Abstract: Technology (including mobiles and computers) has become a basic, indispensable need in our daily life. With an initial purpose of achieving basic functions such as communication, technology has evolved into a virtual gate to the whole world connecting individuals through social media and various websites and applications. Most importantly, technology became the reservoir of our personal information and important, sensitive data. This has led to increased risks of security breaches and data thefts demanding countermeasure approaches. One of these approaches is Steganography. Steganography is a data hiding approach that allows for invisible, relatively safe communication. Several forms of steganography have been developed, among which are Image steganography and our previously developed AES Inspired Steganography. In this paper we propose a new variation in which we combine both of these approaches, Image and AES Inspired Steganography (IAIS). This approach proposes hiding the hex symbol format of the encrypted secret data into a carrier image file. The image file is converted to a hexadecimal representation in which the hex symbol could be embedded without applying any noticeable changes to the original image. Deciphering the hidden information requires secret keys agreed upon by the communicating parties confidentially. These carrier files can be exchanged among mobile devices and/or computers. Comparisons between the original cover images and the cover images with the hidden text have shown that no changes occurred in the colour histogram of the images. However, the noise test has shown that exposure to noise can affect the hexadecimal content of the image, hence the embedded hex symbol representation of the secret text.

Somyia M. Abu Asbeh, Sarah M. Hammoudeh and Arab M. Hammoudeh, “Image and AES Inspired Hex Symbols Steganography (IAIS) for Anti-Forensic Artifacts” International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications(IJACSA), 8(7), 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2017.080728

@article{Asbeh2017,
title = {Image and AES Inspired Hex Symbols Steganography (IAIS) for Anti-Forensic Artifacts},
journal = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
doi = {10.14569/IJACSA.2017.080728},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2017.080728},
year = {2017},
publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
volume = {8},
number = {7},
author = {Somyia M. Abu Asbeh and Sarah M. Hammoudeh and Arab M. Hammoudeh}
}