ISSN(Online): 2320-9801 ISSN (Print): 2320-9798 International Journal of Innovative Research in Computer and Communication Engineering (A High I mpact Factor, Monthly, Peer Reviewed Journal) Vol. 4, Issue 1, January 2016 Copyright to IJIRCCE DOI: 10.15680/IJIRCCE.2016. 0401158 721 A Survey Paper on Steganography Techniques Dr. Rajkumar L Biradar 1 , Ambika Umashetty 2 Associate Professor, Dept. of Electronics and Telematics, G. Narayanamma Institute of Technology & Science, Hyderabad, India 1 Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, Appa Institute of Engineering & Technology, Kalaburagi, India 2 ABSTRACT: Steganography is going to gain its importance due to the exponential growth and secret communication of potential computer users over the internet. It can also be defined as the study of invisible communication that usually deals with the ways of hiding the existence of the communicated message. Generally data embedding is achieved in communication, image, text, voice or multimedia content for copyright, military communication, authentication and many other purposes. In image Steganography, secret communication is achieved to embed a message into cover image (used as the carrier to embed message into) and generate a stego-image (generated image which is carrying a hidden message). In this paper we have critically analyzed various steganographic techniques and also have covered steganography overview its major types, classification, applications. KEYWORDS: Data hiding, Steganography, Cover writing I. INTRODUCTION Steganography word is originated from Greek words Steganós (Covered), and Graptos (Writing) which literally means “cover writing” [22]. Generally steganography is known as “invisible” communication. Steganography means to conceal messages existence in another medium (audio, video, image, communication). Today’s steganography systems use multimedia objects like image, audio, video etc as cover media because people often transmit digital images over email or share them through other internet communication application. It is different from protecting the actual content of a message. In simple words it would be like that, hiding information into other information. Steganography means is not to alter the structure of the secret message, but hides it inside a cover-object (carrier object). After hiding process cover object and stego-object (carrying hidden information object) are similar. So, steganography (hiding information) and cryptography (protecting information) are totally different from one another. Due to invisibility or hidden factor it is difficult to recover information without known procedure in steganography. Detecting procedure of steganography known as Steganalysis. 1.1. Steganography in Digital Mediums Depending on the type of the cover object there are many suitable steganographic techniques which are followed in order to obtain security. It can be shown in Figure 1. 1.1.1. Image Steganography: Taking the cover object as image in steganography is known asimage steganography. Generally, in this technique pixel intensities are used to hide the information. 1.1.2. Network Steganography: When taking cover object as network protocol, such as TCP,UDP, ICMP, IP etc, where protocol is used as carrier, is known as network protocol steganography. In the OSI network layer model there exist covert channels where steganography can be achieved in unused header bits of TCP/IP fields [24]. 1.1.3. Video Steganography: Video Steganography is a technique to hide any kind of files orinformation into digital video format. Video (combination of pictures) is used as carrier for hidden information. Generally discrete cosine