No abstract

Steganography is a powerful method to conceal the existence of secret data inside a cover object. The concealment steps are performed in the spatial domain and/or the transform domain such as wavelet transform. While it is harder to detect, the transform domain steganography involves complex computations. Hence implementing steganography in hardware improves the steganography system performance. The preservation of the entire secret information is one of the main challenges for the transform domain steganography. Errors, introduced by quantisation steps, destroy some of the embedded secret bits. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm to embed and extract the entire secret data in the Haar wavelet-based transform without any secret information loss. This is accomplished by special clipping mechanism as well as modifying the placement of the secret bit in the transform coefficients. The algorithm is implemented in an FPGA-based hardware, and its performance metrics are examined including resources utilisation, power, timing and energy.

No abstract

Firewalls are an essential part of any information security system being the first defense line against security attacks. The sea-saw effect between firewalls and network performance is most concerning to network users; where strict security settings result in weak network performance and permeant security settings allow for a stronger one. Hence, evaluating firewall platforms and their impact on network performance is important when assessing the effectiveness of network security. In this paper, we present an assessment methodology to analyze the performance of different firewalls platforms. The analysis considers the following metrics: delay, jitter, throughput, and packet loss. Moreover, the information security of the firewalls is also tested by applying a set of attacks and observing the reaction of the firewalls. The proposed assessment methodology is tested by performing real experiments on different types of firewalls including those that are personal and network-based. Moreover, a quantitative study is conducted to explore the level of knowledge among the educated category in the community, represented by a sample of college students, on the importance of firewall and their use.