The main goal of

steganography is to hide information in the other cover media so

that other person will not notice the presence of the information.
This is a major distinction between this method and the other
methods of covert exchange of information because, for example,
in cryptography, the individuals notice the information by seeing
the coded information but they will not be able to comprehend
the information. However, in steganography, the existence of the
information in the sources will not be noticed at all. Most
steganography jobs have been carried out on images, video clips
,texts, music and sounds .Nowadays, using a combination of
steganography and the other methods, information security has
improved considerably. In addition to being used in the covert
exchange of information, steganography is used in other grounds
such as copyright, preventing e-document forging.
Steganography [2] & encryption are both used to ensure data
confidentiality However the main difference between them is that
with encryption anybody can see that both parties are
communicating in secret. Steganography hides the existence of a
secret message and in the best case nobody can see that both
parties are communicating in secret.
Digital watermarking is the act of hiding a message related to a digital signal
(i.e. an
image, song, video) within the signal itself. It is a concept closely related to
steganography, in that they both hide a message inside a digital signal. However
, what
separates them is their goal. Watermarking tries to hide a message related to th
e actual
content of the digital signal, while in steganography the digital signal has no
relation
to the message, and it is merely used as a cover to hide its existence
Transaction tracking is another interesting application of watermarking. In this
case
the watermark embedded in a digital work can be used to record one or more
transactions taking place in the history of a copy of this work. For example,
watermarking could be used to record the recipient of every legal copy of a movi
e by
embedding a different watermark in each copy. If the movie is then leaked to the
Internet, the movie producers could identify which recipient of the movie was th
e
source of the leak.
The following is a list of main requirements that steganography
techniques must satisfy:
a) The integrity of the hidden information after it has been
embedded inside the stego object must be correct..
b) The stego object must remain unchanged or almost
unchanged to the naked eye.
c) In watermarking, changes in the stego object must have no
effect on the watermark.
d) Finally, we always assume that the attacker knows that there
is hidden information inside the stego object.

TYPES OF STEGANOGRAPHY
Steganography can be split into two types :
a) Fragile:This steganography involves embedding information
into a file which is destroyed if the file is modified.
b) Robust: Robust marking aims to embed information into a
file which cannot easily be destroyed.
Steganography techniques
1. Binary File technique
COVER MEDIA - Binary File
Embedding TechniqueWatermark can be embedded by making changes to the binary code that does not a
ffect the execution of the file
2. Text Technique
Cover Media
To embed information inside a document we can simply alter some of its charac
teristics.i.e. either the text formatting or
characteristics of the characters.
3. Image Hiding
Cover Media - Image
1 Least Significant Bit
using the least significant bits of pixels in one image to hide the informa
tion of the other.
4. Direct Cosinr transform
5. Wavelet Transform
6. Sound technique
7. Video