SECURITY AND COMMUNICATION NETWORKS

Security Comm. Networks (2017)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/sec.1757

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Text steganography: a novel character-level embedding

algorithm using font attribute
Bala Krishnan Ramakrishnan1*, Prasanth Kumar Thandra2 and A. V. Satya Murty Srinivasula2
1
Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, HBNI, Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, India
2
Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, India

ABSTRACT
Text Steganography uses text documents as cover medium to communicate the secret messages, covertly, by making
unnoticeable distortions in the cover medium. Character-Level Embedding Technique (CLET), a variant of text
steganography, embeds a secret character by serially marking/distorting an identical character in the cover medium. Hence,
these techniques suffer from low embedding capacity as the occurrence of certain alphabets in a text document is not
uniform/guaranteed. In addition, identification of the marked cover character itself can reveal the hidden secret. This makes
the CLET a less preferable choice. To overcome the aforementioned shortcomings, this paper proposes a novel CLET by
introducing the Frequency Normalization Set in combination with the Character and String Mapping. The combination al-
lows a low occurring character to get embedded in several cover characters, and thereby boosts its embedding probability.
In addition, the combination also ensures the uniform embedding probability of secret characters. A font attribute called the
character spacing is used to embed the secret. Experiments were conducted to investigate the embedding capacity,
uniformity in embedding probability and frequency profile of stego characters of the proposed method. A comparison of
the proposed method with the existing CLET algorithms is also provided. Various applications and the security aspects
of the proposed method have also been discussed. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
KEYWORDS
character-level embedding; Frequency Normalization Set; Character and String Mapping; covert communication; information hiding;
text steganography

*Correspondence
Bala Krishnan Ramakrishnan, Computer Division, EIG, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, HBNI, Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, India.
E-mail: balakrishnanr1987@yahoo.co.in

1. INTRODUCTION also came into the picture. Steganographic technique

The substantial growth of the digital communication has
increased the concern of secure communication for users
overtime. To meet the privacy requirements, both
cryptographic and steganographic techniques were
employed [1]. Steganography provides secrecy [2],
whereas, cryptography ensures the security [3]. Though
cryptography succeeds in providing the security, through
encryption, it attracts the attention of adversaries as it
cannot hide its own presence [4,5]. Conversely, steganog-
raphy avoids such attention by performing the communica-
tion in a stealthy manner [5–8].
Based on the type of cover medium used, digital
steganography is classified into various categories [9].
Commonly used cover mediums are text, image, audio
and video files [10]. Recently, Electronic Mail [10],
network packets [11,12] and Short Message Service [13]
embeds the secret by making unnoticeable distortions in
the redundant information of the cover medium [14]. As
the structure and visual appearance of text documents are
directly related, the choice of using text documents as a
cover medium is difficult.
Besides the complications and challenges involved, text
steganography is not a completely avoidable one. There
can be many organizations where text documents could
be exchanged more frequently than other types of digital
media. It is straightforward that using a cover medium that
is being exchanged in abundance, to perform the covert
communication, will make the life of an adversary tougher.
In addition, because of the smaller file sizes involved, text
steganography requires less memory and bandwidth [5].
Considering these facts, this paper introduces a novel text
steganographic scheme that embeds the secret inside the
text documents with high embedding capacity.

Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Text steganography B. K. Ramakrishnan, P. K. Thandra and A. V. S. M. Srinivasula

The three possible ways to embed a secret inside the text Table I. Occurrence frequency of characters in English text.*
document are character-level embedding, bit-level
embedding and mixed-type embedding. CLET is further
classified into two categories. Category I algorithms serially
embeds the secret character by marking them directly in the
cover medium and Category II algorithms, based on the se-
cret character, directly generates the stego work without the
need for a cover medium. In bit-level embedding, the secret
message is either encrypted [15] or converted into their
equivalent binary bits and the resultant bit string is embedded
inside the cover medium. In mixed-type embedding, first the
secret message is converted into an equivalent bit string, and
then it is split into groups of 2 or 4-bits each. Each group is,
then, mapped to an alphabet and consequently the mapped
alphabet is embedded inside the cover medium.
The proposed work falls under the classification of
CLET―Category I. In this type of embedding, each cover
character has the capability to carry a secret character.
*Since the standard occurrence frequency [21], does not consider the
Existing Category I techniques, like [3,9,16–20], serially
‘Dot’ and ‘Space’ characters, a normal English text document is taken
embeds a secret character, say ‘R’, inside the same cover to calculate the occurrence frequency.
character ‘R’. Hence the utilization of the available ‡
Ideal occurrence probability = 100 / 28 = 3.571; For experimental pur-
embedding space, of these techniques, directly depends on pose, any values between 2 and 5 is considered as the average occur-
the availability of characters (in the same order as they appear rence probability.
in the secret message) in the cover medium. Therefore, a low
occurring character takes more embedding space to get em-
bedded, and vice versa. In other words, the ‘Space’ character
requires only 5* cover characters, whereas, the character ‘Q’ character to get embedded even in their absence in the
requires 2128† cover characters. cover medium and also ensures the efficient utilization of
Thus, the existing techniques make inefficient utilization the available embedding space. The attained embedding
of the available embedding space, while embedding a low oc- capacity by this novel idea is even higher than the bit-wise
curring character. This highly affects the embedding capac- and mixed-type embedding techniques. In addition, as a
ity of such systems as a majority of characters have low single cover character carries several different secret char-
occurrence probability in English text document (refer acters, the extraction process is not straightforward.
Table I). In addition, as the relationship between the secret Organization of the rest of this paper is as follows.
and cover character is straightforward, identification of the Section 2 discusses the existing techniques and their
marked cover characters, itself, can reveal the hidden secret. drawbacks. Section 3 introduces the proposed algorithms
Hence, the challenges involved in the Category I which include the generation of FNS, CSM, embedding
steganography are: (i) the secret character(s) must be able and extraction procedures. Section 4 presents the
to be embedded serially, even in their absence (or not in same evaluation of the proposed method and compares the
order) in the cover medium; (ii) embedding a low occurring obtained experimental results with other existing tech-
character (refer Table I) should not waste the available em- niques. Section 5 discusses the various security aspects of
bedding space; and (iii) identification of the marked cover the proposed method. Section 6 highlights the application
characters, itself, should not reveal the hidden secret. of the proposed method. Section 7 provides the future
To handle the aforementioned said challenges, the pro- scope, and Section 8 concludes this paper.
posed method introduces a novel idea called the Frequency
Normalization Set (FNS) in combination with the Charac-
ter and String Mapping (CSM). The main purpose of the 2. RELATED WORKS
combination is to make the embedding probability of all
the characters uniform. The proposed procedure of embed- This section introduces the various existing techniques of
ding a low occurring secret character in several different Text Steganography that are mentioned in Section 1.
high and average occurring cover characters makes this,
uniformity, achievable. Doing so guarantees the secret 2.1. Character-level embedding techniques

