Using image steganography for decryptor distribution

When communicating secret information there is more than one route to follow to ensure the confidentiality of the message being transmitted. Encryption might be an obvious choice; however there are limitations and disadvantages to using encryption. An alternative approach is steganography, which is a technology for hiding information in other information. Combining the two disciplines may provide better security but more overhead, since the receiver must now have knowledge not only of how the information was encrypted, but also of how it was hidden, in order to retrieve the message. This paper proposes a system where image steganography is combined with encryption by hiding not only a message inside an image, but also the means to extract and decrypt the message. An executable program is hidden inside the image that functions as a decryptor, enabling the receiver to be oblivious to the encryption algorithm used.