Improving Data Hiding Methods in Network Steganography Based on Packet Header Manipulation

In this paper, internet is among the basic necessities of life. Internet has changed each and everybody's lives. So confidentiality of messages is very important over the internet. Steganography is the science of sending secret messages between the sender and intended receiver. It is such a technique that makes the exchange of covert messages possible. Each time a carrier is to be used for achieving steganography. The carrier plays a major role in establishing covert communication channel. This survey paper introduces steganography and its carriers. This paper concentrates on network protocols to be used as a carrier of steganograms. There are a number of protocols available to do so in the networks. 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.