IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY

B. Yellamma
III ECE
[email protected]

K. Kanaka Durga
III ECE
[email protected]

SRI VENKATESWARA COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

&
TECHNOLOGY

(Autonomous)
R.V.S. Nagar, Tirupati Road, CHITTOOR- 517 127

ABSTRACT:
The advantage of steganography is that the
intended secret message does not attract
attention to itself as an object of scrutiny. Thus,
whereas cryptography is the practice of protecting
the contents of a message alone, steganography is
concerned with concealing the fact that a secret
message is being sent, as well as concealing the
contents of the message.
Steganography includes the concealment of
information within computer files. In digital
steganography, electronic communications may
include steganographic coding inside of a
transport layer, such as a document file, image
file, program or protocol. Media files are ideal for
steganographic transmission because of their large
size. For example, a sender might start with an
innocuous image file and adjust the color of every
100th pixel to correspond to a letter in the
alphabet, a change so subtle that someone not
specifically looking for it is unlikely to notice it.
INTRODUCTION:
Steganography is the art or practice of
concealing a message, image, or file within
another message, image, or file. The word
steganography is of Greek origin and means
"covered writing" or "concealed writing". Some
implementations of steganography which lack a
shared secret are forms of security through
obscurity, whereas key-dependent steganographic
schemes adhere to Kerckhoffs's principle.It
combines the Greek words steganos meaning
"covered or protected", and graphei meaning
"writing". 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 will appear to be
(or be part of) something else: images, articles,
shopping lists, or some other cover text. For
example, the hidden message may be in invisible
ink between the visible lines of a private letter.

Steganography is the dark cousin of

cryptography, the use of codes. While
cryptography provides privacy, steganography
is intended to provide secrecy. Privacy is what
you need when you use your credit card on the
Internet -- you don't want your number revealed to
the public. For this, you use cryptography, and
send a coded pile of gibberish that only the web
site can decipher. Though your code may be
unbreakable, any hacker can look and see you've
sent a message. For true secrecy, you don't want
anyone to know you're sending a message at all.
Early steganography was messy. Before
phones, before mail, before horses, messages were
sent on foot. If you wanted to hide a message, you
had two choices: have the messenger memorize it,
or hide it on the messenger. In fact, the Chinese
wrote messages on silk and encased them in balls
of wax. The wax ball, "la wan," could then be
hidden in the messenger.
One of the reasons that intruders can be
successful is that most of the information they
acquire from a system is in a form that they can
read and comprehend. Intruders may reveal the
information to others, modify it to misrepresent an
individual or organization, or use it to launch an
attack. One solution to this problem is, through
the use of steganography. Steganography is a
technique of hiding information in digital media.
In contrast to cryptography, it is not to keep others
from knowing the hidden information but it is to
keep others from thinking that the information
even exists.

IMPORTANCE OF STEGANOGRAPHY:
Steganography is defined by Markus Kahn as
follows, "Steganography is the art and science of
communicating in a way which hides the
existence of the communication. In contrast to
Cryptography, where the enemy is allowed to
detect, intercept and modify messages without
being able to violate certain security premises
guaranteed by a cryptosystem, 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. Steganography can be used in a large
amount of data formats in the digital world of
today. The most popular data formats used are
.bmp, .doc, .gif, .jpeg, .mp3, .txt and .wav. Mainly
because of their popularity on the Internet and the
ease of use of the steganographic tools that use
these data formats. These formats are also popular
because of the relative ease by which redundant or
noisy data can be removed from them and
replaced with a hidden message. Steganographic
technologies are a very important part of the
future of Internet security and privacy on open
systems such as the Internet.
Steganographic research is primarily driven by
the lack of strength in the cryptographic systems
on their own and the desire to have complete
secrecy in an open-systems environment. Many
governments have created laws that either limit
the strength of cryptosystems or prohibit them
completely. This has been done primarily for fear
by law enforcement not to be able to gain
intelligence by wiretaps, etc. This unfortunately
leaves the majority of the Internet community
either with relatively weak and a lot of the times
breakable encryption algorithms or none at all.
Civil liberties advocates fight this with the
argument that these limitations are an assault on

privacy. This is where Steganography comes in.

