PAYLOAD CAPACITY ENHANCEMENT IN THE FIELD OF STEGANOGRAPHY BY USING MOBILE APPLICATION BASED STEGO TECHNIQUE

Transcription

1 PAYLOAD CAPACITY ENHANCEMENT IN THE FIELD OF STEGANOGRAPHY BY USING MOBILE APPLICATION BASED STEGO TECHNIQUE By CHANDRAKANT BADGAIYAN Assistant Professor, Department of Mechatronics Engineering, C.S.I.T. Durg (C.G.), India. ABSTRACT The data world has become completely digitized and information moves through channels from one place to other. In this scenario data security has caught everybody's attention. Since private network is not the solution of data security all the time and none of the medium used for data transfer is fully secured which encouraged information hiding techniques like Encryption and Steganography. The advantage of steganography over encryption is that messages do not attract attention to themselves. Plainly visible encrypted messages no matter how unbreakable will arouse suspicion, hence cryptography protects the contents of a message only, whereas steganography can protect both messages and communicating parties. In all existing Steganographic techniques, there is a restriction with respect to payload capacity is that the amount of data to be embedded into cover file can go beyond the size of cover file. In this paper the author check the enhancement of the payload capacity of steganography in any covert communication by using Mobile Apps as cover file and a small modification in approach of hiding data into cover file. Millions of mobile applications are downloaded on mobile phones daily from all part of world. This technique has overcome the problem of other Steganographic techniques like limited payload capacity with added advantage of mobility and portability as it runs on mobile phones instead of PC. This technique is developed in J2ME platform, Mobile Application is a Maze game, payload type is image having various file formats and tested on Nokia Supernova 7610 series phones. Keywords: J2ME, SMS, Encryption, Steganography, PNG, BITMAP, GIF, TIF. INTRODUCTION Steganography is an art of secret transfer of data, became popular in recent years, mainly aimed to hide data within a cover data such that other individuals fail to observe their existence [3]. The steganography is a Greek word that means "hidden writing". While implementation of this method, the main aim is to hide data in a cover media like text, image, audio and video such that except sender and receiver all other person will not notice that such important information is hidden inside cover file. The main difference between Steganography and cr yptography is that in steganography, individuals will not notice at all that data exists in the sources [4]. Cover file in most of Steganographic techniques is used as images, video clips, text, music and sound files [5]. These techniques have been developed for variety of targeted systems such as computers and mobile phones [6]. The steganography method, apart from application in covert exchange of information, is also used in fields like copyright protection, preventing e-document forging, etc [7,16]. On basis of their cover file data type, the Steganographic technique can be categorize as Text, Image, Audio, Video and Protocol [1,9]. In order to evaluate the capability of any Steganographic technique performance some of the major criteria are Invisibility, Payload capacity, Robustness against statistical attacks, i-manager s Journal o n Software Engineering, Vol. 7 lno. 4 lapril - June

2 Robustness against cover data manipulation, Independent of file format and Unsuspicious files [1]. Most of Steganographic technique does not fulfill all of above requirements. Hence a trade off must be selected, depending on the requirement of application at hand [2], [15]. On the other hand in last years mobile phones has become a life line for human being in urban areas because of its all facet development and its enhanced capability in field of Utility, Entertainment, Communication, Data transfer rate, Interactive services etc. Millions of mobile applications are downloaded and installed daily from all over the world. An application in Mobile phone is written using languages those are specialized in dealing the software & hardware specifications and limitations of the mobile phones. Some of the most commonly used programming languages are C++, Java and J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition), which is a embedded version of Java language for low end devices such as set top box, mobile devices and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant) and some of the widely used mobile operating systems are Symbian, Android, Bada, Linux variant, ios for iphones and latest is Tizen. 1. Survey Work Figures 1 and 2 present the basic approach used in sender side and receiver side in any existing Steganographic technique. Here in this approach we hide secret information/ data inside a cover file (Text, Image, Audio or Video File) by embedding secret information bit pattern into cover file or by modifying cover file specific property which change is difficult to detect or observe by normal human senses like echo, phase in audio, small variation in colour pattern of consecutive pixels. As a whole the existing method of hiding information in steganography is by tempering/ modifying the cover file as per secret data at sender end and at receiver end finding these modifications for extraction of secret information. Following problems were presents in the previous Steganographic technique Figures 1 and 2. Figure1. Conventional Model of Steganography at sender side Figure 2. Conventional Model of Steganography at Receiver side As we uses the approach of hiding secret data bit pattern by modification inside the Cover media file; the amount of data which we can embed is always dependant on the size Cove media files. As we uses the approach of hiding secret data bit pattern by modification inside the Cover media file; this produces the distortion in Cover file visual or audio quality or leave marks in statistical domain which is usually used by Steganalysis for identifying presence of steganography in any media file. Payload capacity of existing techniques is always less than size of Cover file; and in order to hide more as in case of LSB method we hide information in almost all pixel and this result more distortion in Cover Stego file. Most of previous techniques available in the field of steganography are PC oriented. In this approach the authors shift the Steganographic technique to Mobile platform. A detailed analysis of Mobile application based Steganographic technique and some of the previous Steganographic work implemented on mobile phone platform are presented. Various types of steganography on mobile phones are basically based on SMS [8,11,12,13,14], MMS [10] and mobile apps based 32 i-manager s Journal o n Software Engineering, Vol. 7 lno. 4 lapril - June 2013