2.1.1. Category I
*
100/20.2944 ≈ 5 (occurrence probability of ‘Space’ is 20.2944—refer (1) Character Marking
Table I)
† This technique marks the characters in a text document
100/0.0470 ≈ 2128 (occurrence probability of ‘Q’ is 0.0470—refer
Table I) by changing its feature like height [19], font size [9,16,17],

Security Comm. Networks (2017) © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/sec
B. K. Ramakrishnan, P. K. Thandra and A. V. S. M. Srinivasula
font style [9], or by making it bold or underline. Grouping
the marked characters together reveals the hidden secret.
(2) Null Cipher [3,9,20]
This technique uses a fixed position from each word or
sentence or paragraph or page to represent the secret
character. Grouping the characters at the specified position
reveals the hidden secret.
(3) Typing Errors
This technique explores the common typing errors like
misspelling [9,17,18], misplacing the characters [17,19]
slightly above or below the baseline to embed the secret.
Grouping the original characters in the misspelled word or
the misplaced characters reveals the secret message. An im-
proved version of the misspelling technique chooses the new
word in such a way that the chosen word also exists in the
vocabulary [18]. For example, ‘chat’ in the place of ‘that’.
2.1.2. Category II
(1) Missing Letter Puzzle [16]
The generated stego work contains a list of words with
one or two characters in each word replaced by the
question mark making it to disguise like a puzzle. The
ASCII value of the secret character, to be hidden,
determines the length of the word. The original character
at the place of the question mark in each word represents
the secret character. On average, this technique requires
10.5 cover characters to embed one secret character.
(2) Hiding Data in Wordlist [16]
This technique also generates a list of words. This
technique uses the ASCII value of the secret character to
determine the first character of each word and its length.
To embed one secret character, on an average, this
technique requires 10.5 cover characters.
2.2. Bit-level embedding techniques
(1) Line and Word Shifting [19,22,23]
Line shifting technique embeds a secret by shifting a line
up or down to some degree. A line is moved up or down,
while the lines adjacent to it are left unmoved. Similar to
line shifting, word shifting moves the middle word, keeping
the adjacent words in a line constant. Line and Word
shifting embeds 2-bits/5-lines and 5-bits/line respectively.
(2) White Spacing [24,25]
Extra white space or tab is inserted between words,
sentences, paragraphs or at the end of each line to embed
the secret bits. Their extra presence represents ‘1’ while
the other represents ‘0’.
Text steganography
(3) Unicode Space Characters [26]
This technique injects special Unicode Space
Characters like En Quad, Em Quad, three-per-Em,
Six-per-Em, Figure, Punctuation, Thin and Hair in
inter-word, inter-sentence, end-of-line and inter-paragraph
spacings to embed the bits secretly [23]. This technique
embeds 2-bits/space-character.
(4) Change Tracking Technique [27]
This technique uses the change tracking facility of
some document formats, like Microsoft Word, to embed
the bits secretly. The sender selects a normal document
and degenerates it by making mistakes in it. Then the
sender himself corrects the mistakes using comment
and sends it to the receiver. Using the change tracking
information, the receiver identifies the intentionally
created mistakes and extracts the hidden bits. This
technique has a very low embedding capacity of 0.33-
bits/word.
2.3. Mixed-type embedding technique
(1) Publishing Summary [28]
Using the vertical and horizontal reflection symmetry
property, English alphabets are divided into four groups
each representing 2-bits of information. Based on each
secret bit pair, the embedding algorithm picks the
sentences from the cover document whose first alphabet
of the first word (not an article) in each sentence
matches with any one of the alphabets present in the
corresponding group. Thus, the generated stego work
will look like a summary. This technique embeds 2-
bits/sentence.
Thus, the CLET―Category I and mixed-type embed-
ding techniques suffer from low embedding capacity
because of the non-uniform occurrence probability of
characters in text documents. The CLET―Category II
can attract the attention of third parties because of the
use of special characters. In addition, sending a list of
words having no relation between them can raise suspi-
cion. The bit-level embedding technique requires more
number of distortions to embed one secret character.
From now on, any reference to the character-level embed-
ding technique (CLET) made in this paper refers to
Category I.
3. PROPOSED WORK
The proposed work comprises of four modules that in-
clude the generation of FNS, CSM, embedding algorithm
and extraction algorithm. FNS generates 28 strings with
the cumulative frequency of each string close to uniform.
CSM maps these 28 strings to the 28 possible secret
characters and thereby achieves the uniform distribution
Security Comm. Networks (2017) © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/sec
Text steganography B. K. Ramakrishnan, P. K. Thandra and A. V. S. M. Srinivasula

Figure 1. Generation of the Frequency Normalization Set.

in stego characters in addition with the uniform embed-
ding probability. The embedding algorithm embeds the
secret characters inside the cover document and the ex-
traction algorithm does the reverse of the embedding
algorithm.
3.1. Generation of the Frequency
Normalization Set
As explained earlier, the embedding capacity of the
existing CLET techniques [3,9,16–20] is directly

Security Comm. Networks (2017) © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/sec
B. K. Ramakrishnan, P. K. Thandra and A. V. S. M. Srinivasula Text steganography

Table II. Sample Character and String Mapping.