Steganography can be used to hide important data
inside another file so that only the parties intended
to get the message even knows a secret message
exists. To add multiple layers of security and to
help subside the "crypto versus law" problems
previously mentioned, it is a good practice to use
Cryptography and Steganography together.
As mentioned earlier, neither Cryptography
nor Steganography are considered "turnkey
solutions" to open systems privacy, but using both
technologies together can provide a very
acceptable amount of privacy for anyone
connecting to and communicating over these
systems.
HISTORY:
The first recorded uses of steganography can
be traced back to 440 BC when Herodotus
mentions two examples in this histories.
Demaratus sent a warning about a forthcoming
attack to Greece by writing it directly on the
wooden backing of a wax tablet before applying
its beeswax surface. Wax tablets were in common
use then as reusable writing surfaces, sometimes
used for shorthand.
The earliest recordings of Steganography were
by the Greek historian Herodotus in his chronicles
known as "Histories" and date back to around 440
BC.
Herodotus recorded two stories of
Steganographic techniques during this time in
Greece. The first stated that King Darius of Susa
shaved the head of one of his prisoners and wrote
a secret message on his scalp.
When the
prisoners hair grew back, he was sent to the
Kings son in law Aristogoras in Miletus
undetected. The second story also came from
Herodotus, which claims that a soldier named
Demeratus needed to send a message to Sparta
that Xerxes intended to invade Greece. Back
then, the writing medium was text written on waxcovered tablets.
Demeratus removed the wax from the tablet,
wrote the secret message on the underlying wood,
recovered the tablet with wax to make it appear as
a blank tablet and finally sent the document
without being detected. Romans used invisible
inks, which were based on natural substances such

as fruit juices and milk. This was accomplished

by heating the hidden text, thus revealing its
contents. Invisible inks have become much more
advanced and are still in limited use today. During
the 15th and 16th centuries, many writers
including Johannes Trithemius
and Gaspari
Schotti wrote on Steganagraphic techniques such
as coding techniques for text, invisible inks, and
incorporating hidden messages in music. Between
1883 and 1907, further development can be
attributed to the publications of Auguste
Kerckhoff Militaire) and Charles Briquet .These
books were mostly about Cryptography, but both
can be attributed to the foundation of some
steganographic systems and more significantly to
watermarking techniques. During the times of
WWI and WWII, significant advances in
Steganography took place. Concepts such as null
ciphers (taking the 3rd letter from each word in a
harmless message to create a hidden message,
etc), image substitution and microdot were
introduced and embraced as great steganographic
techniques. In the digital world of today, namely
1992 to present, Steganography is being used all
over the world on computer systems. Many tools
and technologies have been created that take
advantage of old steganographic techniques such
as null ciphers, coding in images, audio, video and
microdot. With the research this topic is now
getting we will see a lot of great applications for
Steganography in the near future.

TECHNIQUES:

PHISICAL:
Steganography has been widely used, including in
recent historical times and the present day.
Some of such examples are:
Hidden messages within wax tablets.
Hidden messages on messenger's body
also used in ancient Greece. Herodotus
tells the story of a message tattooed on the
shaved head of a slave of Histiaeus,
hidden by the hair that afterwards grew
over it, and exposed by shaving the head
again. The message allegedly carried a
warning to Greece about Persian invasion
plans. This method has obvious
drawbacks, such as delayed transmission

while waiting for the slave's hair to grow,

and the restrictions on the number and size
of messages that can be encoded on one
person's scalp.
In the early days of the printing press, it
was common to mix different typefaces on
a printed page due to the printer not
having enough copies of some letters
otherwise. Because of this, a message
could be hidden using 2 (or more)
different typefaces, such as normal or
italic.
During World War II, the French
Resistance sent some messages written on
the backs of couriers using invisible ink.
Hidden messages on paper written in
secret inks, under other messages or on the
blank parts of other messages.
Messages written in Morse code on
knitting yarn and then knitted into a piece
of clothing worn by a courier.
Jeremiah Denton repeatedly blinked his
eyes in Morse Code during the 1966
televised press conference that he was
forced into as an American POW by his
North Vietnamese captors, spelling out the
word, "T-O-R-T-U-R-E". This confirmed
for the first time to the U.S. Military
(naval intelligence) and Americans that
American POWs were being tortured in
North Vietnam.
Messages written on envelopes in the area
covered by postage stamps.
During and after World War II, espionage
agents used photographically produced
microdots to send information back and
forth. Microdots were typically minute,
approximately less than the size of the
period produced by a typewriter. World
War II microdots needed to be embedded
in the paper and covered with an adhesive,
such as collodion. This was reflective and
thus detectable by viewing against
glancing light. Alternative techniques
included inserting microdots into slits cut
into the edge of post cards.

