A novel font color and compression text steganography technique

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A novel Text Steganography using font color after data compression
Muhammad Askari, Ahsan Mahmood ´´
Air University, Islamabad
Abstract—In modern area data gains, lots of importance day
by day and data become a valuable asset for any organization.
The protection of data from any unauthorize access gains much
importance in this regard. Plenty of techniques adopted to
secure data for various situations like encryption, Blockchain
and Steganography techniques. This research article will focus on
data hiding method like Steganography where meta data is hided
inside non-secret source like 2D-3D images, audio, or Text. Fore-
gone in view, this study has several objectives: (1) To review the
Steganography mechanism (2) To review imperceptibility issue in
Text steganography (3) To review already proposed methods and
increase efficiency. Various articles indicate some common issues
of steganography where, if someone access to Steno images where
information is hidden and have the Steganography knowledge,
they may easily read the hidden information and the second
issue faced by the Steganography technique, if data is lost or
alter by someone during data in transit then the receiver can
not extract the hidden information. Foregone mentioned facts we
may add some extra security features by combining encryption
and steganography techniques to hide data from unauthorized
individuals, who knows about steganography techniques.
Index Terms—Steganography, encryption, Meta data, Stegno
text, transit.
I. INTRODUCTION
Data hiding play’s important role in data security to ex-
change hidden information from one place to another. The
text steganography has the advantage then others is its ubiquity
and small size. Other mediums have their own advantages but
due ubiquity and small size makes text steganography more
important.Similarly text steganography has some limitation in
term of capacity and imperceptibility. Research have been
done so far in text steganography to increase the hiding
capacity and imperceptibility. Khan et al have presented Polish
Text Steganography Method where the hiding process is base
on the dots present in the alphabets of polish language. If the
word contains dots on the letters it is counted as 1 and if
no dots found then consider 0. As the polish language have
frequent dots used in the words. It is much easy job to hide
the character on it[1]. Similarly shah et al presented a novel
technique called frequency normalization used with character
and string mapping to hide the data. The data hiding capacity
increased when it comes to hide data into spaces between two
characters [2]. Naharuddin et al have proposed study technique
where Secret message(ST) is embedded in Cover text(CT) so
no change in CT can be detected. The ST binary digit is
mapping with the binary digit of CT using ASCII characters
including space, punctuation and symbols. Before embedding
process, ST was encrypted using One time Pad (OTP) into
ciphertext. After ciphertext the each character then converted
to binary number of 7bits. The CT is also converted into 7 bits
of binary number. The process of mapping where one bit of
ST is map with first bit of CT character containing the same
number of bit. The process will continue still ST is completely
map to CT. The process has no effect on the CT appearance
[3].
II. THE PRO POS ED ME THO D AND SO LUT ION O F THE
PROBLEM
Text steganography has many limitations in terms of ca-
pacity, and imperceptibility but in the same situation, text
steganography has advantages like ubiquity and small size.
which makes this technique more unique and secure than other
techniques of steganography like images, videos, and audio.
Our novel proposed solution of text steganography using font
color after compression solves the issues related to capacity
and imperceptibility. The proposed solution is mainly divided
into three steps: 1. Secret information compression using
short keywords 2. Embedding process (compressed secret
information into font color) 3. Extraction process (Extract
secret information from stegno text)
1. Secret information compression using short keywords In
the first step of this method, a table of abbreviated words is
created to select a short form of information before sending
it to the receiver. Some sentences and short keywords are as
follows:
Fig. 1. Secret information compression using short keywords
This technique not only solved the capacity issues by
compressing the long secret text and words into some letters
but also solves imperceptibility issues. This process can easily

understand by understanding this example suppose a piece of
secret information uses this sentence ”You need to be positive
about a situation” this can be written as think positive and
with more compression, if added then it can be written as T+
the long sentence now become two letter word. Similarly, a
table containing such sentences and short abbreviated words
and letters makes this process more efficient. The short letter
words are now converted into an equivalent binary number
like binary numbers for C is 0100 0011 and for U is 0101
0101 vice versa.
2. Embedding process
After completion of the compression process, the secret in-
formation hiding process will start in this step the converted
short words and their equivalent binary codes are hidden in
the set RGB color scheme. This process is effective because
the reader normally focuses on the text, not on the font color.
In the RGB color scheme, the Red, Green, and Blue colors
have different binary codes generated when it is set to the
font or words. The representation of the RGB color scheme
is red = 10010001, green = 00110010, and blue = 01111011.
All color combinations can be made like light gray, shadow
gray, dark gray, and similar other colors can be formed by a
change in the binary digit of the RGB colors patterns. A slight
change in the last two binary digits makes a little effect on
the color scheme. Suppose we want to hide the letter U where
U=00100110 here four bits pair like 00 10 01 10 can be added
to the last two bits on the RGB color scheme.
Fig. 2. Embedding process
3. Extraction process
The extraction process is the reverse process of the embedded
process where stegno file is first convert into binary form and
then extract the binary code of last two digit on each font color
where color combination of RGB available. when each binary
code of font color extracted then the binary code converted
into english language. During this process the covered file
from the secret message. The extracted key words now match
with the table where complete sentences of each words are
present. When the letter and words are extracted from the
color scheme they will matched to the table where short and
compressed keyword equivalent sentence are presented.
Fig. 3. Extraction process
III. ALGORITHM FOR MAKING STEGNO FILE
The logic behind hiding the secret data into the cover file
is to select a word file have colored font text. where font is
selected to hide the secret data. The following algorithm will
use to create a program.
Fig. 4. Algorithm
IV. PSE UDO C ODE
The Pseudo code is basically a simplified version of an al-
gorithm where program flow or program code written close to
english language for better understanding to the programmer.
This code helps programmers to design the basic structure of
the program.
To hide the secret data into the cover text first we have to
upload the cover file. when the cover file uploaded the secret
message needed to insert. The program will extract the font
color binary code of RGB and start putting the binary digits of
the secret message into the font color. When secret message
are successfully hided into the cover text it will generate the
stegno file. The program will also perform reverse process at
receiver side. Where secret message will extract from stegno
file and generate the complete secret message.

Fig. 5. Pseudo code
V. EVALUATI ON OF T HE PRO POS ED SO LUT ION
Text steganography have two main issues less data hiding
capacity and data imperceptibility. Lots of Research done so
far and many techniques being discussed but both parameters
have not been addressed and resolved. In our novel text
steganography technique both high data hiding capacity and
data imperceptibility introduced. The data hiding capacity is
higher than other methods.
VI. CONCLUSION AND FUT URE WORK
In modern area data gains, lots of importance day by day
and data become a valuable asset for any organization. The
protection of data from any unauthorize access gains much
importance in this regard. Plenty of techniques adopted to
secure data for various situations like encryption, Blockchain
and Steganography techniques. This research article has ad-
dressed and solved issues related to Text Steganography. Text
steganography has many limitations in terms of capacity, and
imperceptibility but in the same situation, text steganography
has advantages like ubiquity and small size. which makes
this technique more unique and secure than other techniques
of steganography like images, videos, and audio. Our novel
proposed solution of text steganography using font color after
compression solves the issues related to capacity and imper-
ceptibility. In proposed method, English words, sentences and
their compressed version of code being discussed and solved.
In future numeric data hiding techniques and more work on
imperceptibility will be done.
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