Study on Cryptography, Steganography and Combination of both for Data Security

Study on Cryptography, Steganography and Combination of both for Data Security

Meher Afroj
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Bangladesh University of Business and Technology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.51584/IJRIAS.2023.8602
Received: 17 May 2023; Accepted: 31 May 2023; Published: 30 June 2023

Abstract- Secure data communication is a key factor today while communicating through the unreliable network. Nowadays almost all applications are internet-based and it is important that communication made confidential and secure. But network of so many people is always unreliable. Cryptography and steganography are two important techniques which is used for secret and reliable communication over the network. Cryptography is the process of protecting information using different cryptographic algorithms so that only the intended person can read and process it. Steganography is the process of protecting information by hiding it inside another file such as image, audio, video and so on. But in recent years cryptanalysis study becomes so strong that only cryptography or only steganography alone may not enough for securing data. So the combination of cryptography and steganography produce stronger method than previous. In recent years many works has done or proposed about combining different types of cryptography and steganography schemes to make the transmission of data more secure through unreliable medium efficiently. This paper will help to understand some recent works related to combining cryptography and steganography within a short period of time and also will help to precede further study.

Keywords- Cryptography, Steganography, Ciphertext, Plaintext, Encryption, Decryption

I. Introduction

Internet users are increasing day by day. The rise of the Internet is one of the most important factors of information technology. As the internet is rising and the users are increasing, an enormous amount of data is being exchanged over the Internet. Security has been the major aspect for communication due to tremendous growth of networking technologies. The most important motive for the intruder is to obtain the value of the confidential data by attacking the system. Hackers may expose the data, alter it, distort it, or employ it for more difficult attacks [1]. So we need a secured system which gives the assured security of data to us [2]. To maintain the privacy and security of confidential and sensitive information there is a need of approaches which enhances the level of information security. Information hiding is one of the many available approaches which increase the level of information security. The most powerful and widely used approaches of information hiding used to contravene the threats to information security are Cryptography and Steganography. We can make more secure system by using the combination of both approaches.
Cryptography was created as a technique for securing the secrecy of communication by making transmitted data apprehensible for the intended users and incomprehensible for others. Cryptography provides security by manipulating the original confidential information so that it becomes unintelligible for the intruders. Many different methods have been developed to encrypt and decrypt data in order to keep the message secret [3]. Unfortunately it is sometimes not enough to keep the contents of a message secret, it may also be necessary to keep the existence of the message secret. The technique used to implement this, is called steganography[4].It is the art that conceals the existence of communication by hiding the confidential information in some other cover medium such as text, image, audio and video. Text steganography have a very small amount of redundant data, therefore they are very often used, audio and video steganography are very complex in use, image steganography is the most widely used hiding process of data that provides a secure and simple way to transfer the information over the internet [4].

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