DIGITAL:
Concealing messages within the lowest
bits of noisy images or sound files.
Concealing data within encrypted data or
within random data. The data to be
concealed are first encrypted before being
used to overwrite part of a much larger
block of encrypted data or a block of
random data (an unbreakable cipher like
the one-time pad generates ciphertexts that
look perfectly random if one does not have
the private key).
Mimic functions convert one file to have
the statistical profile of another. This can
thwart statistical methods that help bruteforce attacks identify the right solution in a
ciphertext-only attack.
Concealed
messages
in
tampered
executable files, exploiting redundancy in
the targeted.

Pictures embedded in video material

(optionally played at slower or faster
speed).
Injecting imperceptible delays to packets
sent over the network from the keyboard.
Delays in keypresses in some applications
can mean a delay in packets, and the
delays in the packets can be used to
encode data.
Content-Aware
Steganography hides
information in the semantics.
Blog-Steganography.
Messages
are
fractionalized and the (encrypted) pieces
are added as comments of orphaned weblogs (or pin boards on social network
platforms). In this case the selection of
blogs is the symmetric key that sender and
recipient are using; the carrier of the
hidden message is the whole blogosphere.

NETWORK:
All information hiding techniques that
may be used to exchange steganograms in
telecommunication networks can be
classified under the general term of
network
steganography.
This
nomenclature was originally introduced by
Krzysztof Szczypiorski in 2003.
Contrary to the typical steganographic
methods which utilize digital media
(images, audio and video files) as a cover
for hidden data, network steganography
utilizes communication protocols' control
elements and their basic intrinsic
functionality. As a result, such methods
are harder to detect and eliminate.
Typical network steganography methods
involve modification of the properties of a
single
network
protocol.
Such
modification can be applied to the PDU
(Protocol Data Unit.Moreover, it is
feasible to utilize the relation between two
or more different network protocols to
enable secret communication. These
applications fall under the term interprotocol steganography.
Network steganography covers a broad
spectrum of techniques, which include,
among others:
Steganophony - the concealment of
messages in Voice-over-IP conversations,
e.g. the employment of delayed or
corrupted packets that would normally be
ignored by the receiver (this method is
called LACK - Lost Audio Packets
Steganography), or, alternatively, hiding
information in unused header fields.
WLAN Steganography the utilization of
methods that may be exercised to transmit
steganograms in Wireless Local Area
Networks. A practical example of WLAN
Steganography is the HICCUPS system
(Hidden Communication System for
Corrupted Networks)

PRINTED:
Digital steganography output may be in the
form of printed documents. A message, the
plaintext, may be first encrypted by traditional
means, producing a ciphertext. Then, an
innocuous covertext is modified in some way so
as to contain the ciphertext, resulting in the
stegotext. For example, the letter size, spacing,
typeface, or other characteristics of a covertext
can be manipulated to carry the hidden message.
Only a recipient who knows the technique used
can recover the message and then decrypt it.
Francis Bacon developed Bacon's cipher as such a
technique.
The ciphertext produced by most digital
steganography methods, however, is not printable.
Traditional digital methods rely on perturbing
noise in the channel file to hide the message, as
such, the channel file must be transmitted to the
recipient with no additional noise from the
transmission. Printing introduces much noise in
the ciphertext, generally rendering the message
unrecoverable. There are techniques that address
this limitation, one notable example is ASCII Art
Steganography.

Zero-Width Non-Joiner (ZWNJ). These characters

are used for joining and disjoining letters in
Arabic, but can be used in Roman alphabets for
hiding information because they have no meaning
in Roman alphabets, and because they are "zerowidth" and thus not displayed. The embedding of
ZWJ in the cover-text represents "1" and the
embedding of ZWNJ represents "0". Groups of
characters can be used to represent the letters A
(giving it the code "0", and thus represented by
ZWNJ) to Z (giving it the code "1011", and thus
represented by ZWJ,ZWNJ,ZWJ,ZWJ). These
character groups can be inserted between each
character of the cover-text, thereby hiding a
message.
Using Sudoku puzzles:
This is the art of concealing data in an image
using Sudoku which is used like a key to hide the
data within an image. Steganography using
sudoku puzzles has as many keys as there are
possible solutions of a Sudoku puzzle, which is
6.711021. This is equivalent to around 70 bits,
making it much stronger than the DES method
which uses a 56 bit key.

