Evaluation of LSB Based Image Steganography Technique for various File Formats

Steganography is derived from the Greek word steganos which literally means “Covered” and graphy means “Writing”, i.e. covered writing. Steganography is the art and science of hiding messages in such a way that no one apart from sender and receiver identify the message. The paper describes the steganalysis technique for the detection of secret message in the image. The strong and weak point of this technique is mentioned briefly. Steganography function is used to hide a secret message in any media such as text, image, audio and video. There are many algorithms used for hiding the information. One of the simplest and best known techniques is Least Significant Bit (LSB). This paper focuses on image Steganography and hiding the message in the Least Significant Bit (LSB) method. We also discuss the LSB method used for various file formats. KeywordsCryptography, Steganography, Steganalysis, LSB (Least Significant Bit), GIF, PNG, BMP.