An Information Hiding Method Based on Conditional Selection Statement Execution Paths

With the development of information technology, a greater challenge to network security has been put forward. Information hiding is another important way to protect information besides the traditional information encryption technology. In this paper we propose a new method of information hiding based on conditional selection. This method is based on the fact that conditional selection statements have different execution paths, some of which can be employed to store information. Furthermore, different features of the program can be used to increase the extent to which information is hidden. Our experimental results show that the increasing number of the conditional selection statements has no significant negative effect on the execution efficiency of the original program. The method can effectively protect the software and hide information.