Sultan Almuhammadi and Ahmed Al-Shaaby, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia

Digital communication witnesses a noticeable and continuous development in many applications in the Internet. Hence, a secure communication sessions must be provided. The security of data transmitted across a global network has turned into a key factor on the network performance measures. Cryptography and steganography are two important techniques that are used to provide network security. In this paper, we conduct a comparative study of steganography and cryptography. We survey a number of methods combining cryptography and steganography techniques in one system. Moreover, we present a classification of these methods, and compare them in terms of the algorithm used for encryption, the steganography technique and the file type used for covering the information.

Cryptography, encryption, decryption, steganography, stego-image.