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ABSTRACT
Cyber crime has become a dangerous threat to all the technical users and layman. Due to lack of skill on using the secured means in the data communication, many users as well as organizations are suffering. As we know that India is moving a step ahead in technical aspects, which is enhancing and improving the concept “Digital India”, but we must intensify the concept to “Secure Digital India” where we can see no data breaches, no malicious attacks and no cyber terrorism. Security in transmission through the public channels, storage of digital images has its importance in today’s image communications and confidential video conferencing. Because of expanding use in sharing the images in the daily social life, it is essential to protect the confidential image data from unauthorized access. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), a block cipher based algorithm is a well famous methodology making several advantages in data encryption. We are doing a hybrid approach for image security that combines both encryption of the image data and hiding the encrypted data into another image through steganography. The research helps layman to share the images into the public channels without getting compromised.
KEYWORDS : Cryptography, Steganography, Encryption, Decryption, AES, LSB, Hiding-Extracting, Cyber security, Image security, Cyber threats.
INTRODUCTION
Cyber Security is the body of technologies, whose processes and practices are drafted to protect networks. Apart from detecting the already existing threat, it also uses the intrusion prevention methods, in order to avert the upcoming threats. In order to avert threat, virus or any unauthorized access into a network or a computer, we need to safeguard the network with a firewall and awareness of hacking. It is important to avert security breach which can cause diminution for an organization. Potential threats like loss, modification, unauthorized access, data leak must be prevented.
Cryptography
To corroborate the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information, it is vital to secure the information. One pivotal branch of information security is cryptography, the science of securing the data. Cryptography permits the original data to be converted into cipher data that can be sent over the unsecure channel. Fig.1. shows the representational diagram of the steps followed by sender and receiver using cryptography. Encryption is the procedure of transforming the native data into cryptographic data so that only intended recipient can decipher the data by applying decryption.
Fig: Cryptography
Symmetric / Secret Key Cryptography
The strategy of Secret key (same to sender and receiver) encryption can also be known as the symmetric-key, shared key, single-key, and eventually private-key encryption. The technique of private key uses for all side’s encryption and decryption secret data. The original information or plaintext is encrypted with a key by the sender side also, the same key is used by the receiver to decrypt the encrypted data to obtain the plaintext. the key will be known only by the people who are legitimize to the modules of encryption/decryption. However, the technique pledges the good security for transmission but there is a difficulty with the distribution of the key. if one nab or explore the key he can get whole data without any difficulty. An example of Symmetric Key cryptography methodology is DES Algorithm.
1.1.2 Asymmetric / Public Key Cryptography
We can call this system as the asymmetric cryptosystem or public key cryptosystem, this uses two keys which are mathematically associated, use separately for encrypting and decrypting the knowledge. During this technique, once we use the private key, there are not any possibilities to get the info or just discover the opposite key, all keys are needed for the technique to run. The key used for encryption is stored public, ergo it’s called public key, and therefore the decryption key’s stored secret and called private key. An example of Asymmetric-Key Algorithms is RSA.
1.2 Steganography
Steganography is the branch of information security that enables the information hiding. It is the art and science of hiding the data within a cover in order to avoid disruption, modification and disclosure etc. Steganography differs from cryptography in the sense that it keeps the existence of information secret while cryptography keeps contents of information secret. Fig.2. describes the steganography process. Embedding is the process 2 of hiding a secret message within a cover. A great deal of attention is required so that secret message goes unnoticed if third party intercepts the message. Extracting is the inverse of embedding process where secret message is revealed at the end.
Fig : Steganography system – (Ref-2)
