The exchange of information is greater today than any other time in history and with the way technology is improving this exchange will only become greater. The threat of a group or individual misusing standard channels of communication to steal information, sell the stolen information or communicate a plan against someone and many more are more likely happening. Due to this nature of communication, the need for a mean to hide data is increasing; this is where Steganography comes into play.
What exactly it is?
Steganography is the art and science of hiding messages or information within another data, in such a way that no one apart from the sender and intended recipient suspects the existence of message in any ordinary data. Steganography derived from the Greek word steganos, meaning covered or secret, and graph (writing or drawing). On the simplest level, steganography is hidden writing. Cryptography scrambles a message into a code to obscure its meaning, steganography hides the message entirely. So, basically it is a technique for information hiding. It aims to embed secret data into a digital cover media, such as digital audio, image, video, etc., without being suspicious. On the other side, steganalysis aims to expose the presence of hidden secret messages the stego media.
It not only aims at encryption of data but also concealment and compression of information into any supported carrier file making information securely saved, shared or retrieved by decrypting.
The scope of the technology is to reduce unauthorised access and provide better security features during message transmission. To achieve the goal, we use the basic approach encryption and decryption methods.
Oops! Quite old !
Steganography took its role since antiquity and has progressed a lot today few of the examples from history are: head tattoos, hidden messages in boiled eggs, invisible ink, microdots etc.., Interestingly, Leonardo Davinci in late 14th century used steganography tricks in his paintings! Later researches developed methods to secretly embed signature in digital pictures. Now there are a lot of tools available to act as a vault that hides information…
The former consists of linguistic or language forms of hidden writing. The later, such as invisible ink, tries to hide messages physically. One disadvantage of linguistic steganography is that users must equip themselves to have a good knowledge of linguistry. In recent years, everything is trending toward digitization. And with the development of the internet technology, digital media can be transmitted conveniently over the network. Therefore, messages can be secretly carried by digital media by using the steganography techniques, and then be transmitted through the internet rapidly. There exists a large variety of steganography techniques some are more complex than others and all of them have respective strong and weak points.
Latest research
The Steganography Analysis and Research Center (SARC) is a Center of Excellence within Back bone Security focused exclusively on steganography research and the development of advanced steganalysis products and services. The SARC has developed state-of-the-art steganography detection and extraction capabilities that address the needs of computer forensic examiners and information technology security personnel in law enforcement government agencies, military organizations, the intelligence community, and the private sector.
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