SMS STEGANOGRAPHY BASED ON ALPHABETS

Mrs. Shimna Balakrishnan, Mr. Pravin M. Kamde, Mrs. Kirti S. Korabu

Abstract The Short Message Service (SMS) or text
messaging is the most popular and an affordable service used and adopted worldwide in mobile phones today. Now most of the communication takes place in short forms through this service. It is certainly a boon to the society for easy and quick communication. Steganography, the latest technology can be used to hide data in SMS to send urgent, short and secret messages very quickly. There are already existing methods of hiding messages in SMS-Texting using abbreviations and in the OTA (Over The Air) images. SMS provides the assurance of sure delivery and is therefore a very reliable medium of communication. In this proposed idea, we have put forth a new method of using steganography in SMS communication. It is based on the English alphabets. We have identified letters with cuts and crosses. Now the words using these letters will be encoded as 1 and words without these letters will be encoded as 0. When compared to the existing methods, this method can carry more bytes of hidden data. It is more flexible and can vary depending on the users definition of the secret keys. Like in the already existing methods, a Steganography program to hide the message and extractor program to extract the hidden information are required. One more application to give flexibility to the user can be added.

An active mobile handset can receive/transmit messages at any time even when a voice call is in progress. Guaranteed message delivery even if the receiving node is not reachable or switched off. Reliable, low-cost communication mechanism for concise information. E-mail integration Creation of user groups Delivery of messages to multiple subscribers at a time Integration with other Internet based applications Providing various services such as e-commerce Receive reports on the status of the SMS message or even define a validity period for the SMS message.

Keywords SMS Steganography, SMS-Texting, OTA (Over the

Air), SMS (Short Message Service) .

I. SINTRODUCTION
MS

(Short Message Service) is a globally accepted wireless service that enables the transmission of alphanumeric messages between mobile subscribers and external systems. SMS are text messages of unto 160 characters. SMS came into existence in 1991 and GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), the European Standard for digital wireless included short message services. SMS may be sent from one point to another point (called SMS-PP) or to all devices within a specific geographical region (called SMS-CB, mainly used to broadcast information). SMS works on a store-and-forward basis and are exchanged indirectly through a component known as SMSC (Short Message Service Center). characteristics of this service are: The distinguishing

Mrs. Shimna Balakrishnan, Research Scholar, M.E. [IT] Dept. of Information Technology, Sinhgad College of Engg, Pune 41 phone: +919850488325; (e-mail: shimna.balakrishnan@rediffmail.com) Mr. Pravin M Kamde, Asst. Prof, Dept of Computer Engg, Sinhgad College of Engg, Pune-41phone:919423086500(e-mail: pravin_kamde@rediffmail.com) Mrs. Kirti S Korabu, Asst. Prof, Dept of Information Technology, Sinhgad College of Engg, Pune-41. phone: +919890029007

Steganography is the art of hiding information by embedding messages within seemingly harmless messages. Steganography works by replacing bits of useless or unused data in regular computer files like text, HTML, images, audio with bits of different, invisible information. This hidden information can be plain/cipher text or images. An encrypted file may use steganography to hide the encrypted message. Steganography can be used where encryption can not be done or is not permitted. . Special software is needed for steganography, and there are freeware versions available at any good download site. Steganography (covered writing) dates back to ancient Greece, where common practices consisted of etching messages in wooden tablets and covering them with wax and tattooing a shaved messenger's head, letting his hair grow back, then shaving it again when he arrived at his contact point. The advantage of steganography over cryptography is that messages do not attract attention to themselves, to messengers, or to recipients. An unhidden coded message, no matter how unbreakable it is, will arouse suspicion and may in itself be incriminating, as in countries where encryption is illegal. Often, steganography and cryptography are used together to ensure security of the covert message. A steganographic message (the plaintext) is often first encrypted by some traditional means, producing a ciphertext. Then, a covertext is modified in some way to contain the ciphertext, resulting in stegotext. For example, the letter size, spacing, typeface, or other characteristics of a covertext can be manipulated to carry the hidden message, it is only that the recipient (he must know the technique used) can recover the message and then decrypt it. Cryptography the science of writing in secret codes , addresses all of the elements necessary for secure communication over an insecure channel, namely privacy, confidentiality, key exchange, authentication, and nonrepudiation but does not always provide safe communication.

The goal of cryptography is to make data unreadable by a third party and the goal of steganography is to hide the data from a third party. This is where steganography gains an edge over cryptography. II.OVERVIEW OF EXISTING METHODS
A. TEXT STEGANOGRAPHY

