Cryptography and Steganography

    Cryptography and Steganography are two methods to secure your data in a network from 

    eavedroppers , hackers and  data theft .In this article we will see in details about the 

    two approaches.

       

      What is Cryptography ?

      Cryptography is a form of secret writing where the sender who sends the

      message to the receiver encrypts the plain text into cipher text   and send it

      when the receiver receives the message it again decrypts the cipher text into

      plain text.

      Cryptography plays an important  role in many factors to secure the data

      in an insecure channel  like privacy, confidentiality and authetication.

      Basically there are two types of Cryptography:

         1. Symmetric Key Cryptography

         2.Asymmetric Key Cryptography

 

  1. Symmetric Key Cryptography:

       This system is also known as private -key encryption or share key system

       or single key system.Here  private key is used by both the sender and reciever

       of information for encryption and decryption of the message.

      This system uses an algorithm commonly known as DES Algorithm.

      The major drawback of this system is that if the private key is exposed to the  

      the third party in any case the whole message will be public or stolen.

 

2. Asymmetric Key Cryptography:

    In this system of cryptography when a sender sends message to the receiver and 

    when the receiver receives the message  there are two keys used  differently by the

    sender and the receiver. This system uses and algorithm known as RSA Algorithm.

    The key used  for  encryption is stored public therefore it is called public key and

    the key for decryption is stored secret therefore it is called private key. 

   What do you mean by Steganography ?   

    Steganography means the hiding of information in a network in such a way as if

    there is no existence of Information. Here in this system the message is hidden by 

    a cover media using a certain type of algorithm.After the secret information is

    embedded into the cover  object the object is called as stego object which is being

    sent to the receiver. The receiver uses the same stego method for obtaining the

    original information

 

   Is there any advantage of  combining Steganography with Cryptography?

   Yes, Definetly it will be a powerful mechanism to  which enables people to 

    communicate with security. It enhances memory space, and strength for

    important information to send it across a open channel.