A Review on Security Techniques in Image Steganography

Abstract

Given the increased popularity of the internet, the exchange of sensitive information leads to concerns about privacy and security. Techniques such as steganography and cryptography have been employed to protect sensitive information. Steganography is one of the promising tools for securely exchanging sensitive information through an unsecured medium. It is a powerful tool for protecting a user's data, wherein the user can hide messages inside other media, such as images, videos, and audios (cover media). Image steganography is the science of concealing secret information inside an image using various techniques. The nature of the embedding process makes the hidden information undetectable to human eyes. The challenges faced by image steganography techniques include achieving high embedding capacity, good imperceptibility, and high security. These criteria are inter-related since enhancing one factor undermines one or more others. This paper provides an overview of existing research related to various techniques and security in image steganography. First, basic information in this domain is presented. Next, various kinds of security techniques used in steganography are explained, such as randomization, encryption, and region-based techniques. This paper covers research published from 2017 to 2022. This review is not exhaustive and aims to explore state-of-the-art techniques applied to enhance security, crucial issues in the domain, and future directions to assist new and current researchers.

Secure map-based crypto-stego technique based on mac address

“…Steganography and cryptography are cousins in the spy-craft family. Each works in a different way to achieve the same target; cryptography is perceptible and observable without understanding the real content, while steganography hides the content so that it is not perceptible or observable and without producing noticeable changes to the carrier media [4], [7], [11]. The main goal of both cryptography and steganography is security.…”

“…Cryptography focuses on keeping the contents of the message secret, while steganography focuses on keeping the confidentiality and existence of the message secret so that unauthorized people don't know that digital information is hidden in the cover image. As a result, steganography has inherited various security characteristics from its ancestors [7], [11].…”

“…This added layer of security ensures that even if the carrier file is intercepted, it would be extremely challenging for unauthorized individuals to access the hidden message. However, it is important to note that the encryption process may introduce some additional distortion to the stego image, which could potentially affect its quality or appearance [2], [5], [11].…”

“…Researchers in the literature have proposed various steganography techniques, including cryptographic-based, perception-based, least significant bit LSB-based, histogram-based, and feature extraction-based [1]- [3], [11], [12]. Each technique has its own strengths and weaknesses, and the choice of technique depends on the specific application requirements and constraints.…”

A combination of hill cipher and RC4 methods for text security

“…This is due to computer networks with an open system concept that can make it easier for someone to enter the network, which can result in the process of sending data being insecure and can be used by people or other parties who are not responsible for taking information in the middle of the road. One way to maintain the security of confidential data or information is to use cryptography [2]. Cryptography is an encryption technique in which "original text" (plaintext) can be scrambled using an encryption key to become "random text that is hard to read" (ciphertext) [3]- [5].…”