Mapped Frequency Normalization Cumulative Mapped Frequency Normalization Cumulative

character Set (FNS) frequency character Set (FNS) frequency

A WRZFOIN 23.9587 O MNSLAB. 24.5851

B F□CWQXP 26.1824 P TVIZM.A 24.1936
C JMFXY□Z 25.8691 Q SGKPHEM 25.4306
D XA.MNTU 25.0548 R HEUVIYJ 24.9452
E YCHIJOS 24.8356 S IYLNUAK 25.1018
F KUX□ZJC 25.3523 T OFJGCDE 24.5694
G □.BCPQX 25.2272 U VDEHKLY 25.0079
H BLOSWMI 25.4777 V LONQSUR 25.1018
I PJGALHO 23.9744 W QP□KXRV 26.7617
J NSVOBGH 25.0079 X EZDYGPT 25.3054
K UWY.TSL 23.0505 Y .KQUVZ□ 26.0101
L DIREFCQ 25.3367 Z AXMTRVD 24.8356
M GHTR.WB 22.753 □ RTWBDNF 24.9766
N ZBADEFG 25.0392 . CQPJ□KW 26.0571
where, ‘□’ represents ‘Space’ and ‘.’ represents ‘Dot’

dependent on the availability of the respective characters in
the cover medium. Hence, a low occurring character ‘Q’
requires 2128‡ cover characters to get embedded. How-
ever, embedding the same ‘Q’ in several different cover
characters, say ‘S’, ‘G’, ‘K’, ‘P’, ‘H’, ‘E’ and ‘M’, will
boost the cumulative probability to embed ‘Q’ from
0.0470% to 25.4306%―requiring only 4§ cover
characters.
Let ‘P’ be the ideal cumulative probability of embed-
ding a secret character inside a cover character. Then, ‘P’
can be defined as in equation (1).
where, the ‘+2’ in the denominator represents the inclusion
of the ‘Dot’ and ‘Space’ characters in the secret message.
Our empirical studies suggest that when the number of
the cumulated characters is 7††, a uniform embedding
2 3
6 7  Number of characters cumulated to achieve 
6 100 7
P¼ 6 7X
4 Number of alphabets 5 the uniform embedding probability ðN CC Þ
in English þ 2
which means that, on an average, out of the four consecu-
tive characters encountered in the cover medium, a secret
character would be embedded.
In this view, the proposed method introduces a novel
technique called FNS that generates 28 strings with the fol-
lowing properties:
(1) Each string contains English alphabets, Dot and
Space (ADS) characters.
(2) The length of each string ‘L’ is equivalent to the
chosen number of characters that are cumulated to
achieve the uniform embedding probability
(NCC). Therefore, each string has ‘L’
positions/columns {0, 1, 2, 3, ...., L-1}.
(3) Each character occurs only once in a string.
(1)

probability can be achieved. Hence, by substituting the (4) Each character occurs only once in a position in the
value 7 in equation (1) we obtain, whole FNS. That is, column-wise repetitions should
not occur.
(5) When the individual frequency of characters
100 present in any string is summed up, it converges
P¼ X 7 ¼ 25
28 and falls close to the respective ‘P’ value of the
chosen NCC.
An algorithm has been designed to generate such a
‡
100 / 0.0470 ≈ 2128 FNS. Figure 1 and the subsequent pseudo codes give a
§
100 / 25.4306 ≈ 4 simplified version of the developed algorithm. Readers
††
Substituting NCC = 5 in equation (1) results P = 17.86. As the larg- who are not interested in the finer details of the generation
est occurrence frequency value in Table I is 20.2944% (‘Space’ char- of FNS can skip this algorithm and proceed to
acter), the generation of FNS is not possible when NCC ≤ 5. This is the end of this sub-section, for further reading.
because of the later-mentioned properties (2) and (5) of FNS. Also at
NCC = 6, as P = 21.43, it allows the ‘Space’ character to be combined Pseudo code of Test 1:
only with the low occurring alphabets, resulting in lesser number of //Test 1 (): Chooses a String “str” from a Set of available
combinations during FNS generation. Hence, NCC = 7 is considered Strings.

Security Comm. Networks (2017) © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/sec
Text steganography B. K. Ramakrishnan, P. K. Thandra and A. V. S. M. Srinivasula

Input: Set S, ArrayList chkduplicate L: For each Character “ch2” in “individualchar[]” do

Output: String str If dupe==0 && ch2 ∉ alreadyselected && Count(ch2) < 7 && ch2 ∉
Int sim_count2 ← 100 chkduplicate @ position “pos” && Frequency[ch2] < =
Int value2 ← 100 Frequency[ch1] && Frequency[ch2] > max
String str ← ”” ch ← ch2
For each String “str1” in “S” do max ← Frequency[ch2]
Int sim_count[cardinality of chkduplicate] ← No. of End if
similar characters between “str1” and each string in If ch==“ && Last element of “individualchar[]” == ch2
“chkduplicate” respectively dupe ← 1
Int max_count ← Largest value in sim_count[] Goto L
If max_count < sim_count2 End if
Int value[7] ← No. of times each character of “str1” If dupe==1 && (ch2 ∉ alreadyselected && Count(ch2) < 7 && ch2 ∉
appeared in “chkduplicate” respectively chkduplicate @ position “pos”) && ((Frequency[ch2] >
Int max_value ← Largest value in value[] Frequency[ch1]) || (ch2 ∈ str && Count(ch2) < = 5))
If max_value < value2 ch ← ch2
str ← str1 Break
sim_count2 ← max_count End if
value2 ← max_value End for
End if Return ch
End if
End for
Return str

