Steganographic Image Sharing App

Abstract

With the advent of smartphones, many people have the ability to take a photo and upload it to the internet whenever they want. Most smartphones will include basic metadata in the image file; however, this is usually limited to information about the camera itself, and not the content of the photo. This data is also easy to access, as there are many websites and applications that will extract the metadata from an image, thus it is unsuitable for personal information.While there are many applications out there which will allow a user to take and upload photos for their friends or the public to view, such as Facebook or Instagram, these applications rely on information provided along side the image for privacy settings, commenting, and image searching. Other search engines would have difficulty categorising the pictures they find on various sites, and if the image is saved and re-uploaded somewhere else, the information about them would likely be lost.Steganography provides a feasible and viable solution to these problems. By embedding information directly into the image, the information about the image will not be lost, if it is separated from its original source. The aim of the capstone is to demonstrate this aspect via an image sharing app that allows users to exchange messages and personalised information that is embedded in the image such that it is inaccessible without knowing their keys, and metadata that can be used by search engines to categorise the image and its contents. The developed application will provide a platform for users to create an account, share images, embed information within the image, and search for images other users have uploaded.