Mathematical Modeling of Image Steganographic System (original) (raw)

Image based steganography is a dangerous technique of hiding secret messages in the image in such a way that no one apart from the sender and intended recipient suspects the existence of the message. It is based on invisible communication and this technique strives to hide the very presence of the message itself from the observer. As a result it becomes the most preferred tool to be used by Intelligence Agencies, Terrorist Networks and criminal organizations for securely broadcasting, dead-dropping and communicating information over the internet by hiding secret information in the images. In this paper a mathematical model is designed for representing any such image based steganographic system. This mathematical model of any stego system can be used for determining vulnerabilities in the stego system as well as for steganalysing the stego images using same vulnerabilities. Based on these mathematical foundations three steganographic systems are evaluated for their strengths and vulnerabilities using MATLAB ©Image Processing Tool Box.