11 Steganography and Steganalysis

Abstract

Steganography is the technique of hiding private or sensitive information within something that appears to be nothing out of the usual. Steganography in the modern day sense of the word usually refers to information or a file that has been concealed inside a digital Picture, Video or Audio file. Detecting the use of Steganography inside of a file is done by Steganalysis. It does not deal with trying to decrypt the hidden information inside of a file, just discovering it. The most common use of Steganography is to hide a file inside another file. Steganography is often confused with cryptology (cryptography) because the two are similar in the way that they both are used to protect important information. Cryptography is the study of hiding information, while Steganography deals with composing hidden messages so that only the sender and the receiver know that the message even exists. In cryptography the existence of the encrypted message is visible to the world. Due to this, Steganography removes the unwanted attention coming to the hidden message. If a person or many views the object that the information is hidden inside of, they will have no idea that there is any hidden information, therefore the person will not attempt to decrypt the information. In Steganography, when information or a file is hidden inside a carrier file, the data is usually encrypted with a password.