Digital steganography for ASCII text documents Ph.D. research proposal

The digitization of analog signals has inadvertently opened doors for Covert Channel communication which is being exploited as an innocent carrier of Secret information. A number of techniques have been proposed and are in use to attain confidentiality, integrity and authentication for on-line transaction/exchange of messages of which Cryptography and Steganography stands ahead. Cryptography is focused on changing the contents in a manner difficult for the adversary to interpret. Steganography, on the other hand emphasizes on hiding the existence of secret information i.e. making these appear as non-existent. The ability to express more in fewer bits and less printing cost involved has made Text file format as an ideal candidate for hiding priceless secrets inside its body. This Ph.D. research proposal aims at evolving a new steganographic technique for hiding information in digital ASCII Text documents, an area of research considered as the most difficult [1] because digital ASCII Text documents are devoid of any extra overhead to hide information within it. This is followed by software implementation / simulation of the concept together with proposing new / enhancing some existing text-based Steganographic techniques / methods.