A secure steganographic channel using DNA sequence data and a bio-inspired XOR cipher

Abstract

Secure communication is becoming an urgent need in a digital world where tera bytes of sensitive information are sent back and forth over public networks. In this paper, we combine the power of both encryption and Steganography to build a secure channel of communication between two parties. The proposed method uses DNA sequence data as a cover to hide the secret message. The hiding process is performed in phases that start with a complementary substitution operation followed by a random insertion process. Furthermore, and before the hiding process takes place, the message is encrypted to secure its contents. Here, we propose an XOR cipher that is also based on how DNA data is digitally represented and stored. A fixed-size header is embedded right before the message itself to facilitate the blind extraction process. The experimental results showed an outstanding performance of the proposed technique, in comparison with other methods, in terms of capacity, security, as well as blind extraction.