A STEGANOGRAPHY APPLICATION FOR SECURE DATA COMMUNICATION Muhammet BAYKARA 1 and Resul DAŞ 2 Software Engineering Department, Fırat University Elazığ/Turkey 1 mbaykara@firat.edu.tr 2 rdas@firat.edu.tr ABSTRACT Information security is the process of protecting information and information systems from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification or destruction. Nowadays, apart from the military and institutional information security, individual information security is very important. If individual information security is ignored, it can cause intangible damage and monetary loss. In this study, a steganography application was developed to increase personal information security. This application is intended to provide a more secure way of communication for emails which play an important role in personal data transfer. Thus, Steganography, which is one of the communication hiding techniques, is used. And also existing steganography methods are examined and a new application has been developed to be used for personal information security. Finally, this application was applied to an electronic mail communication. Index Terms— Computer security, Information hiding, Information security, LSB, Steganography 1. INTRODUCTION Serious problems can occur while transferring the information in the electronic environment from their source to target environment. For instance, there is always the possibility that data shared via e-mail in the internet environment can reach to third persons. As a result of the development in the cyber world, many studies are carried out to overcome these problems [1]. In addition to these precautions, steganography method is used. Steganography means “hidden writing” in ancient Greek and it is the name for the science of hiding information [2]. Steganography has one superior aspect to cryptology. In cryptology encoded hidden information arouse curiosity, in steganography the presence of the information cannot be known since information is secret. Today, thanks to the steganography science, desired data can be hidden into the audio, video, image files, disks and communication channels [3]. In steganography method, one of the most important points is that the hidden data can have as little change as possible on the file where it is hidden. Besides, data size that can be hidden in the file is an important variable. As a result of these two criterions, different methods are developed to be used in steganography. The most widely used method in steganography is the adding data to the most insignificant bit or bits (LSB). In this method, the last bit, which is the most insignificant bit of each byte of each pixel that make up the image, is changed. Instead of that bit, bits of the data which you want to hide respectively are placed from its beginning. The hidden information is obtained by comparing the image, in which the original image information is hidden, and its pixels. The disadvantage of adding to the last bit method is that the length of message or document to be sent depends on the size of the image [4]. In this study, steganography method is applied to a mail application for the privacy of the personal information transmission. Moreover, an alternative to other ways of steganography is proposed. In this application, insignificant three bits of each byte of the pixels that make up the image are used for the sake of hiding more information. Besides, the change on the original image caused by the method used in application on the original image and the maximum amount of data which can be hide into the image are analyzed. In this study, the steganography technique is applied on the image files and therefore the desired data is hidden. 2. STEGANOGRAPHY AND CRYPTOGRAPHY IN TERMS OF INFORMATION SECURITY SYSTEMS Information has always been one of the most valuable entities for both people and societies from past to the present. Presence of information glorifies the societies, its absence led to the end of many civilizations. Besides information’s value, providing its security has also been a huge problem. As a result of the increase in the use of the computer technologies day by day in personal and institutional spaces, it is necessary using the information security systems efficiently. Therefore, a lot of academic research is made for protecting information and its security [5]. Information security is the process of protection from unauthorized access to information, its use, revelation, destruction, change or harm. Information privacy, its 978-1-4799-3343-3/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE ICECCO 2013 309