Real Time Implementation of Stegofirewall System

Abstract

Great efforts made to detect secret hidden information within digital files. Unfortunately, these efforts are consuming large amount of time and may fail if the hidden information encrypted. Therefore, destruction of such hidden information using a stegofirewall filter seems to be the most appropriate solution. However, it is essential that such process should not affect the cover image file and any authentication information such as watermarking. The paper presents the design of a firewall system that passes the digital image files (the carrier cover) together with a watermarked image file and rejects the hidden content. The system will also achieve cover image enhancement since its operation relies on denoising filtering. This stegofirewall should have a processing speed compatible with that of high speed Internet. The latter requirement achieved through the hardware implementation of such a system using an FPGA to provide the real time speed limitations required. The system implemented using Matlab together with Spartan 6 and Virtex 5 FPGA chips. The results of Matlab simulation show that the system performs well in destruction, whereas the real time implementation shows that Virtex 5 is better than Spartan 6 for the real time implementation and within the acceptable time required.