DIGITAL TEXT:

ENCODING A MESSAGE IN IMAGES:

Unicode steganography uses lookalike

characters of the usual ASCII set to look normal,
while really carrying extra bits of information. If
the text is displayed correctly, there should be no
visual difference from ordinary text. Some
systems, however, may display the fonts
differently, and the extra information would be
easily spotted.
Alternately, hidden characters, and redundant
use of markup can add embedded within a body
of text to hide information that wouldn't be
visually apparent when displayed, but can be
discovered by examining the document source.
HTML pages can contain code for extra blank
spaces and tabs at the end of lines, as well as
different colours, fonts and sizes, which will not
be visible when displayed. A more trivial example
is white text on a white background, which can be
revealed by "selecting".
One such method is based on the non-printing
Unicode characters Zero-Width Joiner (ZWJ) and

Coding secret messages in digital images is by

far the most widely used of all methods in the
digital world of today. This is because it can take
advantage of the limited power of the human
visual system (HVS). Almost any plain text,
cipher text, image and any other media that can be
encoded into a bit stream can be hidden in a
digital image. With the continued growth of
strong graphics power in computers and the
research being put into image based
Steganography, this field will continue to grow at
a very rapid pace. Before diving into coding
techniques for digital images, a brief explanation
of digital image architecture and digital image
compression techniques should be explained.

As Duncan Sellars explains "To a computer,

an image is an array of numbers that represent
light intensities at various points, or pixels. These
pixels make up the images raster data." When
dealing with digital images for use with
Steganography, 8-bit and 24-bit per pixel image
files are typical. Both have advantages and
disadvantages, as we will explain below. 8-bit
images are a great format to use because of their
relatively small size.
USES:
THE TASK OF HIDING INFORMATION:
Steganography now is accomplished in the digital
world using mathematical algorithms to encrypt
data. First, one scrambles the information using an
algorithm. This algorithm creates a key later used
to transform the encrypted data back to its original
form so that the receiver can understand it. For
example, we could use the multiplication of two
50-digit prime numbers to create a 100-digid
product, which becomes the key (Daniel). There
are public and private keys. Private key
cryptography uses the same key for both the
encryption and decryption process. Therefore, the
sender and receiver of the secret information have
the same key.
Public key cryptology uses both a public and
private key. The sender uses the public key, which
may be published in directories. The private key is
necessary for the receiver to decrypt the message.
One may hide information in a variety of files.
Steganography replaces unused parts of data with
the secret information. It is possible to hide
information in text, for example, in the spaces
between words. This type of information hiding is
more successful than steganography that consists
of hidden information in infrequent spelling errors

and in words replaced by synonyms. One of the

main requirements for hiding information in
digital sounds and images is redundant, repetitive
information. Steganography uses this part of the
sound or image to hide the secret information.
One unique example of hiding information is the
embedding of a mobile telephone conversation
into an Integrated Services Digital Network
(ISDN) video conferencing system. It is possible
to do so without seriously changing the quality of
the video, and with the correct key, one could
decode the conversation.
The easiest way to hide information is to
replace the least significant bit (LSB) of every
element with one bit of the secret message. For
example, when a picture is the desired cover
document, each pixel of the picture contains 24
bits of information, which, to the computer,
consists of 0s and 1s. To insert the secret
information, one can change these 0s and 1s to
bits of secret information. The most useful way to
insert these bits is do to do so in a random way
according to the secret key. This makes it harder
for others to break the code. The updated picture
should not appear noticeably different, or else
attackers may become suspicious .When
attempting this type of encryption, one should
also choose a cover image that does not contain a
large area of solid colors because any slight
change caused from the embedded information
will be more apparent.
WATERMARKING:
Watermarking is a type of steganography used
when other parties know of the existence of
hidden information and may have the desire to
remove or change it .Therefore, copyright
protection is a common use of watermarks. One
can protect the validity and originality of
information by embedding information about the
source of the data into files. In this case, the
watermark provides information about the author,
copyright, or license information. Another
application of watermarking is fingerprinting,
which involves inserting a different watermark
into each copy of a file in order to monitor the
recipients of the file.

image. Alternatives include rotating, blurring, or

stretching the image.

