New Data Steganography Technique Exploiting Redundancies in Language Structure: Arabic Language Case Study

Nowadays, there is a huge reliance on digital communication. Due to the lack of security, attackers can steal or tamper with valuable and sensitive data like personal information, medical records, or financial data. Steganography refers to the art of hiding data inside other digital content, including text, image, video or audio content in an inconspicuous way. Good steganography algorithm obscures the fact that there is sensitive data hidden in the cover medium. Steganography is one of the effective ways of securing data. This paper proposes a new technique for hiding secret data in ordinary Arabic text. The proposed technique exploits the redundancies present in natural language structures. For example, one can exploit the commutative property of conjunctive words such as “and” and “or” to hide one bit. Furthermore, one can say “The boy likes blue and yellow colors” or “The boy likes yellow and blue colors”. Whether saying “blue and yellow” or “yellow and blue”, the meaning remains the same. The desirable features in steganography are the high capacity and imperceptibility. The capacity is the amount of data bits that can be hidden in the cover medium. Imperceptibility is the inability of an eavesdropper to notice or figure out the hidden data. A study on random Arabic passages was conducted to measure the capacity. Moreover, an empirical study on the imperceptibility of the proposed technique was conducted as well. The results showed that the proposed technique can effectively conceal data within Arabic text.