# Framework for Malware Triggering Using Steganography
## 1 Introduction  
Offensive security is necessary for the ever-evolving threat landscape to help companies sniff out cracks in their defenses before the bad guys do. New cybersecurity threats are evolving and changing rapidly due to the equally rapid developments in communication and information technologies. Cybercriminals use modern and advanced techniques to improve the speed and scale of their attacks [1]. The Internet has become essential in almost every aspect of life because our vocational, social, and economic lives are increasingly digitized, and our management, health care, military, and bank infrastructures rely on the Internet for their day-to-day operations, malware targets are larger and more lucrative [2]. Online security issues come in many forms, including cyber espionage, malware, identity theft, cyber extortion, phishing, etc. Over the years, hackers have developed new, more advanced, and highly effective methods to carry out their commands [3]. Too many organizations are waiting to be told that they have been compromised. However, the conventional method of \"building greater fences\" will no longer be adequate given the growing number and size of cyber-attacks and the advanced techniques used by threat actors to conceal their activities [4]. In addition, there is a time lag when a novel malware emerges, or a new version of a current malware before security solutions providers update their customers with the latest signature, a time when the customers are exposed to the new malware [5]. According to the global vaccine testing group AV-Test, 350,000 new malicious pieces of code appear each day. The company discovered that the number of malicious codes rose exponentially from 4.7 million in 2015 to 9.42 million in 2019 [6]. Many businesses, such as antivirus providers, do their utmost to index viruses and produce virus signatures (a virus's unique digital code) so that they can be detected and stopped beforethey can infect any computers. Despite these attempts to mitigate the effects of malware, malware authors have become even more experts at disguising their malicious code to escape detection protocols. Hiding content is an integral part of security because it ensures secrecy. However, the techniques used to hide content are also used by hackers, criminals, terrorists, and others for various purposes. The goal is the same, and methods or algorithms designed for covert communication are used for both good and evil purposes [7]. Malicious software can hide its presence on a system or network using steganography and encryption. Steganography's objective, in contrast to encryption, is to conceal both the existence of the information and the content itself. Encryption's sole purpose is to hide the information's content. When encryption is used by malware, its presence is known. With steganography, its existence is hidden due to the nature of its use which makes it difficult to detect and even more challenging to understand [8]. The use of digital steganography to conceal harmful programs and circumvent the potential of computer security software to identify them is a growing trend that makes detecting malware increasingly difficult. Kaspersky Lab researchers noticed this disturbing trend in 2017, noting that the use of steganography is growing among both cybercrime organizations and individual cyber criminals performing cyber espionage [9]. Using steganography to hide information in digital images is also becoming more mainstream. Furthermore, the widespread use of photo-sharing applications, like Instagram and Snapchat, as well as sharing photographs on the Internet, has created an opportunity for the easy implementation of steganography and the preservation of its stealth [8,10]. A new threat, known as \"Stegosploit,\" has recently emerged. Stegosploit is an attack that uses steganography to exploit a vulnerability [11]. Stegosploit has created a new method of encoding malicious code and delivering them via image files to perform browser exploits. The image payloads are undetectable and invisible.