A Study of Data Security on E-Governance using Steganographic Optimization Algorithms

Steganography has been used massively in numerous fields to maintain the privacy and integrity of messages transferred via the internet. The need to secure the information has augmented with the increase in e-governance usage. The wide adoption of e-governance services also opens the doors to cybercriminals for fraudulent activities in cyberspace. To deal with these cybercrimes we need optimized and advanced steganographic techniques. Various advanced optimization techniques can be applied to steganography to obtain better results for the security of information. Various optimization techniques like particle swarm optimization and genetic algorithms with cryptography can be used to protect information for e-governance services. In this study, a comprehensive review of steganographic algorithms using optimization techniques is presented. A new perspective on using this technique to protect the information for e-governance is also presented. Deep Learning might be the area that can be used to automate the steganography process in combination with other method

A Comprehensive Review on Digital Image Watermarking

The advent of the Internet led to the easy availability of digital data like images, audio, and video. Easy access to multimedia gives rise to the issues such as content authentication, security, copyright protection, and ownership identification. Here, we discuss the concept of digital image watermarking with a focus on the technique used in image watermark embedding and extraction of the watermark. The detailed classification along with the basic characteristics, namely visual imperceptibility, robustness, capacity, security of digital watermarking is also presented in this work. Further, we have also discussed the recent application areas of digital watermarking such as healthcare, remote education, electronic voting systems, and the military. The robustness is evaluated by examining the effect of image processing attacks on the signed content and the watermark recoverability. The authors believe that the comprehensive survey presented in this paper will help the new researchers to gather knowledge in this domain. Further, the comparative analysis can enkindle ideas to improve upon the already mentioned techniques

Design and Analysis of Reversible Data Hiding Using Hybrid Cryptographic and Steganographic approaches for Multiple Images

Data concealing is the process of including some helpful information on images. The majority of sensitive applications, such sending authentication data, benefit from data hiding. Reversible data hiding (RDH), also known as invertible or lossless data hiding in the field of signal processing, has been the subject of a lot of study. A piece of data that may be recovered from an image to disclose the original image is inserted into the image during the RDH process to generate a watermarked image. Lossless data hiding is being investigated as a strong and popular way to protect copyright in many sensitive applications, such as law enforcement, medical diagnostics, and remote sensing. Visible and invisible watermarking are the two types of watermarking algorithms. The watermark must be bold and clearly apparent in order to be visible. To be utilized for invisible watermarking, the watermark must be robust and visibly transparent. Reversible data hiding (RDH) creates a marked signal by encoding a piece of data into the host signal. Once the embedded data has been recovered, the original signal may be accurately retrieved. For photos shot in poor illumination, visual quality is more important than a high PSNR number. The DH method increases the contrast of the host picture while maintaining a high PSNR value. Histogram equalization may also be done concurrently by repeating the embedding process in order to relocate the top two bins in the input image's histogram for data embedding. It's critical to assess the images after data concealment to see how much the contrast has increased. Common picture quality assessments include peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), relative structural similarity (RSS), relative mean brightness error (RMBE), relative entropy error (REE), relative contrast error (RCE), and global contrast factor (GCF). The main objective of this paper is to investigate the various quantitative metrics for evaluating contrast enhancement. The results show that the visual quality may be preserved by including a sufficient number of message bits in the input photographs

A Systematic Review on Image Data Protection Methods

Securing data is the main goal of any data security system (DSS). Valuable data must be protected all the time and stored in a very highly secure data storage device. This need has become more critical due to the continuous growth of data size.  Furthermore, non-text data in the form of images, audio, and videos can now be transferred and processed easily and thus become part of sensitive data that needs to be protected. Since there is a need to secure and protect data in any form in order to keep them private and valid, it is expected that there would be many attempts already that have been proposed in the literature for this purpose. This paper reviews a group of these proposed strategies and methods that have been applied to different kinds of DSSs. Challenges and future trends of DSSs are also discussed. A number of main findings are grouped and organized as follows: (1) there are many different kinds of security techniques, each of which offers varying degrees of performance in terms of the amount of data and information that can be managed securely, (2) depending on the architecture of the proposed method, the tactics or strategies of the security system, the kinds of DSSs, as well as a few other factors, some methods are more appropriate for the storage of certain categories of data than others

Modified algorithm for image watermarking using 2D-DCT and elgamal cryptosystem / Nur Azien Yazid, Kamilah Abdullah and Suhaila Abd Halim

