Steganography is the most trendy and researchable topic in our modern life. Can you surmise that if you had the capability and potency to hide or conceal information in plain sight? So, is it possible or not? Steganography is nothing but hiding some hidden message through audio files, text, video clips, images, etc. So, that hidden message we cannot see, it’s invisible. Normal people can not notice any changes in a text or audio or image file.
Well in our daily life, we all know about hacking. So, for cyber security, Steganography is the technique for sending secret information within a non-secret or normal file like video clips, audio, or images. In this article, you can learn about this technique and how it works, uses, etc.
What is Steganography?
Steganography is the technique of hiding some message through ordinary files like video, audio, image, etc. On the other hand, it is just a method that embeds information within a text, audio, or image file. Steganography comes from Greek Steganographia which is divided into two words “steganos’ ‘ meaning “covered or hidden “ and “graphia’ ‘ meaning “writing”. Mainly in simple words, the sender sets secret info within a file. And then when this file passes through phases no one can understand that file has some secret information. Moreover, only the receiver can restore this message. For hackers also restoring this info is difficult.
Types of Steganography:
There are different types of hiding a message. Mainly files or images contain bytes. So, some bytes in files or images are not necessary and also can be replaced with secret messages without destroying the original image or file quality. In this way, we can hide information. Here are some types of hiding messages.
- Text
- Audio
- Image
- Video
- Protocol
Text Steganography:
Text Steganography is an old and famous method of this technique. Mainly it is a technique to conceal data in the text. This method is a mechanism or technique to hide a secret message within another text for hiding the original secret message.
Audio Steganography:
This method is basically hiding secret messages through audio files. It is also a popular method for hiding secret data.
Image Steganography:
Image Steganography is one very useful and common method. From this name, we can get some idea about this method. It is a technique to hide secret data within an image file. For this method which image is selected is called the cover image and after steganography is called stego image.
Video Steganography:
This method is presently the most researchable and trending method in data hiding technologies. Video Steganography is a bunch of data hiding techniques. Here we can hide data through images or audio or both. So, we can hide multiple secret messages through a video file.
Protocol Steganography:
It is the mechanism of hiding information within network control protocols using data transmission like TCP, UDP, etc. So, you can use this technique in the OSI model in converting channels.
Some examples Of This Technique:
Basically, it is full of art more than science, so there are many ways where steganography can be used. However, some common examples are given below:
- Playing a soundtrack reverse to uncover the mystery message.
- Playing a video to uncover the secret message.
- Writing with imperceptible ink.
- Embedding the secret text in a picture.
Conclusion:
Steganography is the major technology now for hiding secret messages through audio, image, or video files. But it is in the incipient stage of development. This technique is very helpful in the cyber security section for security purposes. So, the future probable use of this technique is as below:
- Concealed data on the network.
- P2P(peer-to-peer) private communication.
- Post hidden messages on the web to get off the transmission.
