Security by obscurity has gained attention; as a result steganography is becoming more popular in the network communication. Network steganography describes various methods used for transmitting data over a network without it being detected. Most of the methods proposed for hiding data in a network do not offer an additional protection to the covert data as it is sent as plain text. This paper presents a framework that offers the protection to the covert data by encrypting it and compresses it for gain in efficiency. Several ways of sending covert information through network using TCP/IP protocol are discussed. Also, the communication made more secure and efficient by using compression and encryption techniques. Finally, the performance of the proposed framework is compared with other steganography tools.

Steganography, Covert Channel, Protocol Headers, Cryptography.

Jasbir Singh, Lalitsen Sharma.Framework for Efficient Secure Steganographic Communication over Network Protocols. International Journal of Advanced Computer Research. 2013;3(13):146-150.