Steganography VS Cryptography
11/01/2012 09:25:00 pm
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Secret communication is very important because if your message is important and if you do not want others know about your message than you use different techniques to hide your message from third person, there are many ways to do this. In computing and in computer science we use a term called cryptography, in short cryptography is the science of secret communication. There are so many algorithms are available to make the cryptography process strong so that an intruder or cracker does not able to crack it. Cryptography has been implemented on different services even you are using one algorithm on your smart card (it may be your credit card, SIM card and others), the famous cryptography algorithm is DES (data encryption standard) and we have different variant of DES like triple DES to make the process and the secret key strong and unbreakable. So if we have a strong and smart system for secret communication than:
- Why there is a need to introduce a new technique?
- What is Steganography?
- How steganography is smart and strong than cryptography?
- What is the working mechanism of steganography?
These are the most important question that you might be thinking about steganography and I will discuss each and everything about steganography in detail.
Why There Is a Need to Introduce a New Technique?
If cryptography is a strong way to encrypt and secure a communication than why we need a new technique? Answer is very simple when we are using any cryptography technique we need to send a secret key and third person can easily judge that some secret communication is going on. Lets consider an example simple communication, we need two entities one is the sender and the other is receiver sender send the message and receiver receive it, a simple communication but consider an encrypt way of communication. Entities like this:
- A sender
- A receiver
- A third person (might be machine and other way)
Sender encrypt the message by using a pre-define algorithm and generate a secret key and a cipher message than send it to receiver, receiver needs a key to decrypt it generally a third system carry this key and provide it to the receiver than receiver decrypt it. So in this case anyone can understand that something unusual is going on. In some cases like an military agent (secret agent) wants to send some message to the command station but he/she does not want to do this cryptanalysis because enemies can easily judge the process than the simple way to send a normal message and hide your secret message into this normal message.
What is Steganography?
Steganography has been discovered from a Greek term and it means “Covered writing”, Cryptography has also discovered from a Greek term and it means “Secret writing”. So you can easily understand that both techniques has been discovered from Greek and both are the methods of secret communication. In steganography you don't need any key or a key distributor (pure steganography). The basic idea of steganography is to covered writing means hide your secret message into a simple/regular message so that other parties does not aware about the communication.
These are the most important question that you might be thinking about steganography and I will discuss each and everything about steganography in detail.
Why There Is a Need to Introduce a New Technique?
If cryptography is a strong way to encrypt and secure a communication than why we need a new technique? Answer is very simple when we are using any cryptography technique we need to send a secret key and third person can easily judge that some secret communication is going on. Lets consider an example simple communication, we need two entities one is the sender and the other is receiver sender send the message and receiver receive it, a simple communication but consider an encrypt way of communication. Entities like this:
- A sender
- A receiver
- A third person (might be machine and other way)
Sender encrypt the message by using a pre-define algorithm and generate a secret key and a cipher message than send it to receiver, receiver needs a key to decrypt it generally a third system carry this key and provide it to the receiver than receiver decrypt it. So in this case anyone can understand that something unusual is going on. In some cases like an military agent (secret agent) wants to send some message to the command station but he/she does not want to do this cryptanalysis because enemies can easily judge the process than the simple way to send a normal message and hide your secret message into this normal message.
What is Steganography?
Steganography has been discovered from a Greek term and it means “Covered writing”, Cryptography has also discovered from a Greek term and it means “Secret writing”. So you can easily understand that both techniques has been discovered from Greek and both are the methods of secret communication. In steganography you don't need any key or a key distributor (pure steganography). The basic idea of steganography is to covered writing means hide your secret message into a simple/regular message so that other parties does not aware about the communication.
The next article of this series will be publish soon!
I was actually assuming both these concepts similar. But with the help of this post I came to know about each of them in a clear way. Thanks for highlighting all the main points difference.
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