge of the

administrator and also if by any means such data is noticed and accessed by the administrator,

the time taken to decrypt it will be long enough for the data to be decrypted by the supposed

recipient. Since cryptography was created as a technique for securing the secrecy of

communication and many different methods have been developed to encrypt and decrypt data

in order to keep the message secret, which unfortunately has sometimes not been enough to

keep the contents of a message secret. Thus, it may also be necessary to keep the existence of

the message secret.

1.3Aim and Objectives

The aim of this research is to implement an efficient information security system using

residue number system and data hiding technique.

The objectives are;

i. To change the representation of a text to numbers.

ii. To implement forward conversion for second level encryption.

iii. To implement reverse conversion for first level decryption.

iv. To implement an image compression algorithm.

v. To implement hide the existence of the text in an image.

vi. To evaluate the performance of the proposed system.

1.4Scope of the Study

This research work is limited to the use of Residue Number System for the encryption and

decryption process, and lossless compression approach for the image compression.

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1.5Significance of the study

This scheme will allow encrypted data to be sent securely over a network without the

knowledge of an intruder. It will further increase the understanding of how residue number

system can be applied in cryptography

1.5 Proposed Methodology

The method to be adopted in the proposed work involves both data encryption and data

hiding. Firstly, the data transformed to a numeric equivalent, thereafter, the process of

encrypting and decrypting the data will be done using Residue Number System, with respect

to the moduli set {2n-1, 2n, 2n +1}. Thereafter the encrypted data is hidden inside a given

image, with the image being compressed before and after the data hiding.

Start

Insert Plain
Text

Convert Plain Text to

Numbers

Encrypt Plain Text

Stop

Figure 1: Encryption Process

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 Start

Insert Encrypted
data

Decrypt Data

Stop

Figure 2: Decryption

Start

Insert Image

Compress Image

Stop

Figure 3: Image Compression

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 Start

Insert Compressed
Image

Insert Encrypted
Data

Hide Data in the

Image

Image containing
hidden data

Stop

Figure 4: Steganography

Furthermore, for the purpose of reducing the size of the image, the lossless compression

approach will be used, which is a better option than the lossy compression since it never

removes any information from the original image, by representing the data in mathematical

formulas. The original image’s integrity is maintained and the decompressed image output is

bit-by-bit identical to the original image input.

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1.6Literature Review

A scheme was proposed by [ CITATION Oba13 \l 1033 ], he introduced a new approach with the

aim of maintaining the security on the communication channels by making it difficult for

attacker to predicate a pattern as well as speed of the encryption / decryption scheme, due to

the fact that most of the proposed algorithms encountered some problems such as lack of

robustness and significant amount of time added to packet delay to maintain the security on

the communication channel between the terminals.

The implemented algorithm for the encryption and decryption consists of combination of

public key infrastructure for hybrid system and RC6 algorithm for confusion and diffusion

operations. The RC6 algorithm play the roles of generating a private position based on the

secrete value from public key infrastructure. Plain-text 1024- bits size divided to 2 blocks.

One of these blocks used as key after performed confusion and diffusion operations using

RC6 algorithm. The last step is Insert the key inside the Cipher data based on the private

position.

The result obtained shows that the average time required to encrypt the data is 0.2972729 ms

in 512-bits key length using the proposed approach, and to encrypt the data using AES is

0.8918188 ms in 512-bits key length.

An image encryption scheme was proposed by [ CITATION Sha09 \l 1033 ] which is very similar

to image steganography and video steganography. The scheme adopted Private marking

system using symmetric key steganography technique and LSB technique for hiding the

secret information.

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The main goal of this method is to hide information on the output image of the instrument

(such as image displayed by an electronic advertising billboard).

Following are the steps involved in embedding the secret information within a cover media.

a) Send the normal data that has to be displayed to the display board.

b) Using a suitable Steganography algorithm hide the secret data within the normal data

before sending it to the display board.

Description of the algorithm for embedding the secret message: Algorithm for embedding the

secret message is as follows:

a) Read the image from the source.

b) Divide the image into [R x C] smaller blocks .Where R & C are the first & second bytes of

the key respectively

c) Each smaller block is a combination of many pixels of different values.

d) The LSBs of the pixel are changed depending on the pattern bits and the secret message

bits.

e) The pattern bits are considered in sequence form its MSB.

f) If the pattern bit is 0, then the first LSB of the pixel is changed [i.e if data bit is 1 and pixel

bit is 0, then pixel bit is changed to1 or else it is retained as it is.]

g) If the pattern bit is 1, then the second LSB of the pixel is changed accordingly.

h) A single bit of the secret message is distributed throughout the block. This is done to have

enough information so that correct information can be retrieved after decoding

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i) Similarly the other bits are inserted in the remaining blocks.

j) If the length of the secret message is large, then it can be divided and stored in two or three

frames.

k) To extract the information, operations contrary to the ones carried out in embedding are

performed.

A cloud-based scheme was proposed by [ CITATION PSa14 \l 1033 ] , which supports

outsourcing of dynamic data, where the owner is capable of not only archiving and accessing

the data stored by the CSP, but also updating and scaling this data on the remote servers. The

proposed scheme enables the authorized users to ensure that they are receiving the most

recent version of the outsourced data. Moreover, in case of dispute regarding data

integrity/newness, a TTPA is able to determine the dishonest party. The data owner enforces

access control for the outsourced data by combining three cryptographic techniques:

broadcast encryption, lazy revocation, and key rotation. The experimental results show that

the proposed scheme is a robust model in terms of security.

Cloud storage model considered in this work has four main components as depicted.

i. A data owner can be an organization, which generates sensitive data that is to be outsourced

to the cloud and made available for only authorized users.

ii. A Trusted Third Party Auditor (TTPA) who is trusted by all other components and has the

capability to detect the dishonest party.

iii. A CSP who manages cloud services and provides paid storage service on its infrastructure

to the data owner, where he outsources the file and makes them available for authorized

users.

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iv. Authorized users – a set of owner’s clients who have the right to access the outsourced

file.

An AES based algorithm was proposed by [ CITATION Deb14 \l 1033 ], which is a framework

which encrypts a file before it is uploaded on to the cloud. AES (Advanced Encryption

Standard) is one of the most secure encryption algorithms and not many attacks are

successful on data which is encrypted using AES. This proposal solves the problem of most,

if not all, of the threats that data stored in the cloud faces. Our framework also suggests the

use of login id and password to ensure authentic and authorized access to a user’s data. Thus,

if used securely, cloud computing provides a user with amazing benefits and overcomes its

only disadvantage of security threat.

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References

Al-Hazaimeh, O. M. (2013). A new approach for complex encrypting and decrypting data.

International Journal of Computer Networks & Communications (IJCNC) Vol.5, No.2, , 95-

103.

Debajyoti Mukhopadhyay, G. S. (2014). Enhanced Security for Cloud Storage using File

Encryption. International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and

Technology, 55-98.

P. Sathyabama Gayathri, J. A. (2014). Enhancing Security of Dynamic Data for Storage

Services In Cloud Computing. International Conference on Innovations in Engineering and

Technology, 2137-2143.

Shashikala Channalli, A. J. (2009). Steganography An Art of Hiding Data. Shashikala

Channalli et al /International Journal on Computer Science and Engineering Vol.1(3), 137-

141.

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