Information hiding

As the name suggests, Information Hiding is an art of hiding data and

communication inside other data and communication.
Information hiding is somewhat similar to cryptography. On the other hand it
seems to be stronger than it. Cryptography hides content of communication;
information hiding hides even the presence of communication. Information
hiding means communication of information by hiding in and retrieving from any
digital media. The digital media can be an image, an audio, a video or simply a
plain text file.
Information hiding contain four sub-disciplines
a) Covert Channels
b) Steganography
c) Anonymity
d) Copyright marking

a) Steganography: - Steganography means, literally, covered writing.

Steganography is the art and science of hiding information such that
its presence cannot be detected. Steganography is the hiding of secret
message within an ordinary message and its extraction at destination
point. The main goal of steganography is to communicate securely in
a completely undetectable manner.
Steganography techniques may be roughly classified into
linguistic steganography and technical steganography.

b) Watermarking: - Watermarking is a branch of information hiding

which is used to hide additional information in digital media like image,
audio, video, or text. A digital watermark is defined as a visible or
invisible identification code that is permanently embedded in the data,
to transmit hidden data. It remains present in the data even after the
decryption process. It usually provides copyright protection of
intellectual property. The watermark is later used to identify the de
facto copyright owner of the object.
c) Anonymity: - Anonymity is finding ways to hide the meta content of
messages, i.e., the sender and the recipients of a message. There are
different varieties depending on who is anonimyzed: the sender, the
receiver or both. Web applications have focused on receiver

anonymity whereas email users are concerned with sender anonymity.

d) Covert channels: - it is defined as the communication paths that were
neither designed nor intended to transfer information at all. These channels are
typically used by untrustworthy programs to leak information to their owner while
performing a service for another program.

Application of Information Hiding: Information hiding is an area of great interest due to its applications in copyright protection of
images, data, passport control, CDs, DVDs, videos and so on.