Steganography Before Computers

Introduction

Steganography (/ ÃÅ s t Ãº Ã¡ Ã ÃË n Ã Ã¡ r Ã f i / STEG-Ã-NOG-rÃ-fee) is the practice of concealing a message within another message or a physical object. In computing/electronic contexts, a computer file , message, image, or video is concealed within another file, message, image, or video.

Based on the cover object, steganographic techniques can be categorized as image steganography, audio steganography, video steganography, text steganography etc¦ In case of image steganography, the image with hidden data is called as stego image. The figure below shows a basic image steganographic system. Attention reader! Dont stop learning now.

As noted above, steganography is an effective and efficient way of hiding data, it is just protecting the data from the unauthorized or unwanted interception. But stego is merely one of many methods to defend the confidentiality of data. It is probably the best used in integration with another data-hiding method.

Stegosuite: It is a Java-based, free steganography tool. Stegosuite makes it simple to obfuscate data in pictures for covert purposes. OpenPuff: It is a high-quality steganographic tool that allows you to conceal data in other media types like images, videos, and Flash animations.

What is steganography?

Image steganography will definitely be used by hackers to hide malware in images because there is no way to tell if the image contains malware or not without further investigation. Although an image appears to be innocent, it may be embedded with malicious code that may be further executed by calling another process, for example.

More recently, image steganography has been used by the Sundown Exploit Kit, the new Vawtrak to hide code in favicons, the Stegoloader/Gatak backdoor Trojan, and Stegano to hide malicious code in advertising banner images that appeared on legitimate websites. Stegoloader/Gataks downloaded image file including hidden data.

Although an image appears to be innocent, it may be embedded with malicious code that may be further executed by calling another process, for example. Organizations must take all necessary security precautions when it comes to Steganography.

The image holds a steganographically-embedded malicious executable, the authors say. Inside an exploit kit The first example of this is the Stegano/Astrum exploit kit, which was used in 2016 as part of a huge malvertising campaign. Malicious code is embedded within banner ads by modifying the color space of the PNG image (the alpha channel).

What are the different types of steganographic techniques?

Text Steganography Ë There is steganography in text files, which entails secretly storing information. In this method, the hidden data is encoded into the letter of each word. 2. Image Steganography Ë The second type of steganography is image steganography, which entails concealing data by using an image of a different object as a cover.

Technical steganography uses scientific methods to hide a message, such as the use of invisible ink or microdots and other size reduction methods. This chapter will not address technical steganography methods. Linguistic steganography hides the message within the carrier in some nonobvious ways and is further categorized as semagrams or open codes.

The initial footages of Steganography were by the Greek historian Herodotus in hischronicles known as Histories and date back to around 440 BC. Herodotus recorded two stories of Steganographic techniques during this time in Greece.

On the other hand, criminal hackers use steganography to corrupt data files or hide malware in otherwise innocent documents. For example, attackers can use BASH and PowerShell scripts to launch automated attacks, embedding scripts in Word and Excel documents.

Is steganography a good way to hide data?

Use steganography to hide data in image or audio files. Hiding secret messages inside what seem to be harmless messages is nothing new. The word steganography itself originated in Greece and means covered writing.

Criminals use steganography to hide information and communicate covertly with other criminals. Their goal is five-fold: scouting the target, scanning it, gaining access, staying undetected, and covering their tracks. The chart below classifies information-hiding techniques and shows how they are used by malware in different attack phases.

But over time, penetration testers and attackers alike have been using steganography to do more than share messages. Today, attackers use PowerShell and BASH scripts to automate attacks. So are pen testers. For example, attackers have been embedding actual scripts within macro-enabled Excel and Word documents.

Although the concept of watermarking is not necessarily steganography, there are several steganography techniques that are being used to store watermarks in data. The main difference is on intent, while the purpose of steganography is hiding information, watermarking is merely extending the cover source with extra information.

What is the best free steganography tool?

Here are the top 10 best Steganography tools to perform the Steganography for free. 1 1. Xiao Steganography. Xiao Steganography is a free and best Steganography tool that can be used to hide secret files in the image as well as audio … 2 2. Image Steganography. 3 3. Steghide. 4 4. Crypture. 5 5. RSteg. More items

Image Steganography tool is another free tool to perform robust Steganography using images. Input the image file and the private text you want to include into Image Steganography. Encrypt it using the software, it results in the image output.

SteganPEG uses JPEG image format to perform Steganography. It can hide any kind of private data or secret messages in JPEG image with out altering the quality of the image. To be frank, you cannot visually find the difference between Steganogrpahed image and normal image, if you are using JPEG format.

Steganography can have various forms depending on the type of message, cover message and the tool used. The message and cover can be text, images, audio, video, HTML pages etc. Different tools provide various forms but the most widely used is hiding image or text in another image. Since images are harmless and do not pose any threat. 1.

How to perform robust steganography using images?

Network Standards Networking standards define the rules for data communications that are needed for interoperability of networking technologies and processes. Standards help in creating and maintaining open markets and allow different vendors to compete on the basis of the quality of their products while being compatible with existing market …

The standards for network protocols are created by obtaining the support of a standards organization, and obtaining this support also initiates the process of standardization. This process is what is commonly referred to as protocol development. Voluntarily, the members of the standards organization agree to adhere to the work that results.

If the different network standards in place today were in print, they would fill volumes upon volumes of text. These network standards serve specific purposes, as defined by the standard itself. For example, there is a standard for you to communicate across the Internet and a different standard for you to talk across the telephone network.

The work for establishing the network started in the early 1960s and DOD sponsored major research work, which resulted in development on initial protocols, languages and frameworks for network communication.

What is steganpeg and how to use it?