Image watermarking embeds identifying information in an image in such a manner that it cannot easily be removed. For the past several years, image digital watermarking has become a necessary element used for hid ing secret image and enabling secured communication such as privacy, confidentiality, authentication and data integrity. Although numerous watermarking schemes are present in grayscale images, the present work focuses on the RGB color image. This study proposed a new hybrid method that would satisfy the essential needs of modern image watermarking. The color image watermarking is based on the 2D Discrete Cosine Transform and Egamal cryptosystem.The 2D Discrete Cosine Transform depends on the matrix products, while the ElGamal cryptosystem depends on the discrete logarithm problem. The cryptosystem is combined with existing Arnold transform in watermarking algorithm to enhance the security of secret image. Value of Peak Signal to Noise Ratio was taken as performance evaluation parameters. On the whole, the performance evaluation shows that combining the two algorithms improved the performance of image watermarking

Framework for privacy-aware content distribution in peer-to- peer networks with copyright protection

The use of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks for multimedia distribution has spread out globally in recent years. This mass popularity is primarily driven by the efficient distribution of content, also giving rise to piracy and copyright infringement as well as privacy concerns. An end user (buyer) of a P2P content distribution system does not want to reveal his/her identity during a transaction with a content owner (merchant), whereas the merchant does not want the buyer to further redistribute the content illegally. Therefore, there is a strong need for content distribution mechanisms over P2P networks that do not pose security and privacy threats to copyright holders and end users, respectively. However, the current systems being developed to provide copyright and privacy protection to merchants and end users employ cryptographic mechanisms, which incur high computational and communication costs, making these systems impractical for the distribution of big files, such as music albums or movies.El uso de soluciones de igual a igual (peer-to-peer, P2P) para la distribución multimedia se ha extendido mundialmente en los últimos años. La amplia popularidad de este paradigma se debe, principalmente, a la distribución eficiente de los contenidos, pero también da lugar a la piratería, a la violación del copyright y a problemas de privacidad. Un usuario final (comprador) de un sistema de distribución de contenidos P2P no quiere revelar su identidad durante una transacción con un propietario de contenidos (comerciante), mientras que el comerciante no quiere que el comprador pueda redistribuir ilegalmente el contenido más adelante. Por lo tanto, existe una fuerte necesidad de mecanismos de distribución de contenidos por medio de redes P2P que no supongan un riesgo de seguridad y privacidad a los titulares de derechos y los usuarios finales, respectivamente. Sin embargo, los sistemas actuales que se desarrollan con el propósito de proteger el copyright y la privacidad de los comerciantes y los usuarios finales emplean mecanismos de cifrado que implican unas cargas computacionales y de comunicaciones muy elevadas que convierten a estos sistemas en poco prácticos para distribuir archivos de gran tamaño, tales como álbumes de música o películas.L'ús de solucions d'igual a igual (peer-to-peer, P2P) per a la distribució multimèdia s'ha estès mundialment els darrers anys. L'àmplia popularitat d'aquest paradigma es deu, principalment, a la distribució eficient dels continguts, però també dóna lloc a la pirateria, a la violació del copyright i a problemes de privadesa. Un usuari final (comprador) d'un sistema de distribució de continguts P2P no vol revelar la seva identitat durant una transacció amb un propietari de continguts (comerciant), mentre que el comerciant no vol que el comprador pugui redistribuir il·legalment el contingut més endavant. Per tant, hi ha una gran necessitat de mecanismes de distribució de continguts per mitjà de xarxes P2P que no comportin un risc de seguretat i privadesa als titulars de drets i els usuaris finals, respectivament. Tanmateix, els sistemes actuals que es desenvolupen amb el propòsit de protegir el copyright i la privadesa dels comerciants i els usuaris finals fan servir mecanismes d'encriptació que impliquen unes càrregues computacionals i de comunicacions molt elevades que fan aquests sistemes poc pràctics per a distribuir arxius de grans dimensions, com ara àlbums de música o pel·lícules

Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine XXX (2013) XXX‐XXX 1 Effective Management of Medical Information through ROI-Lossless Fragile Image Watermarking Technique

In this article, we have proposed a blind, fragile and Region of Interest (ROI) lossless medical image watermarking (MIW) technique, providing an all-in-one solution tool to various medical data distribution and management issues like security, content authentication, safe archiving, controlled access retrieval and captioning etc. The proposed scheme combines lossless data compression and encryption technique to embed electronic health record (EHR)/DICOM metadata, image hash, indexing keyword, doctor identification code and tamper localization information in the medical images. Extensive experiments (both subjective and objective) were carried out to evaluate performance of the proposed MIW technique. The findings offer suggestive evidence that the proposed MIW scheme is an effective all-in-one solution tool to various issues of medical information management domain. Moreover, given its relative simplicity, the proposed scheme can be applied to the medical images to serve in many medical applications concerned with privacy protection, safety, and management etc. Keywords