Therefore, one can trace back illegally

produced copies to the original receiver.
Watermarks are also useful in providing
information on the copy status of the document. A
final application of watermarks is to detect
manipulation of the original file. Certain
important characteristics about the file are stored
in the file itself in the form of a watermark and
make it possible to check if the image later has
altered characteristics

Attackers of steganography systems use a

process called steganalysis when finding and
disabling the use of hidden information.
Therefore, breaking a steganography system
requires two steps. The detecting phase is the first
site .Although one may detect unusual or
repetitive patterns without aids, disk analysis
programs also can find unused areas in a file and
report on the hidden information. Attackers often
search for perceptible noise that is detectable
when embedded information distorts sounds or
images .Attackers may also detect hidden
information using filters that find TCP/IP packets
whose headers contain hidden or invalid
information. One may also look for unusual color
schemes and patterns in images .

In regards to encryption that uses keys for the

decoding of hidden information, an option exists
to use computer programs that try every possible
key until they find the correct one. Therefore, it is
important to continue using larger algorithms in
order to prevent attackers from finding correct
keys and illegally decoding hidden information.
Governments are beginning to give large grants to
mathematical centers to fund the search for
stronger algorithms, and these funds are expected
to increase in the future. Additional research is
also required in order to create more secure
watermarks. Stronger watermarks may be
required in order to withstand the altering of the
image by the attacker. In order to create more
secure watermarks, it is important to evaluate the
watermarks that exist today and form a standard
for creating watermarks. StirMark is a program
that helps to illustrate the problems with current
watermarks by showing how to disable them.
Hopefully, in creating a standard for secure
watermarks, companies will continue to improve
their watermarking technology.

Once the attacker has knowledge of the

existence of hidden information, he must disable
the embedded information. In considering the
attack on a watermark, one may disable the
watermarks readability by simply cropping the
image if the watermark is visible. However, if it is
invisible, one could insert unknown watermarks to
the image to disable the correct watermark so that
it is no longer effective. Only if additional unused
space exists within the image can one accomplish
this process without changing the original visible

One of the most important points regarding

steganalysis is that often, the most difficult
steganography to detect is also the simplest form
to create. It is possible to accomplish
steganography through very low-tech means, as
long as the receiver of the cover file understands
or knows the method of decoding the information.
For example, a picture of a man with his hand
raised could potentially mean something such as
the location of a future bomb. According to Ben
Venzke, a terrorism specialist at the security

STEGANALYSIS:

analyst firm IntelCenter, "Sometimes the best

technologies are the simplest ones".
RECENT EXAMPLES OF THE EFFECTS
OF ENCRYPTING INFORMATION:
One of the governments greatest concerns of
eliminating the ban on strong encryption products
was the possibility that terrorist information might
reach a receiver without the governments
interception and knowledge. This fear intensified
immediately after the attacks on the World Trade
Center on September 11, 2001. Many suspect that
the al-Qaeda used steganography to hide terrorist
plans on online porn sites. Senator Judd Gregg,
only two days after the attack, "called for
international cooperation to create tighter controls
over the use of strong encryption and for
decryption products to be put in the hands of
government so that communications and
documents could be cracked when circumstances
required".He also immediately proposed a new
global law to give law enforcement officials
access to private keys .
After the attacks, the developers of electronic
encryption, who had previously been strong
proponents for no government control of the
technology, questioned if they had done the right
thing by pushing to release the technology to the
public. They wondered if terrorist groups would
have developed the technology by now or not.
However, in the end, these developers and other
individuals feel that other countries would have
created the technology, even if the U.S. had a ban
on the strong encryption products. Again, by
limiting the use and exportation of these products,
the U.S. will lose its status as a leader in
encryption technology. If this occurs, the U.S.
faces more of a threat to its national security.
On the other hand, many have already
experienced the benefits steganography brings to
society. Steganography software has been useful
for
many
countries
under
oppressive
governments. Human rights organizations utilize
this technology to collect data from witnesses who
saw government officials murdering or harming
civilians. This represents a change in the ideas
concerning the users of technology. Previously, it