3 steganography [17], [19]. Security of Mobile apps based stego application can be improved by implementing SMS Module [18]. SMS can be used to send Text data or binary image data hence uses text steganography and image steganography techniques respectively [20]. Above all problems were solved by the Mobile apps based Steganographic techniques [17], [19]. In this technique secret data is image type and its file format can be any type. This secret data is hidden inside the jar file which is executable files in case of J2ME based platform. Then this JAD/JAR files are downloaded to mobile phones from server or a website directly on the mobile phone and then installed on it. In order to recover the secret image from application user has to use his secret key and it will recover. User can again hide image by using his secret key. The basic problem of existing techniques was approach of tempering Cover file for hiding information inside it which causes limited and dependent payload capacity and distortion in Cover file after embedding process. These problems were root out by adopting a new approach in methodology in case of Mobile Application Based Steganography [17], [19] which is discussed in next section. 2. Methodology In all type of previous Steganographic technique secret information/data is hidden into some Cover file based on some algorithm. Since these methods change cover file either in spatial domain or in transform domain some properties of Cover file to hide Secret information based on particular Steganographic Algorithm. Because of these process changes in cover data first disadvantage is the amount of payload is limited and also amount is dependent on the size of cover data and changes in cover data caused in noise production in cover image. In order to overcome disadvantage of previous technique which main reason was during embedding process changes in Cover file; can be improved if we find the way of hiding secret information such that both Cover file and Secret information can exist independently so that the amount of payload to be hidden inside Cover file; can be free from size of Cover file and approach should be such that hiding and recovery of secret information can be done securely with secret key and that is too very fast. For achieving these points we use a Mobile Application as Cover file. Hence in our technique of image hiding in mobile application, we are going to mix secret image with mobile application resources in such a way that it cannot be retrieved from any other means except by using Mobile Apps in running state [17] [19]. The control flow diagram is shown in Figure 3. This technique is implemented on J2ME enable device and. Run & Tested on Nokia Supernova 6710 phone. In order to achieve this, above flow of control Figure 3 is implemented in a Mobile Application which can be any utility like Paint Brush and entertainment application like any Mobile Game. In this case this entertainment application is Maze. The results obtained are shown in Figures 4 and 5. Then they have tested this application on various mobile phones Nokia Supernova 7610, Nokia 5130, Nokia C2-01 and Nokia Supernova 7210 with various ways of installation of mobile application on mobile phones like through Bluetooth, data cable as shown in Tables 1&2. Finally they tested this technique by hiding images of various type and size like BITMAP, PNG, JPEG and GIF to prove the technique works fine with all formats supported by phones and there no dependency Figure 3. Control flow diagram of technique [17] i-manager s Journal o n Software Engineering, Vol. 7 lno. 4 lapril - June