Pseudo code of Test_3b:

Pseudo code of Sub-Module: Count //Chooses a String from “chkduplicate” that satisfies certain
Input: Char ch, ArrayList chkduplicate properties
Output: Int no Input: ArrayList chkduplicate, Double individualfreq[], Char
Return Number of times “ch” has occurred in “chkduplicate” ch1, Int pos, Char ch, String str
Output: String str2
String str2 ← “”
Int dupe ← 0
Pseudo code of Test 2: Int min ← 100
//Test2 (): Tries to replace the characters of “str”, when its L: For each String “str1” in “chkduplicate” do
number of occurrences in “chkduplicate” crosses certain If dupe==0 && ch1 ∈ str1 @ position “pos” && ch ∉ str1
limit. str2 ← str1
Input: String str, Int occurred_first[], Char End if
individualchar[], Double individualfreq[], Double minerror, If str2==”” && Last element of “chkduplicate[]” == str1
Double maxerror, ArrayList chkduplicate dupe ← 1
Output: String str Goto L
String result ← “SUCCESS” End if
For each Character “ch” in “str” do If dupe == 1 && ch ∉ str1 && str1[pos] ∉ str &&
Int pos ← Position of “ch” in “str” Frequency[str1[pos]]-Frequency[ch] < min && < 4.5
If (Count(ch)==7) || (Count(ch)==6 && occurred_first of str2 ← str1
“ch”==0 && str[0] ! = ch) min ← Frequency[str1[pos]]-Frequency[ch]
Search for a character “ch1” in “individualchar[]” such End if
that ch1 ∉ str && ch1 ∉ chkduplicate @ position “pos” && End for
Frequency[ch1]-Frequency[ch] is between “minerror” and Return str2
“maxerror” exclusive
If Search == SUCCESSFUL then str[pos] ← ch1
Else result ←”FAIL” From the experiments conducted, it has been observed
End if
End for that a large number of such FNS exists. Table II depicts
Return (str, result) one such generated FNS along with the respective cumula-
tive frequency values.
Pseudo code of Test 3:
//Test3 (): Handles the problematic characters of “str”. 3.2. Character and String Mapping
Input: String str, ArrayList chkduplicate, ArrayList
alreayselected
Output: String str Map the generated 28 strings of FNS to the 28 possible
For each problematic character “ch1” in “str” do
Int pos ← Position of “ch1” in “str” ADS characters of the secret message. Map the characters
L: Char ch ← Test_3a ()
If ch ∉ str then str[pos] ← ch
in the same order as in Table I (refer Table II). Perform
Else the mapping in such a way that:
String str1 ← Test_3b ()
If str1 ! = “”
str[pos] ← str1[pos] Table III. Possible ways to embed the secret character ‘X’.
chkduplicate ← Remove “str1” from
“chkduplicate”
str1[pos] ← ch
Select the
chkduplicate ← Add “str1” in “chkduplicate” string from Yj ∈ Position of Yj Respective
End if
Else add “ch” in “alreadyselected” & Goto L
CSM that is selected in selected character
End else mapped to Xi string string spacing
End for
Return str
EZDYGPT E 0 Condense by 0.1 pt
Z 1 Condense by 0.2 pt
Pseudo code of Test _3a: D 2 Condense by 0.3 pt
//Chooses a Character from “individualchar” that satisfies cer- Y 3 Expand by 0.1 pt
tain properties
Input: Char individualchar[], Double individualfreq[], G 4 Expand by 0.2 pt
ArrayList chkduplicate, Int pos, Char ch1, ArrayList P 5 Expand by 0.3 pt
alreadyselected, String str
Output: Char ch T 6 Expand by 0.4 pt
Char ch ← “
Int dupe ← 0 Xi - Secret character to be hidden; Yj - Character encountered in the cover work
Int max ← 0 CSM, Character and String Mapping.

Security Comm. Networks (2017) © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/sec
B. K. Ramakrishnan, P. K. Thandra and A. V. S. M. Srinivasula Text steganography

Table IV. Possible characters hidden in the stego character ‘U’.

Character Position based on String in CSM that contains ‘U’ Actual embedded
spacing of Xi character spacing at the specified position character

Condensed by 0.1 pt 0 UWY.TSL K

Condensed by 0.2 pt 1 KUX□ZJC F
Condensed by 0.3 pt 2 HEUVIYJ R
Expanded by 0.1 pt 3 .KQUVZ□ Y
Expanded by 0.2 pt 4 IYLNUAK S
Expanded by 0.3 pt 5 LONQSUR V
Expanded by 0.4 pt 6 XA.MNTU D
Xi - Character encountered in the stego work
CSM, Character and String Mapping.

Cover_Work
(1) The mapped character does not exist in the selected count++
string. If Yj ∈ Sk
Int pos ← Position of Yj in Sk
(2) Map a high frequency character to a string that con- Change the character spacing of Yj based on pos
tains atleast 2-low, 1-average and 1-high frequency End if
Else Goto L
characters. CSM ← Perform a Circular Left Shift on all the Strings in CSM //
makes the CSM dynamic
(3) Map an average or a low frequency character to a End for
string that contains atleast 1-low, 1-average and 1- Return Modified_Cover_Work
high frequency characters.
(4) The mapping should not make any cover character For example, let Xi be ‘X’ and is the first character in the
to carry more secret characters**. secret message. Then, the seven possible ways to embed Xi in
Yj are given in Table III. (use the CSM provided in Table II)
This mapping procedure not only increases the embed- The modified cover work is the required stego work
ding probability of a low occurring character but also which has to be saved and communicated to the receiver.
makes it uniform, by efficiently utilizing the available em- In addition, the used CSM, EoS characters and the respec-
bedding space. Also, it makes the embedding process tive character spacing of the seven positions should also be
faster than other existing CLET algorithms. communicated.

