Skip to main content
Log in

A roadmap of steganography tools: conventional to modern

  • Published:
Spatial Information Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Steganography emerged as an effective technology for securing the data over the network. Its specificity of concealing the existence of the secret data supports its application in securing the information in the modern era. The desire of industry and support from various governments motivated the researchers to develop steganography tools. These spatial and transform domain tools implement different steganography techniques either solo or as a hybrid using a wide range of media as a cover file for hiding various types of data. In this paper, a systematic study of the steganography tools developed in the last three decades has been done. The comparative analysis of these tools based on specified parameters represents their strengths, limitations, applicability, and scope for future work as well. OpenPuff steganography tool spawns a huge acceptance by academics and professionals. This paper also analyze the performance of the OpenPuff tool on some unexplored parameters to validate and justify its performance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Sloan, T., & Hernandez-Castro, J. (2015). Steganalysis of OpenPuff through atomic concatenation of MP4 flags. Digital Investigation, 13, 15–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Kadhim, I. J., Premaratne, P., & Vial, P. J. (2020). Improved image steganography based on super-pixel and coefficient-plane-selection. Signal Processing, 171, 107481.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Ali, A. H., George, L. E., Zaidan, A. A., & Mokhtar, M. R. (2018). High capacity, transparent and secure audio steganography model based on fractal coding and chaotic map in temporal domain. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 77(23), 31487–31516.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Cheddad, A., Condell, J., Curran, K., & Mc Kevitt, P. (2007). A comparative analysis of steganographic tools. In Proceedings of the Seventh IT&T Conference. Institute of Technology Blanchardstown, Dublin, Ireland. 25th, 29–37.

  5. Ramalingam, M., & Isa, N. A. M. (2015). Fast retrieval of hidden data using enhanced hidden Markov model in video steganography. Applied Soft Computing, 34, 744–757.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. El Rahman, S. A. (2015). A comprehensive image steganography tool using LSB scheme. International Journal of Image, Graphics and Signal Processing, 7(6), 10.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Chen, M., Zhang, R., Niu, X., & Yang, Y. (2006). Analysis of current steganography tools: classifications & features. In 2006 International Conference on Intelligent Information Hiding and Multimedia, (384–387).

  8. Banerjee, I., Bhattacharyya, S., & Sanyal, G. (2013). Study and analysis of text steganography tools. International Journal of Computer Network and Information Security, 5(12), 45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Sloan, T., & Hernandez-Castro, J. (2018). Dismantling OpenPuff PDF steganography. Digital Investigation, 25, 90–96.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Moskowitz, I. S. (2001). Information Hiding: 4th International Workshop, IH 2001, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, April 25–27, 2001. Proceedings (Vol. 2137). Springer Science & Business Media.

  11. Arif, H., & Hajjdiab, H. (2017). A comparision between steganography software tools. In 2017 IEEE/ACIS 16th International Conference on Computer and Information Science (ICIS), pp. 423–428.

  12. Das, R. (2014). An investigation on information hiding tools for steganography. International Journal of Information Security Science, 3(3), 200–208.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Lakdawala, J., & Rankawat, J. (2003). Evaluation of best steganography tool using image features. International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT), 50, 50–58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Atawneh, S., Almomani, A., & Sumari, P. (2013). Steganography in digital images: Common approaches and tools. IETE Technical Review, 30(4), 344–358.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Por, L. Y., Lai, W. K., Alireza, Z., Ang, T. F., Su, M. T., & Delina, B. (2008). StegCure: a comprehensive steganographic tool using enhanced LSB scheme (p. 50603). Delina: Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology University of Malaya.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Broda, M., Hajduk, V., & Levický, D. (2014). The comparison of classifiers in image steganalysis. Acta Electrotechnica et Informatica, 14(4), 3–7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Pope, M. B., Warkentin, M., Bekkering, E., & Schmidt, M. B. (2012). Digital Steganography—An Introduction to Techniques and Tools. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 30(1), 22.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Castelan, Y., & Khodja, B. (2015). MP3 Steganography Techniques. In Proceedings of the 4th Annual ACM Conference on research in information technology, pp. 51–54.

  19. Sloan, T., & Hernandez-Castro, J. (2015). Forensic analysis of video steganography tools. PeerJ Computer Science, 1, e7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Gupta, L. K., Singh, A., Yadav, V. K., & Srivastava, A. (2020). Performance Analysis of Open Puff Steganography Tool Using Various Image Formats. Available at SSRN 3550941.

  21. Kundu, D., & Upreti, A. (2018). Study of Various Steganography Tools. In 2018 International Conference on Automation and Computational Engineering (ICACE), pp. 117–120.

