Every day throughout
history they have found technology changes as fast as you can buy the latest
hardware or software. Information
security is actually quite younger than computers, as it was not needed
immediately after their creation. As the
technology continues to rapidly evolve and develop so quickly, it is becoming difficult
to keep up with the required internet security changes. Originally, cryptography was used on a
regular basis for encryption between users when messaging one another. Although cryptography has now become inadequate
over time. This security vulnerability
within cryptography of requiring a secret key allows a hacker the ability to
decipher it easily. Once the risks were
found in cryptography due to the rapid growth in technology and the average
humans understanding, steganography was developed in its place. When utilizing steganography for
communication it would embed the message within a cover medium, such as an
image.
As the author discusses
the techniques of image steganography, there is an introduction, comparison,
background, reason, history, classification, benefits, drawbacks, just to name
a few. Throughout this article Chugh achieves
displaying the resources to the readers, through the many strengths and
weaknesses that will be dissected and explained. Dissected information may include material, such
as the data and sources provided, grammar, structure, authors argument, ideas,
and support; as this article will be examined, evaluated, and reviewed entirely. As image steganography studies and techniques
are reviewed by Chugh, to provide a full review and explanation of the image
steganography techniques available today.
When reading the article, it is obvious that he clearly utilized
multiple sources such as studies, surveys, and journals. Luckily, he was able to quote these resources
well throughout his own article to strengthen the ideas of image steganography.
Providing the readers
with background information on steganography such as the history of the word,
originating from Greek meaning “covered or protected”, and rapid growth
history. As Chugh argues his point regarding
history, “Due to the prohibition and restriction imposed by the government on
cryptographic systems, steganographic technologies are a very important part of
the future […]. (Chugh, 2013)”, this makes
internet security growth very difficult to keep up with.. Chugh then recommends the argument towards
the interest in image steganography when, “Publishing and broadcasting
industries have become interested in techniques for hiding encrypted […]” (Chugh, 2013). Steganography in general has actually been
around a lot longer than you would have imagined dating back to 1499, as
information hiding was extremely messy but useful for many reasons. Chugh mentions many known historical figures
who used some sort of information hiding (steganography) to send hidden message
to another person. Although, in the
technological world today, there are many more ways to utilize steganography
than there were in the 1800’s. There are
a total of four steganography categories, text, images, audio/video, and
protocol; Chugh lists these out as a numerical list it allows the reader to see
these clearly. A small section mentions
the process of steganalysis which is cracking the steganographic process, also
known as hacking.
As we move further along, Cugh’s strengthens
his argument by discussing image steganography in further detail. There are many diagrams to assist the readers
understanding with the information given.
Image Steganography can be utilized by hiding information such as data
in text, images, audio files, and in protocols.
The concept well known in the technical world of “What You See Is What
You Get” applies in Image Steganography as well. There are only two steps in the steganography
system and it is completed.
Image steganography can
be checked for effectiveness by comparing the stego image with the cover
image. To determine the effectiveness,
the following are some factors that can be checked, robustness,
imperceptibility, payload capacity, PSNR, MSE, SNR, NCC, and BER. As shown in Cugh’s article in Figure 4, the
two most popular schemes used for image steganography are spatial domain and
transform domain. Cugh continues to
strengthen his article by providing more information on image steganography and
different techniques. Such as the Least
Significant Bit Method, Masking and Filtering, Parity Checker Method, Gray
Level Modification, Pixel value Differencing technique, Algorithms and Transformations,
and each has their own advantages and drawbacks provided. Similar there are benefits and drawbacks of
steganography also, it would be beneficial to utilize cryptography with
steganography.
Cugh provides readers
with a current list of applications that utilize image steganography to give
them an idea as to what we could do if it was progressed any further in the
future. Image steganography only hides
the message, it does not actually encrypt the message, we would need to utilize
cryptography with steganography to gain that ability. Copyright Protection, which is used to ensure
everyone knows that the steganography “item” is owned. Feature Tagging, is similar to tagging on Facebook
except it would be embedded, so it would contain the user or name of person and
possibly their location. Digital
Watermarking is the ability to embed a digital watermark inside of an image in
order for someone to verify the full authenticity. The worst application yet, use by terrorists,
steganography is and can be used at an extremely large scale by terrorist to
hide messages secretly to spread terrorism across the country. (Chugh, 2013)
References
Chugh, G. (2013). Image Steganography Techniques: A Review
Article. Acta Technica Corviniensis - Bulletin Of Engineering, 6(3),
97-104.