3.3. Embedding algorithm 3.4. Extraction algorithm

To embed the secret, the proposed method explores a font
attribute called the character spacing of text documents
like, Microsoft Word/Power Point and Libre Office Writer.
The character spacing is either decreased/condensed by
{0.1, 0.2 or 0.3} points or increased/expanded by {0.1,
0.2, 0.3 or 0.4} points to represent the seven respective po-
sitions of the string in CSM.
The embedding procedure starts if the number of ADS
characters in the cover work is at least four times greater
than the number of characters in the secret message (in-
cluding the End of Secret (EoS)††). The pseudo code of
the embedding procedure is as follows.
Pseudo code of the Embedding Procedure:
Input: Secret_Message, Cover_Work, CSM, EoS characters, char-
acter spacing and their respective positions
Output: Modified_Cover_Work
Int count ← 1
Secret_Message ← Secret_Message + EoS Characters
For each Character “Xi” in Secret_Message do
String Sk ← String that is mapped to Xi in CSM
L: Yj ← Read the character @ position “count” in
**
For example, mapping several high frequency characters to strings
containing ‘Space’ will make the ‘Space’ character to carry more se-
cret characters
††
End of Secret characters can be anything that does not appear in the
secret message. For experimental purpose, it has been considered as ‘. .
.’ → ‘Dot Space Dot Space Dot’
The extraction process is the reverse of the embedding pro-
cess. The pseudo code of the extraction procedure is as follows.
Pseudo code of the Extraction Procedure:
Input: Stego_Work, CSM, EoS characters, character
spacing and their respective positions
Output: Secret_Message
Int count ← 1
String Secret_Message ← “”
Repeat
Char Xi ← Read the character @ position “count” in
Stego_Work
count++
If character spacing of Xi ≠ 0.0
Int pos ← Respective position, based on the character
spacing of Xi
String Sk ← String in CSM that has Xi @ position pos
Secret_Message ← Secret_Message + Character that
is mapped to Sk in CSM
CSM ← Perform a Circular Left Shift on all the
Strings in CSM
End if
Until (count > Total no. of characters in Stego_Work || EoS is
read)
Return Secret_Message
For example, let Xi be ‘U’ and is the first encountered
stego character. Table IV gives the seven possible charac-
ters that are embedded in ‘U’ (use the CSM provided in
Table II).
Reaching the end of the stego work without encounter-
ing the EoS characters indicates, the receiver, that a
corrupted stego work is received.

Security Comm. Networks (2017) © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/sec
Text steganography B. K. Ramakrishnan, P. K. Thandra and A. V. S. M. Srinivasula

Table V. Result of embedding the secrets in the cover medium.

No. of characters encountered in the cover medium while embedding the secret + EoS
No. of characters characters Embedding
in the secret message capacity
(excluding EoS) Alphabet Dot Space Other Total (in %)

500 1484 13 282 8 1787 28.10568

1000 2842 27 556 12 3437 29.19708
1500 4535 48 864 26 5473 27.53809
2000 5999 63 1139 32 7233 27.77392
2500 7612 85 1461 45 9203 27.29854
3000 9238 104 1769 59 11 170 27.00027
3500 10 459 116 2032 83 12 690 27.76235
4000 11 736 130 2287 100 14 253 28.26256
4500 13 403 146 2608 114 16 271 27.85171
5000 14 848 164 2879 128 18 019 27.94701
EoS, End of Secret.

3.5. Salient features of the proposed Table VI. Uniformity in embedding probability.
procedure
Secret message (5000 + EoS char)
(1) Uses text documents as cover medium.
(2) Uses character-level embedding technique. No. of times Average no. of cover characters
(3) Embeds the secrets in the ADS characters of the Characters occurred used to embed one secret character
cover medium. A 184 4.011
(4) Secret messages can contain the ADS characters. B 173 3.572
(5) Secret message should not contain the EoS pattern. C 176 3.699
(6) The embedding and extraction procedures are not D 159 3.874
case-sensitive. E 155 3.142
F 205 3.624
G 184 3.549
4. EVALUATION OF THE PROPOSED H 196 3.673
METHOD I 164 4.238
J 172 3.622
The proposed method is evaluated using the following four K 166 4.265
parameters: L 174 3.046
M 194 4.361
(1) Secrecy: It is nothing but the imperceptibility of the N 180 3.578
embedded secret [29,30]. A good steganographic al- O 180 4
gorithm must embed the secret without creating a P 202 4.327
Q 172 3.192
noticeable difference in its visual appearance.
R 174 3.184
S 173 4.023
To test the imperceptibility level, experiments were
T 192 3.010
conducted using the proposed method with various secret
U 192 3.938
messages. For verification purpose, an illustration is pro- V 173 3.312
vided in the sample given below. W 179 3.156
X 171 3.421
Cover Work:
Y 191 3.822
INTRODUCTION: Internet which is extensively Z 160 3.819
used to share any kind of information does not imply Space 189 3.386
any strict rules for the security of data on its own. Dot 175 3.577
EoS, End of Secret.
Secret Message: Come to my home tomorrow.

Stego Work:
INTRODUCTION: Internet which is extensively used to By looking at both the cover and stego work of the given
share any kind of information does not imply any strict sample, it can be observed that the proposed method does
rules for the security of data on its own. not create any attraction in its visual appearance.

Security Comm. Networks (2017) © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/sec
B. K. Ramakrishnan, P. K. Thandra and A. V. S. M. Srinivasula Text steganography

(2) Embedding Capacity [10,30]: Embedding capacity
is the measure of the maximum size of the se-
cret that a chosen cover medium can hide.
Hence, the embedding capacity can be defined as
in equation (2).
To validate the uniformity of the proposed method, a
random secret message is embedded inside an English
cover medium and the average number of cover charac-
ters used to embed each secret character is given in
Table VI.

