Hybrid Arabic text steganography

Alshahrani, Haya Mesfer S and Weir, George (2017) Hybrid Arabic text steganography. International Journal of Computer and Information Technology, 6 (6). pp. 329-338. 6. ISSN 2279-0764

[thumbnail of Alshahrani-Weir-IJCIT-2017-Hybrid-Arabic-text]
Preview
 Text. Filename: Alshahrani_Weir_IJCIT_2017_Hybrid_Arabic_text.pdf
Final Published Version
Download (1MB)| Preview

Abstract

An improved method for Arabic text steganography is introduced in this paper. This method hides an Arabic text inside another based on a hybrid approach. Both Kashida and Arabic Diacritics are used to hide the Arabic text inside another text. In this improved method, the secret message is divided into two parts, the first part is to be hidden by the Kashida method, and the second is to be hidden by the Diacritics or Harakat method. For security purposes, we benefitted from the natural existence of Diacritics as a characteristic of Arabic written language, as used to represent vowel sounds. The paper exploits the possibility of hiding data in Fathah diacritic and Kashida punctuation marks, adjusting previously presented schemes that are based on a single method only. Here, the secret message is divided into two parts, the cover text is prepared, and then we apply the Harakat method on the first part. The Kashida method is applied on the second part, and then the two parts are combined. When the hidden ‘StegoText’ is received, a split mechanism is used to recover the original message. The described hybrid Arabic StegoText showed higher capacity and security with promising results compared to other methods.

ORCID iDs

Alshahrani, Haya Mesfer S ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2707-8321 and Weir, George ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6264-4480;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)