Steganography is the art and science of hiding messages within other messages, such as images, audio files, video files, and even text. The term “steganography” comes from the Greek words “stegas” and “graphia,” or “covered writing.” Today, we typically think of steganography as the practice of hiding information in images, audio files, video files, and text. One of the best-known historical uses of steganography is the art of invisible writing, which was used to convey secret messages in classical antiquity.
In modern digital steganography, data is first encrypted or obfuscated in some other way and then inserted, using a special algorithm, into data that is part of a particular file format such as JPEG image, audio video file.
The secret message can embedded into ordinary data files in many different ways. One technique is to hide data in bits that represent the same color pixels repeated in a row in an image file. By applying. the encrypted data to this redundant data in some inconspicuous way, the result will be an image file that appears identical to the original image but that has noise patterns of regular, unencrypted data.
Table of Contents
Steganography can be divided into five types:
Text Steganography
Image Steganography
Video Steganography
Audio Steganography
Network Steganography
Text Steganography
Text steganography involves the use of text to hide information or secret messages within other types of data. For example, a researcher could use text steganography to hide the fact that they conducted secret research in a paper they published in a journal. The researcher could hide the secret research in a paragraph that is text-heavy but has little to no meaning to a reader. The reader would think that the paragraph is just a normal part of the text but on a deeper level it is telling a different story.
Also Read:Security Issues/Breaches In Cyber Space (Cyber Security and law)
Image Steganography
Image steganography is a process of digital hiding. It is a form of steganography in which digital information is embedded in a digital image. Unlike cryptography, which encrypts information, steganography requires only one end of a communication to be aware of the presence of the hidden data.
Video Steganography
Digital communications play a very important role in all aspects of our lives. Video steganography is no different. This is the process of hiding data in a video, so that when it is played it will be hidden. This is done to prevent the video being stored or shared in a way that would reveal the content.
Audio Steganography
Audio steganography, an audio steganography is a technique used to hide or embed secret messages within sound recordings. There are several ways to do it. One is to add a noise signal that changes subtly over time, another is to vary the audio content in a way that’s imperceptible to humans, and the third is to have the audio signal itself be a secret message.
Also Read:Cyber Security Issues And Challenges
Network Steganography
Network Steganography is the practice of hiding information in a message. The goal is to hide the information in such a way that it is not readily detectable. Steganography is often used to hide information in video, audio, and image files.
Benefit
The benefit of this method is that the data is extra and twice as safe ie, that first that it is out of sight and the second is that it is encrypted. Because of this process, it becomes challenging for the person to first locate or trace the data and then encrypt it.
Also Read:-What is Cryptography or cipher ?
Some of the well-known uses of steganography around the world include:
Head of the messenger was shaved and a tattoo was done on the head and after the hair grew back, the messenger was sent and the recipient again shaved the hair to read the tattooed message, U.S. Marine Corps Navaho code talkers of WWIL disappearing ink and microdots, Osama bin Laden’s pre-recorded videos that are re-played on TV stations around the world contain hidden messages, September 11 attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C. (Gary C. Kessler, 2001, p.1)