As we mentioned earlier, OpenStego, SteganPEG is one of the applications that are used to implement Steganography. The data required to be wrapped and the data under which it has to be wrapped are being used by the application to merge them in a specific way.

Conclusion Steganography is one of the most important methodologies used in cybersecurity in order to protect the crucial data before getting transmitted to the public or private network. It is leveraged by the military and organizations to transmit critical messages from one host to another.

Techniques of Steganography 1 Using Application#N#There is numerous software available in the market like Image Steganography, Steghide, Crypture… 2 Manual Method More …

In these cases, the attacker can sniff at least the junks, but in the case of Steganography, they wont be able to detect if anything important has been transmitted. It is usually applied at a place where the data has to be sent secretly. There are several kinds of methodologies available to take leverage of steganography.

What are the different forms of steganography?

Therefore, image and audio Steganography techniques can also be employed on the video. Video files are generally a collection of images and sounds, so most of the presented techniques on images and – audio can be applied to video files too.

Steganlysis is process to detect of presence of steganography. In this article we have tried to elucidate the different approaches towards implementation of steganography using multimedia file (text, static image, audio and video) and Network IP datagram as cover. Also some methods of steganalysis will be discussed.

[1] The first recorded use of the term was in 1499 by Johannes Trithemius in his Steganographia, a treatise on cryptography and steganography, disguised as a book on magic. Generally, the hidden messages appear to be (or to be part of) something else: images, articles, shopping lists, or some other cover text.

What are the different types of steganography?

When an image file is used as the cover medium, it is known as Image steganography. There are a number of techniques employed to hide secret information within an image file but one of the most common technique is known as the Least Significant Bit (LSB). Every byte of an image pixel is made up of 8 bits.

The method that could be used for text Steganography is data compression. Data compression encodes information in one representation into another representation. The new representation of data is smaller in size.

Linguistic steganography can be described quite simply as any form of steganography that uses language in the cover. A number of forms of linguistic steganography are covered in the next sections, but the two most basic categories are open codes and text semagrams.

What is technical steganography and how does it work?

Steganography is the practice or technique of hiding and concealing information in plain sight. It makes use of ordinary files like text, audio, image, videos, and even Word or Excel sheets to conceal information. Steganography is taken from the two Greek words steganos and graphia.

The difference between steganography and other forms of cryptography is that steganography hides the information in plain sight or uses ordinary day-to-day files; while using other cryptography techniques you know that there is secret information being transmitted.

The attacker doesnt need to trick the user into using applications such as Steghide. In this case, the hacker or pen tester is living off the land. The attacker is using a steganographic application to take advantage of common Windows applications and features such as Excel and PowerShell.

Where did steganography originate from?

How it all originated ? The first use of steganography was by greeks although the chinese had few traces if it . The messenger head was shaved and then the required content was return on the scalp , once the hair has grown he is sent and information is read accordingly.

In computing/electronic contexts, a computer file, message, image, or video is concealed within another file, message, image, or video. The word steganography comes from Greek steganographia, which combines the words steganÃ³s ( ÃÆÃÃµÃ³Ã±Ã½ÃÅÃ ), meaning covered or concealed, and -graphia ( Ã³ÃÃ±Ã Ã®) meaning writing. [1]

This noise can be replaced by a signal the secret message which has been transformed in such a way that, unless you know a secret key, it is indistinguishable from the actual noise, and therefore can be transmitted without arousing suspicion. In 1985, personal computers began to be used for classical steganography applications.

What is steganography and how is it used in cybercrime?

Today, steganography is an often-overlooked cyberthreat, Polito Inc. founder Fred Mastrippolito said. What Is Steganography? Steganography is the practice of hiding information inside something normal-looking. Cybercriminals use steganography to hide stolen data or malicious code in images, audio files and other media.

Steganography is the practice of hiding a secret message in something that is not secret. But cyberattackers use steganography to do more than share messages. One of the first things I remember doing as a kid was writing secret messages to friends using invisible ink.

Cryptography happens when you can see information but not understand it. Steganography happens when information is hidden. A note written in a secret code is cryptography; a note written in invisible ink is steganography. People exchanging private or sensitive information online use both methods.

What is steganography and how to use it?

– Definition from SearchSecurity What is steganography? Steganography is the technique of hiding secret data within an ordinary, non-secret, file or message in order to avoid detection; the secret data is then extracted at its destination. The use of steganography can be combined with encryption as an extra step for hiding or protecting data.

Steganography detection is challenging because by definition it is hard to detect that the concealment of a message has even taken place. More recently, steganography has been used as a digital method to hide the existence of data online.

How does malware use steganography to hide information?

This is a trivial example of how steganography has been used over the decades. But over time, penetration testers and attackers alike have been using steganography to do more than share messages.

It needs two keys, one private and the other public, the public key is stored in a public database whereas the public key is used in the embedding process and the private key is used to extract the secret message. The steganographic model includes the cover file, where it can be the image that will be used as the cover to send the secret message.

Conclusion

Watermarking and steganography are processes in which the digital image is changed in a way that one can see the background image or the text without any kind of corruption in the image.

Video steganography is used for hiding the data in video format. Network steganography is for embedding the data in the network control protocols. Image steganography is used for hiding information using images. For steganography, there are certain tools needed to be performed to achieve the best result. Steganography is easy to use.

Watermarking is used to verify the identity and authenticity of the owner of a digital image. It is a process in which the information which verifies the owner is embedded into the digital image or signal.

Invisible watermarking refers to adding information in a video or picture or audio as digital data. It is not visible or perceivable, but it can be detected by different means. It may also be a form or type of steganography and is used for widespread use. It can be retrieved easily. It is used for copyright protection.

Steganography Before Computers