Secure data transmission using video

In today's world transmitting data in a safe and secure fashion is difficult, especially when highly sensitive data is involved. The data should be ideally robust to security threats. The paper aims at proposing a methodology which employs dual level of security using cryptography and steganography to hide the secret text data using video as a cover. A blend of existing and novel techniques is used for hiding the data. Cryptography aims at concealing the secret data and steganography hides the existence of the data. Since a video is addressed as a collection of frames, a frame selection logic is incorporated which inserts data into the frames in a random fashion so that the data cannot be retrieved easily by the attacker. Considering the goal of crypto and steganography the analysis of the methodology can be done on the basis of visual perceptibility, error ratios and histogram comparison of video frames before and after hiding data. Use of two techniques with distinct goals to hide the data increases the robustness as well as simple frame selection logic prevents the attacker to obtain the data easily, but at the same time simplifies the sender's job as a rule index of frames is maintained.