Number of Characters in the Secret Message ðExcluding EoSÞ

Embedding Capacity ¼ (2)
Number of ADS Characters required in the Cover Medium

Experiments were carried out by embedding various
English secret messages inside a standard English cover
medium. Table V furnishes the number of characters pres-
ent in the secret message and the number of characters used
in the cover medium to embed the same.
From Table V, it can be observed that the proposed
method achieves an average embedding capacity of
27.87%.
From Table VI, it can be observed that the average em-
bedding probability of any secret character uniformly falls
within the range 3.571  0.8. This proves that the proposed
method utilizes the available embedding space efficiently.
(4) Comparison with the Existing Methods: Table VII
provides the comparison of the proposed method
with the techniques explained in Section 2.

(3) Uniformity in Embedding Probability: A good
character-level embedding algorithm must embed
any secret character, in a uniform manner, irrespec-
tive of its occurrence frequency in the cover
medium.
The comparison is carried out by considering the aver-
age length of a word as 4.50 (not including Space) [31],
the average number of characters in a line as 60 (including
Space) [32], and the average number of words in a sen-
tence (should be between 15 and 20 [33]) as 15.

Table VII. Comparison of the proposed method with the existing techniques.

No. of No. of No. of cover

distortions Whether embeddable characters
Level of required to possibility of locations required to
stealthiness embed a non-occurrence required to embed one
Type of (based on secret Embedding of alphabets embed a secret character
Technique embedding visibility) character probability is handled? secret character (approximate)

Character marking Character-level Low 1 Non-uniform No 1 Variable

[9,16,17,19],
Typos [9,17–19]
Missing letter Character-level Low 1 Uniform Yes 1 10.5
puzzle [16]
Hiding data in Character-level Low 1 Uniform Yes 1 10.5
wordlist [16]
Inter-sentence Bit-level Low 8 Uniform Yes 8 751
spacing [24,25]
Inter-word Bit-level Low 8 Uniform Yes 8 44
spacing [24,25]
Line shifting Bit-level Low 8 Uniform Yes 8 1020
[19,22,23]
Word shifting Bit-level High 8 Uniform Yes 8 98.5
[19,22,23]
Unicode space Bit-level High 4 Uniform Yes 4 26.5 (inter-word
characters [26] (2-bits) space)
Change tracking Bit-level High 24 Uniform Yes 24 132
technique [27]
Publishing Mixed-type High 4 Non-uniform No 4 333
summary [28] (2-bits)
Proposed method Character-level High 1 Close to Yes 4 4
uniform

Security Comm. Networks (2017) © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/sec
Text steganography B. K. Ramakrishnan, P. K. Thandra and A. V. S. M. Srinivasula

Table VIII. Character spacing of the identified stego characters. From Table VII, it can be observed that the proposed
Identified character spacing
method records the least number of cover characters re-
Stego
quired to embed a secret character. In addition, when
characters 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 compared with other existing bit-level embedding tech-
niques, the proposed method stands best by making
A 57 59 49 65 53 67 59 only one distortion to embed a secret character whereas
B 16 14 22 20 11 26 20 the former methods require a minimum of four
C 36 29 20 25 26 25 18 distortions.
D 29 31 41 36 37 41 44
E 98 86 82 85 91 81 102
F 22 19 29 18 21 28 23
5. SECURITY ASPECT
G 14 18 10 18 21 24 22
H 33 38 38 28 37 32 31
This section discusses the various security aspects of the
I 88 64 98 68 62 75 72
proposed method that include the uniform distribution in
J 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
stego characters and cryptographic aspects.
K 2 2 1 5 4 5 4
L 23 23 21 24 21 18 23
M 19 20 13 17 10 20 17 5.1. Uniform distribution in stego characters
N 90 89 81 113 85 73 85 To avoid any leakage of information to an adversary,
O 64 74 71 91 85 81 73 the proposed method should distribute the secret charac-
P 5 5 8 14 5 8 7 ters in the seven levels of character spacing of a cover
Q 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 character uniformly. In this regard, the same has been
R 56 70 75 72 62 60 62 studied by embedding an English secret message inside
S 54 39 48 51 50 46 51 an English cover medium. Table VIII presents the ob-
T 73 59 76 90 77 77 85 tained results.
U 13 19 12 10 13 12 16 From Table VIII, it can be observed that the proposed
V 2 1 5 3 1 3 2 method distributes each secret character, among the avail-
W 12 14 14 18 17 19 17 able seven levels, in a uniform manner.
X 0 0 0 0 1 2 1
Y 14 12 16 12 12 12 11 5.2. Cryptographic aspect
Z 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 By default, the proposed method provides a security
Space 90 81 86 75 78 79 75 level comparable with that of a polyalphabetic substitu-
Dot 6 9 6 10 4 1 9
tion cipher of cryptography, when the used CSM is kept

Figure 2. English secret in English cover work.

Security Comm. Networks (2017) © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/sec
B. K. Ramakrishnan, P. K. Thandra and A. V. S. M. Srinivasula Text steganography

Figure 3. Random secret in English cover work.

Figure 4. Random secret in Random cover work.

Figure 5. Proposed method combined with the Format Preserving Encryption system. CSM, Character and String Mapping.

