A New Approach of Data Security using Steganography Technique

A New Approach of Data Security using Steganography Technique
Authors:MANOHAR N SAYYADPURKAR, C.G.PATIL

Abstract: Steganography is the art of hiding the existence of data in another transmission medium to achieve secret communication. It does not replace cryptography but rather boosts the security using its obscurity features. Steganography method used in this paper is based on biometrics. And the biometric feature used to implement steganography is skin tone region of images [1]. Here secret data is embedded within skin region of image that will provide an excellent secure location for data hiding. For this skin tone detection is performed using HSV (Hue, Saturation and Value) color space. Additionally secret data embedding is performed using frequency domain approach - DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transform), DWT outperforms than DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform). Secret data is hidden in one of the high frequency sub-band of DWT by tracing skin pixels in that sub-band. Different steps of data hiding are applied by cropping an image interactively cropping results into an enhanced security than hiding data without cropping i.e. in whole image, so cropped region works as a key at decoding side. This study shows that by adopting an object oriented steganography mechanism, in the sense that, we track skin tone objects in image, we get a higher security. And also satisfactory PSNR (Peak- Signal-to-Noise Ratio) is obtained. 

Keywords: Biometrics; Skin Tone Detection; DWT; DCT; Cropping; Security; PSNR. 

INTRODUCTION 

         In this highly digitalized world, the Internet serves as an important role for data transmission and sharing. However, since it is a worldwide and publicized medium, some confidential data might be stolen, copied, modified, or destroyed by an unintended observer. Therefore, security problems become an essential issue. Encryption is a well know procedure for secured data transmission [2]. Frequently used encryption methods include RSA, DES (Data encryption standard).Although encryption achieves certain security effects, they make the secret messages unreadable and unnatural or meaningless. These unnatural messages usually attract some unintended observers‟ attention. This is the reason a new security approach called “steganography” arises. As an example, the cover text [3]: “I‟m feeling really stuffy. Emily‟s medicine wasn‟t strong enough without another febrifuge.” Hides the sentence “Meet me at nine” If the reader retains the second letter of each word in sequence. In steganography secret message is the data that the sender wishes to remain confidential and can be text, images, audio, video, or any other data that can be represented by a stream of bits. The cover or host is the medium in which the message is embedded and serves to hide the presence of the message. 

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