A Survey on Image Encryption and Decryption using Blowfish & Watermarking

Internet means International Network. In the present era, to send and receive information, the internet is the main media. This information may be text, audio, graphics and video etc. There are many advantages of internet. Internet provides quickest data delivery services, security of data is major concern for all internet users. There is always a sense of insecurity amongst internet user after sending data or image until he gets an acknowledgment from the opposite side informing that they have received the data safely, that too without any manipulation in its content. The confidentiality, non-repudiation, validation, reliability, of the information (data or image) should be checked properly otherwise data manipulation can have big problem. We can get these objectives with cryptography which is simply the science of securing sensitive and confidential information as it is stored on media or transmitted through communication network paths. Here, images are considered with an aim to secure them during its storage and transmission. Blowfish Algorithm, a type of symmetric key cryptography is the best solution for this. The two processes, encryption and decryption together form the cryptographic process. For ensuring security, the images are encrypted by the sender before transmitting them and are decrypted by the receiver after receiving them so that only the sender and the intended person can see the content in the image. The blowfish algorithm is safe against unauthorized attack and runs faster than the popular accessible algorithms. For double protection, after the blowfish process, the encrypted image tends to go through a water marking process which is used to hide a secret or personal message to protect a products copyright or to demonstrate data integrity Watermarking is the process of embedding new data into image, audio or video. We perform watermarking on different types of images say JPEG, BMP etc. The anticipated work is designed and implemented using MATLAB. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.150516

Application of Stochastic Diffusion for Hiding High Fidelity Encrypted Images

Cryptography coupled with information hiding has received increased attention in recent years and has become a major research theme because of the importance of protecting encrypted information in any Electronic Data Interchange system in a way that is both discrete and covert. One of the essential limitations in any cryptography system is that the encrypted data provides an indication on its importance which arouses suspicion and makes it vulnerable to attack. Information hiding of Steganography provides a potential solution to this issue by making the data imperceptible, the security of the hidden information being a threat only if its existence is detected through Steganalysis. This paper focuses on a study methods for hiding encrypted information, specifically, methods that encrypt data before embedding in host data where the ‘data’ is in the form of a full colour digital image. Such methods provide a greater level of data security especially when the information is to be submitted over the Internet, for example, since a potential attacker needs to first detect, then extract and then decrypt the embedded data in order to recover the original information. After providing an extensive survey of the current methods available, we present a new method of encrypting and then hiding full colour images in three full colour host images with out loss of fidelity following data extraction and decryption. The application of this technique, which is based on a technique called ‘Stochastic Diffusion’ are wide ranging and include covert image information interchange, digital image authentication, video authentication, copyright protection and digital rights management of image data in general

Enhanced Stegano-Cryptographic Model for Secure Electronic Voting

The issue of security in Information and Communication Technology has been identified as the most critical barrier in the widespread adoption of electronic voting (e-voting). Earlier cryptographic models for secure e-voting are vulnerable to attacks and existing stegano-cryptographic models can be manipulated by an eavesdropper. These shortcomings of existing models of secure e-voting are threats to confidentiality, integrity and verifiability of electronic ballot which are critical to overall success of e-democratic decision making through e-voting.This paper develops an enhanced stegano-cryptographic model for secure electronic voting system in poll-site, web and mobile voting scenarios for better citizens’ participation and credible e-democratic election. The electronic ballot was encrypted using Elliptic Curve Cryptography and Rivest-Sharma-Adleman cryptographic algorithm. The encrypted voter’s ballot was scattered and hidden in the Least Significant Bit (LSB) of the cover media using information hiding attribute of modified LSB-Wavelet steganographic algorithm. The image quality of the model, stego object was quantitatively assessed using Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Structural Similarity Index Metrics (SSIM).The results after quantitative performance evaluation shows that the developed stegano-cryptographic model has generic attribute of secured e-voting relevant for the delivery of credible e-democratic decision making. The large scale implementation of the model would be useful to deliver e-voting of high electoral integrity and political trustworthiness, where genuine e-elections are conducted for the populace by government authority. Keywords: Electronic Voting, Cryptography, Steganography, Video, Image, Wavelet, Securit