was a common thought that governments use

technology to spy on individuals, yet in these
examples, citizens use technology against
repressive governments. One interesting example
concerns the civil war in Guatemala that killed
over 100,000 people. A majority of those killed
were Mayan Indians, and many survivors refused
to give testimonies out of fear. However, the
International Center for Human Rights Research
collected over 5000 testimonies in one year, with
the help of data encryption. Researchers gathered
testimonies in isolated mountain areas and
encrypted all data before sending it to their head
quarter. Therefore, with the help of steganography
technology, civilians could safely provide
accurate accounts of what they saw without fear
of their government harming them.
DRAWBACK IN ENCODING:
The drawback is that only 256 possible
colours can be used which can be a potential
problem during encoding. Usually a grey scale
colour palette is used when dealing with 8-bit
images such as (.GIF) because its gradual change
in colour will be harder to detect after the image
has been encoded with the secret message. 24-bit
images offer much more flexibility when used for
Steganography. The large numbers of colours
(over 16 million) that can be used go well beyond
the human visual system (HVS), which makes it
very hard to detect once a secret message, has
been encoded. The other benefit is that a much
larger amount of hidden data can be encoded into
a 24-bit digital image as opposed to an 8-bit
digital image. The one major drawback to 24-bit
digital images is their large size (usually in MB)
makes them more suspect than the much smaller
8-bit digital images (usually in KB) when sent
over an open system such as the Internet. Digital
image compression is a good solution to large
digital images such as the 24-bit images
mentioned earlier. There are two types of
compression used in digital images, lossy and
lossless. Lossy compression such as (.JPEG)
greatly reduces the size of a digital image by
removing excess image data and calculating a
close approximation of the original image. Lossy
compression is usually used with 24-bit digital
images to reduce its size, but it does carry one

major drawback. Lossy compression techniques

increase the possibility that the uncompressed
secret message will lose parts of its contents
because of the fact that lossy.
APPLICATIONS:
Usage in modern printers:
Steganography is used by some modern
printers, including HP and Xerox brand
color laser printers. Tiny yellow dots are
added to each page. The dots are barely
visible and contain encoded printer serial
numbers, as well as date and time stamps.
Example from modern practice:
The larger the cover message is (in data
content termsnumber of bits) relative to
the hidden message, the easier it is to hide
the latter. For this reason, digital pictures
(which contain large amounts of data) are
used to hide messages on the Internet and
on other communication media. It is not
clear how commonly this is actually done.
For example: a 24-bit bitmap will have 8
bits representing each of the three color
values (red, green, and blue) at each pixel.
If we consider just the blue there will be
28 different values of blue. The difference
between 11111111 and 11111110 in the
value for blue intensity is likely to be
undetectable by the human eye. Therefore,
the least significant bit can be used (more
or less undetectably) for something else
other than color information. If we do it
with the green and the red as well we can
get one letter of ASCII text for every three
pixels.
Stated somewhat more formally, the
objective for making steganographic
encoding difficult to detect is to ensure
that the changes to the carrier (the original
signal) due to the injection of the payload
(the signal to covertly embed) are visually

(and ideally, statistically) negligible; that

is to say, the changes are indistinguishable
from the noise floor of the carrier. Any
medium can be a carrier, but media with a
large amount of redundant or compressible
information are better suited.
From an information theoretical point of
view, this means that the channel must
have more capacity than the "surface"
signal requires; that is, there must be
redundancy. For a digital image, this may
be noise from the imaging element; for
digital audio, it may be noise from
recording techniques or amplification
equipment. In general, electronics that
digitize an analog signal suffer from
several noise sources such as thermal
noise, flicker noise, and shot noise. This
noise provides enough variation in the
captured digital information that it can be
exploited as a noise cover for hidden data.
In addition, lossy compression schemes
(such as JPEG) always introduce some
error into the decompressed data; it is
possible to exploit this for steganographic
use as well.
Used for digital watermarking:
Steganography can be used for digital
watermarking, where a message (being
simply an identifier) is hidden in an image
so that its source can be tracked or verified
(for example, Coded Anti-Piracy), or even
just to identify an image.
Use by terrorists:
When one considers that messages could
be encrypted steganographically in e-mail
messages, particularly e-mail spam, the
notion of junk e-mail takes on a whole
new light. Coupled with the "chaffing and
winnowing" technique, a sender could get
messages out and cover their tracks all at
once.

CONCLUSION:
Although steganography is not a new
concept, its recent application with
technology instigates many new ideas. First,
substantial research is necessary to create
algorithms that are strong enough to
withstand the many unique forms of
steganalysis. Although in the past, the
government disagreed with individuals and
businesses on the issue of public use of
strong encryption products, each group must
recognize the benefits that this technology
brings to society. Further research in this
field will not only help to decrease the
effects of the drawbacks of public use, but it
will also create possibilities for even more
individual identity protection and a more
secure nation..