A Novel High-Capacity Behavioral Steganographic Method Combining Timestamp Modulation and Carrier Selection Based on Social Networks

Behavioral steganography is a method used to achieve covert communication based on the sender’s behaviors. It has attracted a great deal of attention due to its robustness and wide application scenarios. Current behavioral steganographic methods are still difficult to apply in practice because of their limited embedding capacity. To this end, this paper proposes a novel high-capacity behavioral steganographic method combining timestamp modulation and carrier selection based on social networks. It is a steganographic method where the embedding process and the extraction process are symmetric. When sending a secret message, the method first maps the secret message to a set of high-frequency keywords and divides them into keyword subsets. Then, the posts containing the keyword subsets are retrieved on social networks. Next, the positions of the keywords in the posts are modulated as the timestamps. Finally, the stego behaviors applied to the retrieved posts are generated. This method does not modify the content of the carrier, which ensures the naturalness of the posts. Compared with typical behavioral steganographic methods, the embedding capacity of the proposed method is 29.23∼51.47 times higher than that of others. Compared to generative text steganography, the embedding capacity is improved by 16.26∼23.94%.

Disbursal of Text Steganography in the Space of Double-Secure Algorithm

Hackers reveal sensitive information from encrypted conversations as the globe has become one community. As a result, steganography and cryptography are used together to safeguard sensitive data more effectively than previous approaches and newly developed algorithms. A double-secure algorithm for text steganography (DSTS) is the safest approach compared to the paragraph hiding method (PHM) and capital alphabet shape encoding (CASE) method. In this context, the paragraph hiding method uses ASCII coding, which is not a standard method, and the CASE method has a security issue that if someone understands its applicability, it can be easily attacked. DSTS algorithm overcomes its limitations by using UTF-16 coding and enhances the security of CASE with a one-time pad (OTP). The one-time pad is a theoretically unbreakable cryptographic method. Still, it is not feasible for long messages, however, it is usable for short messages such as a password or intelligence agency’s more secure messages. DSTS degrades the average hiding capacity in a PHM from 2.06% to 1% due to UTF-16 coding. Using the UTF-8 method, the authors have improved MDSTS and the CMPHM by 6.49% and 7.76% hiding capacity, which outperforms in existing procedures; in the CMPHM, there is one reason for the improvement in hiding capacity is using the LZW compression method. CMHPM algorithm optimization standard deviation is less than that of the HPM, DSTS, and MDSTS, ultimately increasing speed.

Reproduction of encrypted messages in fiction from English into Russian

This article examines cases where translators are confronted with messagesm whose meaning is obscured by a simple cipher. Russian translators had to overcome certain difficulties while translating certain passages in the works of British (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie) and American (Edgar Allan Poe, Dan Brown) fiction writers. Substitution code (―The Gold-Bug‖, ―The Adventure of the Dancing Men‖), anagrams (―The da Vinci Code‖), as well as different kinds of text steganography (―The Gloria Scott‖, ―The Four Suspects‖) can be used to encrypt the information. Each case is illustrated with two examples. The translator has to depict not only the very process of deciphering a message, but also render its cryptic nature with the means of a target language (Russian). We show, that in half of the cases it is a mere translation of the deciphered text. It is a simpler way, because there is no need to create an analogue thereof. The grand purpose, however, remains unachieved. In two instances there were multiple translations of the same text (6 of ―The Gold-Bug‖ by E.A Poe and 9 of ―The Four Suspects‖ by A. Christie). This phenomenon can be explained not only by the popularity of the stories, but by the relatively small circulation of certain editions. We have undertaken a comparative analysis of these translations and have revealed discrepancies, concerning more and less significant translation units and, in some cases minor errors.

A Comparative Analysis of Arabic Text Steganography

Protecting sensitive information transmitted via public channels is a significant issue faced by governments, militaries, organizations, and individuals. Steganography protects the secret information by concealing it in a transferred object such as video, audio, image, text, network, or DNA. As text uses low bandwidth, it is commonly used by Internet users in their daily activities, resulting a vast amount of text messages sent daily as social media posts and documents. Accordingly, text is the ideal object to be used in steganography, since hiding a secret message in a text makes it difficult for the attacker to detect the hidden message among the massive text content on the Internet. Language’s characteristics are utilized in text steganography. Despite the richness of the Arabic language in linguistic characteristics, only a few studies have been conducted in Arabic text steganography. To draw further attention to Arabic text steganography prospects, this paper reviews the classifications of these methods from its inception. For analysis, this paper presents a comprehensive study based on the key evaluation criteria (i.e., capacity, invisibility, robustness, and security). It opens new areas for further research based on the trends in this field.