  22. Bansal, D., & Chhikara, R. (2014). Performance evaluation of steganography tools using SVM and NPR tool. In 2014 Fourth International Conference on Advanced Computing & Communication Technologies pp. 483–487.

  23. Wang, Y., Zhao, X., & Cao, Y. (2020). Detecting the fingerprint of video data hiding tool OpenPuff. Forensic Science International: Reports, 100088.

  24. Mishra, A., Kumar, S., Nigam, A., & Islam, S. (2019). VStegNET: Video Steganography Network using Spatio-Temporal features and Micro-Bottleneck. In BMVC (274).

  25. Nakasoft. Web URL https://download.cnet.com/Xiao-Steganography/3000-2092_4-10541494.html. Release date 04 July 2006. Last access 24 July 2020.

  26. Kenneth, M. Web URL https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/cissp-steganography-an-introduction-using-s-tools/#gref. Last access 28 July 2020.

  27. MPR, I. M. Web URL https://download.cnet.com/Hide-N-Send/3000-2092_4-75728348.html. Last update 06 July 2012. Last access 29 July 2020.

  28. Syvaidya. Web URL:http://sourceforge.net/projects/openstego/files/ , Last update: 17–04–2014, Last access: 08–08–2020

  29. Digital, E. F. Web URL http://stegoshare.sourceforge.net/download.html. Last update 08 Dec 2008. Last access 1 Aug 2020.

  30. Eng., Cosimo O. Web URL https://www.darknessgate.com/2015/06/07/openpuff/. Last update 20 April 2020, Last access 4 August 2020.

  31. Ben. U. Web URL http://vsl.sourceforge.net/. Last update 11 April 2013. Last access 6 August 2020.

  32. Steganography French Touch. Web URL https://www.download3k.com/Security/Encrypting-Tools/Download-Outguess-Rebirth-steganography.html. Last update 09 Dec 2015. Last access 6 August 2020.

  33. Signallock. Web URL https://sourceforge.net/projects/jstego/. Last update 19 April 2013, Last access 7 August 2020.

  34. Gaffga. C. Web URL https://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Others/F5-Steganography.shtml. Last update 31 March 2012. Last access 07 August 2020.

  35. Infinitylogic. Web URL https://sourceforge.net/projects/steghideui/, Last update 13 August 2017, Last Access 07 August 2020.

  36. Kango, A., Ana, M. Web URL https://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Encrypting/SteganPEG.shtml. Last access 25 July 2020.

  37. Abhinav K.K. Web URL https://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Security-Related/rSteg.shtml. Last update 1 Oct 2015. Last access 26 July 2020.

  38. Van Loo Software. Web URL https://www.ssuitesoft.com/ssuitepicselsecurity.htm. Last update 09 May 2014. Last access 27 July 2020.

  39. Matthew K. Web URL http://www.darkside.com.au/snow. Last update 20 June 2013. Last access 28 July 2020.

  40. Publisher Secure kit. Web URL http://steganography.findmysoft.com/. Last update 07 August 2012. Last access 27 July 2020.

  41. Ana, M. Web URL https://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Encrypting/QuickStego.shtml. Last update 5 Nov 2013. Last access 30 July 2020.

  42. Mircea, D. Web URL https://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Encrypting/HexaStego-BMP.shtml. Last update 10 Feb 2017 Last access 30 July 2020.

  43. Elena, O. Web URL https://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Encrypting/DeepSound.shtml. Last updated 2 Dec 2015 Last access 30 July 2020.

  44. Santhosh, A. Web URL https://sourceforge.net/projects/stegostick/. Last update 15 March 2015. Last access 31 July 2020.

  45. Software, Z. A. Web URL https://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Encrypting/DeEgger-Embedder.shtml. Last update 28 May 2014. Last access 1 Aug 2020.

  46. Antiforensics. Web URL https://www.darknessgate.com/2016/06/08/jphide-and-jpseek/. Last update 08 June 2018. Last access 4 August 2020.

  47. Gregory Kipper. Web URL http://www.bailer.at/wbstego/pr_4ix0.htm. Last update 01 April 2004. Last access 5 August 2020.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Rohit Tanwar or Tanupriya Choudhury.

Ethics declarations

Conflicts of interest

The authors have no competing interests in any form.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Pilania, U., Tanwar, R., Gupta, P. et al. A roadmap of steganography tools: conventional to modern. Spat. Inf. Res. 29, 761–774 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41324-021-00393-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41324-021-00393-7

Keywords

Navigation