Security Comm. Networks (2017) © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/sec
Text steganography B. K. Ramakrishnan, P. K. Thandra and A. V. S. M. Srinivasula

secret. In the proposed method, as both the secret and 6. APPLICATION

cover document are English text, an attacker can try to
gain knowledge, about the hidden secret, by performing
the frequency analysis on the stego characters. Hence,
experiments were conducted to study the correlation be-
tween the frequency profile of the secret and stego
characters.
5.2.1. Frequency distribution of stego characters
To study the distribution of secret characters in the
available embedding space, the English and random secret
messages are embedded inside the English and random
cover works. Figure 2, 3 and 4 illustrates the occurrence
frequency of characters in the secret message, cover work
and stego characters.
From Figure 2, 3 and 4, it can be observed that the fre-
quency profile of the stego character is predominantly due
to the frequency profile of the cover work but not due to
that of the secret message.
5.2.2. Use of the Format Preserving Encryption
system
Combining the proposed method with the Format Pre-
serving Encryption (FPE) system [34] could further en-
hance the confidentiality of the embedded secret. Unlike
other cryptographic schemes, FPE preserves the length
and format of the given input. Thereby the encrypted
cipher text, which is again an English alphabet, is then em-
bedded inside the chosen cover medium using the pro-
posed method (refer Figure 5).
To break this type of dual security, first, an adversary
has to identify the presence of the hidden message and
has to extract it. After this, he has to break the FPE se-
curity system in order to get the original secret message.
As it is very difficult even for an advanced adversary to
scan all the traffic flowing in/out of an organization,
identifying the steganographically embedded message
on the fly is more complex. Hence, the combined system
can provide a greater challenge to an adversary than
when the FPE and proposed method are individually
applied.
The proposed method, by default, can be used as a CLET to
send any secret message that is not case-sensitive. In addi-
tion, it can also be used as a mixed-type embedding tech-
nique as a way to send encrypted or multimedia data such
as image, audio, video, etc. In such a case, the binary data
has to be divided into groups of 4-bits each. The 16 possible
4-bit values are mapped to the 28 ADS characters as shown
in Table IX. Mapping is carried out in such a way that the
number of common characters between the mapped strings
to the corresponding characters in CSM is minimal.
Using Table IX, convert the divided bit stream into a
character stream which is in turn embedded using CSM.
This is identical to the case of embedding a random secret
in an English text (refer Figure 3).
For example:
Secret bit stream―0000 1111 0010 1101 0101
Equivalent character stream―A/U Z C/M V F/□
In the earlier example, the first 4-bits ‘0000’ are em-
bedded using the strings that are mapped to the charac-
ter ‘A’ or ‘U’ in CSM, achieving an embedding
capacity that varies from 4-bits/2-cover-characters to 4-
bits/4-cover-characters. Whereas, the string mapped to
the character ‘Z’, alone, is used to embed the second
4-bits ‘1111’ achieving an embedding capacity of 4-
bits/4-cover-characters. Hence, an average embedding
capacity of 4-bits/3.25-cover-characters can be attained
by the proposed method in this mixed-type manner.
However, by using the mapping presented in
Table IX, an embedding capacity of 4-bits/2.5-cover-
characters can be achieved. This is due to the non-
occurrence of common characters between the strings
of the mapped character.
Furthermore, the proposed method is not restricted to
English language and can be applied to any.
7. FUTURE WORK
Future work can focus to make the proposed method suit-
able to embed all printable characters. Developing a

Table IX. Mapping of the ADS characters and the 4-bit values.

No. of common characters No. of common characters

between the strings of between the strings of
4-bit value Mapped character the mapped character 4-bit value Mapped character the mapped character

0000 A/U 0 1000 I/Y 0

0001 B/P 0 1001 J/. 0
0010 C/M 0 1010 K/W 0
0011 D/T 0 1011 L/O 0
0100 E/N 0 1100 Q —
0101 F/□ 0 1101 V —
0110 G/R 0 1110 S —
0111 H/X 0 1111 Z —
where, ‘□’ represents ‘Space’ and ‘.’ represents ‘Dot’
ADS, English alphabets, Dot and Space.