4 Image Format/Mobile Devices Bluetooth Data OTA Nokia Supernova 7610 YES YES Not Performed Nokia 5130 YES YES Not Performed Nokia Supernova 7210 YES YES Not Performed Nokia C2-01 YES YES Not Performed Table 2. Testing on various devices with different Modes of installation Image Name Image Format Image Size Mobile App Size without Image Mobile App Total Size with Image Diagram.jpg JPEG 21 kb 8.31 kb 28.9 kb Chandra.jpg JPEG 458 kb 8.31 kb 465 kb Obama.jpg JPEG 34.6 kb 8.31 kb 42.8 kb Osama.jpg JPEG 8.09 kb 8.31 kb 16.3 kb Penta_bmp.bmp BITMAP 446 kb 8.31 kb 54.3 kb Penta_gif.gif GIF 31.1 kb 8.31 kb 39.1 kb Penta_tif.tif TIF 32.6 kb 8.31 kb 39.3 kb (not supported) Penta_jpeg.JPG JPEG 14.5 kb 8.31 kb 21.7 kb Penta_png.png PNG 9.55 kb 8.31 kb 17.9 kb of payload on size of Cover File as shown in Table 3. As this technique is implemented on mobile phones, it has advantage of mobility, portability, less power consumption, various type of network connectivity etc. 3. Result 3.1 Applications Figure 4. Maze Game App in Normal Mode Figure 5. After Applying Secret Key, Image Display Mode Image Format/Mobile phones PNG BITMAP JPEG Nokia Supernova 7610 YES YES YES Nokia 5130 YES YES YES Nokia Supernova 7210 YES YES YES Nokia C2-01 YES YES YES Table 1. Testing various phones with different Image format Table 3. Testing Results with different size and format of image size where Apps is Maze game, device is Nokia7610 This method has advantages of mobility, portability, various modes of connectivity and less power usage features hence it can be used by agents of secret agencies such as RAW, CBI, FBI, CIA etc. The Maze Game App in Normal Mode is shown in Figure 4. Useful for secret communication in form of chatting by SMS module concept. There is no restriction related to type of media format, data type like text, audio, video, image and size of payload data. Figure 5. After Applying Secret Key, Image Display Mode. 4. Performance Evaluation Inferences from Tables 1, 2, 3 and Figure 3 In Table 3, it is proved that the size of payload image that can be hidden is variable and hence fully independent from the Cover File i.e. Mobile Apps size. Another inference is our method supports almost all formats of images like jpeg, png, bitmap, gif as payload which indicates that our method does not has any limitations as far as concerned of payload format. From hiding image name Penta_bmp.bmp, which size is 446 kb into the mobile Apps Maze which size is 8.31 kb we get the final Apps Size of 54.3 kb. This example shows that in case of uncompressed hidden data our technique also provides internal compression during 34 i-manager s Journal o n Software Engineering, Vol. 7 lno. 4 lapril - June 2013

5 embedding process. This methodology works fine with all J2ME enabled device and tested on Nokia Supernova 7610, Nokia 5130, Nokia Supernova 7210 and Nokia c2-01. It is clear from Table 1 that all type of possible ways on mobile phone was checked for installation like Bluetooth, data cable. Installation using OTA is not check yet. Conclusion In this work, the authors tested the Mobile Application Based Steganographic technique [17,19] from the point of view of Payload capacity independence and establish fact that this technique makes the payload capacity of steganography technique independent from the dependency on Size of Cover File. We also get the result in Table 3 that this technique provides compression to the uncompressed image media files as discussed in section performance evaluation. Because of its high payload carrying capability this technique can be used in covert communication between secret agencies agent and in all type of other usage. As the mobile application is quite normal file these days its transfer does not catch attention too. This technique has limitation that secret information can be exposed to hacker if he has doubt that a mobile application has contain an embedded data image inside it. Recovering image file will require connection of mobile phones to PC and specialized software. It has a risk of code reverse engineering. Both of these short comings can be paramount by using Obfuscated code and Binarized resource data. References [1]. Samir K Bandyopadhyay, Debnath Bhattacharyya, Debashis Ganguly, Swarnendu Mukherjee, Poulami Das, (2008). A Tutorial Review on Steganography, International conference 2008 at JIIT. [2]. Ahsan, K., & Kundur, D. (2002). Practical Data hiding in TCP/IP, Proceedings of the Workshop on Multimedia Security at ACM Multimedia. [3]. F.A.P. Petitcolas, R.J. Anderson, and M.G. Kuhn, (1999). "Information hiding-a survey," Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 87, Issue 7, July 1999, pp [4]. J.C. Judge, (2001). "Steganography: Past, Present, Future," SANS white paper, 30 November, 2001, [5]. N.J. Hopper, (2004). Toward a theory of Steganography, Ph.D. Dissertation, School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, July [6]. M. Shirali-Shahreza, (2005). "An Improved Method for Steganography on Mobile Phone," WSEAS Transactions on Systems, Vol. 4, Issue 7, July 2005, pp [7]. F. Hartung and B. Girod, (1997). "Copyright Protection in Video Delivery Networks by Watermarking of Pre- Compressed Video," Proceedings of Multimedia Applications, Services and Techniques ECMAST '97', Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1242, Milan, Italy, May 1997, pp [8]. M. Hassan Shirali-Shahreza, Mohammad Shirali- Shahreza, (2007). Sending Mobile Software Activation Code by SMS Using Steganography, Intelligent Information Hiding and Multimedia Signal Processing, 2007, IIHMSP 2007, Third International Conference on 2007, pp [9]. Abbas Cheddad, Joan Condell, Kevin Curran, Paul Mc Kevitt, (2010). "Digital image steganography: Survey and analysis of current methods" 2010, Elsevier, Signal Processing, pp [10]. Rosziati Ibrahim, Law Chia Kee, (2012). MoBiSiS: An Android-based Application for Sending Stego Image through MMS, ICCGI 2012: The Seventh International Multi-Conference on Computing in the Global Information Technology. [11]. Mohammad Shirali Shahreza, (2006). Stealth Steganography in SMS, IEEE Wireless and Optical Communications Networks, 2006 IFIP International Conference. [12]. Mohammad Shirali-Shahreza, M. Hassan Shirali- Shahreza, (2007). Text Steganography in SMS, 2007 International Conference on Convergence Information Technology. [13]. M. Hassan Shirali-Shahreza, Mohammad Shirali- Shahreza, (2008). Steganography in SMS by Sudoku Puzzle, Computer Systems and Applications, i-manager s Journal o n Software Engineering, Vol. 7 lno. 4 lapril - June

