USING A CRYPTO-STEGANOGRAPHIC APPROACH TO SOLVE INFORMATION SECURITY PROBLEMS

Abstract

The paper substantiates the feasibility of integrating as one software solution cryptographic and steganographic ap-proaches to information security and developed two cryptoseganosystems to protect sensitive information and their trans-mission through open communication channels. The principle of implementation of RC4 stream cipher and block AES is described; the essence of the steganographic LSB method, the application of which involves the concealment of information in digital objects, socalled containers. In this paper, the RGB images and WAVE audio files are used as steganocontainers. In the case of a container image, the steganographic protection of the cryptographically enclosed RC4 information algorithm is accomplished by embedding it in the least significant bits of pseudo-randomly selected pixels. The choice of an RGB bitmap is because this type of image consists of a set of pixels of red, green and blue components, which in turn creates enough redundancy and the ability to embed large amounts of information. The embedding of an AES encrypted text message into an audio file is done by block hiding. The simplicity of the WAVE file structure makes it easy to implement any steganographic methods of hiding data without much effort. Software complexes have been developed based on crypto-steganographic systems. The conclusions about the prospects of the crypto-steganographic approach and the feasibility of further research in this direction have been made. The integration of cryptography and steganography makes it possible to get rid of the vulnerabilities of the known methods of information protection and to develop new methods of solving information security problems from the standpoint of computational complexity and resistance to hacking.