Security Comm. Networks (2017) © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/sec
B. K. Ramakrishnan, P. K. Thandra and A. V. S. M. Srinivasula
flexible algorithm that can generate FNS with strings of
any user-defined length can also be targeted.
8. CONCLUSION
This paper has introduced a character-level embedding text
steganographic algorithm that uses a font attribute called
the character spacing to embed the secret. A novel tech-
nique named FNS in combination with the CSM has been
proposed to achieve the uniformity in embedding probabil-
ity and thereby to increase the embedding capacity. The
various characteristics of FNS and the procedure to gener-
ate them were provided. From the experiments conducted,
an average embedding capacity of 27.87% is acquired.
This is close to the theoretically expected value of 25% that
outperforms other existing methods. The process of em-
bedding a secret character in multiple cover characters fa-
cilitated the proposed method to achieve a uniform
embedding probability of 3.66 cover characters for a secret
character. The imperceptible changes made in the cover
work attained high secrecy and hence created no attraction
in its visual appearance. Frequency profile of the stego
characters is analyzed and found to follow the frequency
profile of the cover medium and not the frequency profile
of the secret message. The proposed embedding scheme,
by default, provides the security level comparable with that
of a polyalphabetic substitution cipher of cryptography.
The use of the FPE system with the proposed method has
been discussed to enhance the security level further. In ad-
dition, a method has been suggested to convert the pro-
posed character-level embedding into a mixed-type
embedding, making the method suitable to communicate
any encrypted or multimedia data like image, audio, video,
etc., with an average embedding capacity of 4-bits/3.25-
cover-characters.
REFERENCES
1. Thiyagarajan P, Aghila G, Prasanna Venkatesan V.
Stepping up internet banking security using dynamic
pattern based image steganography. Communications
in Computer and Information Science, Springer Berlin
Heidelberg 2011; 193: 98–112.
2. Li X, Wang J. A steganographic method based upon
JPEG and particle swarm optimization algorithm.
Information Sciences, Elsevier 2007; 177(15):
3099–3109.
3. Fabien A. P. Petitcolas, Ross J. Anderson, and Markus
G. Kuhn, Information hiding—a survey, Proceedings
of the IEEE, IEEE 1999: 1062–1078.
4. Chang C-C, Kieu TD. A reversible data hiding scheme
using complementary embedding strategy. Informa-
tion Sciences, Elsevier 2010; 180(16): 3045–3058.
Text steganography
5. Wang Z-H, Chang C-C, Lin C-C, Li M-C. A reversible
information hiding scheme using left–right and up–
down Chinese. The Journal of Systems and Software,
Elsevier 2009; 82(8): 1362–1369.
6. Johnson NF, Jajodia S. Exploring steganography: see-
ing the unseen. IEEE Computer, IEEE 1998; 31(2):
26–34.
7. Thiyagarajan P, Aghila G. Reversible dynamic secure
steganography for medical image using graph color-
ing. Health Policy and Technology, Elsevier 2013;
2(3): 151–161.
8. Thiyagarajan P, Natarajan V, Aghila G, Prasanna
Venkatesan V, Anitha R. Pattern based 3D Image Steg-
anography. 3D Research 2013; 4(1): 1–8.
9. Desoky A, Younis M. Chestega: chess steganography
methodology. Security and Communication Networks,
Wiley 2009; 2(6): 555–566.
10. Satir E, Isik H. A compression-based text steganogra-
phy method. The Journal of Systems and Software,
Elsevier 2012; 85(10): 2385–2394.
11. A.S. Nair, A Kumar, A Sur, and S Nandi, “Length
based network steganography using UDP protocol,”
in IEEE 3rd International Conference on
Communication Software and Networks (ICCSN),
IEEE 2011: 726–730.
12. Mazurczyk W, Smolarczyk M, Szczypiorski K. Re-
transmission steganography and its detection. Soft
Computing, Springer-Verlag 2011; 15(3): 505–515.
13. M. Shirali-Shahreza and M.H. Shirali-Shahreza, Text
Steganography in chat, in 3rd IEEE/IFIP International
Conference in Central Asia on Internet, IEEE 2007: 1–5.
14. Sabu M. Thampi, “Information hiding techniques: a
tutorial review,” in ISTE-STTP on Network Security
& Cryptography, LBSCE, 2004.
15. Mark Ettinger J. Steganalysis and game equilibria. In-
formation Hiding, Springer Berlin Heidelberg 1998;
1525: 319–328.
16. Agarwal M. Text steganographic approaches: a com-
parison. International Journal of Network Security &
its Applications, AIRCC 2013; 5: 91–106.
17. Krista Bennett, Linguistic steganography: survey,
analysis, and robustness concerns for hiding informa-
tion in text, Purdue University, CERIAS, Technical
2004-13.
18. Mercan Topkara, Umut Topkara, and Mikhail J.
Atallah, “Information hiding through errors: a confus-
ing approach”, in Proceedings of the SPIE Interna-
tional Conference on Security, Steganography, and
Watermarking of Multimedia Contents IX, SPIE
2007; 6505.
19. Brassil JT, Low S, Maxemchuk NF. Copyright protec-
tion for the electronic distribution of text documents.
Proceedings of the IEEE, IEEE 1999; 87(7): 1181–1196.
Security Comm. Networks (2017) © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/sec
Text steganography
20. Kahn D. The code-breakers: the comprehensive
history of secret communication from ancient times to
the internet (2nd edn). Scribner, New York, 1996.
21. Behrouz A Forouzan, Debdeep Mukhopadhyay. Cryp-
tography and network security. Tata McGraw-Hill
Education, India, 2011.
22. Brassil JT, Low S, Maxemchuk NF. Electronic
marking and identification techniques to discourage
document copying. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas
in Communications, IEEE 1995; 13(8): 1495–1504.
23. Kim Y-W, Il-Seok O. Watermarking text document
images using edge direction histograms. Pattern
Recognition Letters, Elsevier 2004; 25(11):
1243–1251.
24. Singh P, Chaudhary R, Agarwal A. A novel approach
of text steganography based on null spaces. IOSR
Journal of Computer engineering, IOSR 2014; 3(4):
11–17.
25. Bender W, Gruhl D, Morimoto N, Lu A. Techniques
for data hiding. IBM Systems Journal, IBM 1996;
35(384): 313–336.
26. Yee Por L, Wong KS, Onn Chee K. UniSpaCh: a text-
based data hiding method using Unicode Space
Characters. The Journal of Systems and Software,
Elsevier 2012; 85(5): 1075–1082.
27. Liu T-Y, Tsai W-H. A new steganographic method
for data hiding in Microsoft word documents by a
change tracking technique. IEEE Transactions on
Security Comm. Networks (2017) © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/sec
B. K. Ramakrishnan, P. K. Thandra and A. V. S. M. Srinivasula
Information Forensics and Security, IEEE 2007; 2:
24–30.
28. A. Majumder and S. Changder, “A novel approach for
text steganography: generating text summary using
reflection symmetry,” in International Conference on
Computational Intelligence: Modeling Techniques
and Application, Elsevier 2013: 112–120.
29. Ni Z, Shi Y-Q, Ansari N, Wei S. Reversible data
hiding. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems
for Video Technology, IEEE 2006; 16(3): 354–362.
30. Zhang X, Wang S. Vulnerability of pixel-value
differencing steganography to histogram analysis and
modification for enhanced security. Pattern Recogni-
tion Letters, Elsevier 2004; 25(3): 331–339.
31. Pierce JR. An Introduction to Information Theory:
Symbols, Signals and Noise (2nd edn). Dover
Publications, New York, 1980.
32. Isabelle de Ridder, Reading from the screen in a
second language: empirical studies on the effect of
marked hyperlinks on incidental vocabulary learning,
text comprehension and the reading process.: Garant,
Belgium, 2003.
33. Cutts M. Oxford Guide to Plain English. Oxford
University Press, United Kingdom, 2013.
34. Bellare M, Ristenpart T, Rogaway P, Stegers T.
Format-preserving encryption. Selected Areas in
Cryptography, Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2009;
5867: 295–312.