6 AICCSA IEEE/ACS International Conference, pp [14]. Khan Farhan Rafat, (2009). Enhanced Text Steganography in SMS, Computer, Control and Communication, 2009, IC4 2009, 2nd International Conference, pp [15]. W. Bender, D. Gruhl, N. Morimoto and A. Lu, (1996). Techniques for data hiding, IBM Systems Journal, vol. 35, Issue 3&4, 1996, pp [16]. Zenon Hrytskiv, Sviatoslav Voloshynovskiy, Yuriy Rytsav. Cryptography and Steganography of Video information in modern communication, Electronics and Energetics, Vol 11, No. 1, [17]. Chandrakant Badgaiyan, Ashish Kumar Dewangan, Bhupesh Kumar Pandey, Keerti Yeulkar, Kaushal Kumar Sinha, (2012). A New Steganographic Technique: Image Hiding in Mobile Application, International Journal of Advanced Computer and Mathematical Sciences, Vol 3, issue 4, 2012 pp [18]. Chandrakant Badgaiyan, Ashish Kumar Dewangan, (2012). A New Method of Sending Mobile Software Activation Key Using SMS Module, CIIT International Journal of Automation and Autonomous System, Vol 4, No 6, June [19]. Chandrakant Badgaiyan, Mr. Ashish Kumar Dewangan, (2013). Implementation of Mobile Based Steganography Technique on Non Touch Mobile Phones Using Password Protection, International Journal of Information and Computation Technology, Volume 3, Number 2, 2013, Special issue. [20]. Chandrakant Badgaiyan, Mr. Ashish Kumar Dewangan, (2012). A Survey Paper on SMS Based Steganography, International Journal of Advanced Computer and Mathematical Sciences, Vol 3, Issue 4, 2012, pp ABOUT THE AUTHOR Chandrakant Badgaiyan is currently working as an Assistant Professor under the Department of Mechatronics Engineering, CSIT Durg (C.G) India and handling technical bodies sponsored projects. He has been awarded with the degree of Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Telecommunication from Pt. Ravi Shankar Shukla University, Raipur (C.G) in He has also obtained the certification of PG Diploma in Wireless and Mobile Computing from CDAC Pune in FEB Then he completed his Post Graduation (M.E.) in Communication Engineering from C.S.V.T.U. Bhilai (C.G.) in He has presented his research work in many conferences and published several papers in various reputed journals in the field of Image processing, Steganography and Mobile Computing. He has also worked as Game Programmer with Gameloft Pvt. Ltd. India Hyderabad. Mr. C.K. Badgaiyan is an Associate Member of IETE since 2011 and membership no. AM He has also been selected in Advisory Board Member of few International Journals. 36 i-manager s Journal o n Software Engineering, Vol. 7 lno. 4 lapril - June 2013