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A Review on Text Steganography Techniques

Author

Listed:
  • Mohammed Abdul Majeed

    (Center for Cyber Security, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia)

  • Rossilawati Sulaiman

    (Center for Cyber Security, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia)

  • Zarina Shukur

    (Center for Cyber Security, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia)

  • Mohammad Kamrul Hasan

    (Center for Cyber Security, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia)

Abstract

There has been a persistent requirement for safeguarding documents and the data they contain, either in printed or electronic form. This is because the fabrication and faking of documents is prevalent globally, resulting in significant losses for individuals, societies, and industrial sectors, in addition to national security. Therefore, individuals are concerned about protecting their work and avoiding these unlawful actions. Different techniques, such as steganography, cryptography, and coding, have been deployed to protect valuable information. Steganography is an appropriate method, in which the user is able to conceal a message inside another message (cover media). Most of the research on steganography utilizes cover media, such as videos, images, and sounds. Notably, text steganography is usually not given priority because of the difficulties in identifying redundant bits in a text file. To embed information within a document, its attributes must be changed. These attributes may be non-displayed characters, spaces, resized fonts, or purposeful misspellings scattered throughout the text. However, this would be detectable by an attacker or other third party because of the minor change in the document. To address this issue, it is necessary to change the document in such a manner that the change would not be visible to the eye, but could still be decoded using a computer. In this paper, an overview of existing research in this area is provided. First, we provide basic information about text steganography and its general procedure. Next, three classes of text steganography are explained: statistical and random generation, format-based methodologies, and linguistics. The techniques related to each class are analyzed, and particularly the manner in which a unique strategy is provided for hiding secret data. Furthermore, we review the existing works in the development of approaches and algorithms related to text steganography; this review is not exhaustive, and covers research published from 2016 to 2021. This paper aims to assist fellow researchers by compiling the current methods, challenges, and future directions in this field.

Suggested Citation

  • Mohammed Abdul Majeed & Rossilawati Sulaiman & Zarina Shukur & Mohammad Kamrul Hasan, 2021. "A Review on Text Steganography Techniques," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(21), pages 1-28, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jmathe:v:9:y:2021:i:21:p:2829-:d:674447
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Al-Daweri, Muataz Salam & Abdullah, Salwani & Ariffin, Khairul Akram Zainol, 2021. "A homogeneous ensemble based dynamic artificial neural network for solving the intrusion detection problem," International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection, Elsevier, vol. 34(C).
    2. Ning Wu & Zhongliang Yang & Yi Yang & Lian Li & Poli Shang & Weibo Ma & Zhenru Liu, 2020. "STBS-Stega: Coverless text steganography based on state transition-binary sequence," International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, , vol. 16(3), pages 15501477209, March.
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