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What is Steganography?

Steganography is the art of hiding information and an effort to conceal the existence of the embedded information. It is the best way of securing message than cryptography which only conceals the content of the message not the existence of the message Internet users frequently need to store, send, or receive private information. The most common way to do this is to transform the data into a different form. The resulting data can be understood only by those who know how to return it to its original form. This method of protecting information is known as encryption. A major drawback to encryption is that the existence of data is not hidden. Data that has been encrypted, although unreadable, still exists as data. If given enough time, someone could eventually unencrypt the data. A solution to this problem is steganography. The ancient art of hiding messages so that they are not detectable. No substitution or permutation was used. The hidden message is plain, but unsuspecting to the reader. Steganography’s intent is to hide the existence of the message, while cryptography scrambles a message so that it cannot be understood.

Where Steganography used:

1. Steganography can be a solution which makes it possible to send news and information without being censored and without the fear of the messages being intercepted.

2. It is also possible to simply use steganography to store information on a location. For example, several information sources like our private banking information, some military secrets, can be stored in a cover source.

3- E-commerce allows for an interesting use of steganography. In current e-commerce transactions, most users are protected by a username and password, with no real method of verifying that the user is the actual card holder.

4- Paired with existing communication methods, steganography can be used to carry out hidden exchanges.

5. The transportation of sensitive data is another key use of steganography. A potential problem with cryptography is that eavesdroppers know they have an encrypted message when they see one.