Introduction
1.1 Background to the study
Currently, the digital information revolution has brought significant changes in our society and daily routines. In line with the revolution, Internet and wireless network offer ubiquitous channels to deliver and exchange information. Therefore, public information exchange is secured by using an encryption method where a secret data can be encrypted to prevent the content from being intercepted. However, with the technological advancement of information security, most Internet users are not aware that sending encrypted messages will draw unnecessary attention to malicious black hats such as crackers and hackers. This is because the encrypted data appears as a string of gibberish data that might arouse suspicion. Moreover, there is a possibility of illegal exploitation attempts to the vulnerability of the encrypted messages due to curiosity and inquisitiveness of a hacker. As a result, the secret data which has been encrypted could be illegally intercepted, unauthorized tampered or even damaged during data transmission.
In order to alleviate the issue mentioned above, steganography is introduced as an alternative design to conceal a secret data into an unsuspicious cover-object so that it can be sent stealthily through a public communication channel without drawing any unnecessary attention of the black hats.
Steganography is derived from the findings of Johannes Trithemus (1462-1516) entitled Steganographia which comes from the Greek words (στεγανÏŒ-ς, γραυ-ειν), steganos literally means “covered”; and graphia means “writing”. Eventually the entire definition is defined as covered writing (Petitcolas et al., 1999).
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