one requires the original image, or at least a specification of the change in pixels at a feature. Due to the frequently high number of features in documents that can be altered, feature coding supports a high amount of data encoding. Also, feature encoding is largely indiscernible to the reader. Finally, feature encoding can be applied directly to image files, which leaves out the need for a format file. d) Semantic Method Here, the synonym of words replaces certain words in the text and thus hide information. A major advantage of this method is the protection of information in case of retyping or using OCR programs. For example, the word big might be given a value of one, the word large a value of zero. Then, when the word big is encountered in the coded text, a value of one can be decoded. Further synonyms can mean greater bit encoding. However, these methods can sometimes interfere with the nuances of meaning. e) Open space method Here, extra white-spaces are added in the text. These white spaces can be placed at the end of each line, at the end of each paragraph or between the words. This method can be implemented on any arbitrary text and is not noticed by the reader. But the volume of information hidden in this method is very little. Moreover, some text editors automatically delete extra white-spaces and thus destroy the hidden information. f) Syntactic method This method utilizes punctuation and contractions. In syntactic methods, multiple methods of punctuation are harnessed to encode data. For example, the two phrases below are both considered correct, although the first line has an extra comma: bread, butter, and milk bread, butter and milk Alternation between these two forms of listing can be used to represent binary data. Other methods of syntactic encoding include the controlled use of contractions and abbreviations. Although such syntactic encoding is very possible in the English language, the amount of data that could be encoded would be very low, somewhere in the order of a several bits per kilobyte of text. g) Persian/Arabic Text Steganography Method Here information is hidden in Persian and Arabic using certain specific characteristics of the language. The existence of too many points in these languages helps us in hiding data by vertical displacement of these points. Though large amount of data can be hidden in this manner this method is language-specific. h) Abbreviation Method A list of words with the abbreviated form is made. Then the steganography text is searched for words in the list. For example, the full form of the word is used in the text to hide a 0 and the abbreviated form is used to hide a 1. Like this, the intended data is hidden in the text. At the time of extraction of data, the abbreviated words are identified.

Text Steganography is the most difficult because there is no redundant information in a text file as compared with a picture or a sound file. In text documents, the structure is identical to what we see but in images, the structure of the file is different from what we see. Therefore, it is easy to hide information in image/sound files than in text. Text documents occupy lesser memory space, communicate more information and are cheaper than other file formats. a) Word Shifting Method In word-shift coding, codewords are coded into a document by shifting the horizontal locations of words within text lines, while maintaining a natural spacing appearance. This encoding can also be applied to either the format file or the page image bitmap. The method, of course, is only applicable to documents with variable spacing between adjacent words, such as in documents that have been textjustified. As a result of this variable spacing, it is necessary to have the original image, or to at least know the spacing between words in the not encoded document. b) Line Shifting Method In this method, text lines are vertically shifted to encode the document uniquely. Encoding and decoding can generally be applied either to the format file of a document, or the bitmap of a page image. By moving every second line of document either 1/300 of an inch up or down, line-shift coding worked particularly well, and documents could still be completely decoded, even after the tenth photocopy. However, this method is probably the most visible text coding technique to the reader. Also, line-shift encoding can be defeated by manual or automatic measurement of the number of pixels between text baselines. Random or uniform respacing of the lines can damage any attempts to decode the codeword. c) Feature Coding Method A third method of coding data into text suggested by Brassil et al. is known as feature coding. This is applied either to the bitmap image of a document, or to a format file. In feature coding, certain text features are altered, or not altered, depending on the codeword. For example, one could encode bits into text by extending or shortening the upward, vertical end lines of letters such as b, d, h, etc. Generally, before encoding, feature randomization takes place. That is, character end line lengths would be randomly lengthened or shortened, then altered again to encode the specific data. This removes the possibility of visual decoding, as the original end line lengths would not be known. Of course, to decode,

If the word is present in full, it shows bit 0 and if the abbreviated form is present it shows bit 1. By concatenating the extracted bits the hidden data is revealed. As an improvisation to the text methods, steganography in SMS has come into existence though it is in its nascent stage, it will certainly make way for security of information in the cheapest form as discussed below.
B. SMS STEGANOGRAPHY

SMS has almost evolved as a new medium of communication all over the world. SMS being cheap and reliable is ideal for important communications a) SMS Steganography in picture messages In this approach, we send black and white pictures through SMS. Most of the approaches till now have dealt with color pictures because B/W pictures are more sensitive to changes i.e., change in one pixel of the picture in a white area would be quite visible while in color pictures a slight change will be hardly noticed. b) SMS-Texting Steganography In this method, abbreviations are used in generous amounts to save time, make typing easy etc. For example, gr8 is used instead of great. c u is used in place of see you. pls is used instead of please and so on. These abbreviations are used in SMS-Texting because of restricted size of the SMS (160 bytes), lack of proper keyboard on mobile phones and to increase the typing speed in writing SMS. As seen above, SMS-Texting uses a lot of acronyms. So the abbreviation text steganography method can be made use of here as well. The words and phrases which are abbreviated in SMS-Texting have to be identified and the same methodology explained in abbreviation method is employed. In this method, the SMS words do not attract any attention since they are commonly in usage. The list is more enhanced since SMS-Texting has more abbreviations than in normal English. Next, we will see the new approach which I am putting forth through his paper which has substantially more benefits when compared to the above existing methods. III. EXPOSURE TO THE NEW APPROACH One innovative method I have designed which needs more of refining is considering all alphabets in the English languages which have cuts or crosses on them. A, E, F, H, I, J, T, X are letters identified. Now the hidden message is converted into a collection of bits using encoding algorithm. For example, HI, KRISHNA PLS GIV. THE FILE. The words with the above alphabets are considered as 1 and the words without them are considered as 0. But mostly the words containing A, E, I (the vowels) are more so if a dot is accompanied by the word then that represents a 0, for example GIV.. The coded message will be 110011. In Steganography, the main idea is to hide the fact that information is hidden.

Now the above message looks absolutely unsuspicious and attaching a dot to GIV is hardly noticeable. Just like in the above methods, a Steganography program is used to hide the message and an extractor program is used to extract the hidden information. This method is an enhancement of the SMS-Texting method which can be further refined by the use of smileys and the mix of Text and B/W pictures. The Stealth feature can be implemented into this method by removing any dots or extra detailing attached. As such the message is very normal and cannot be decoded by a third person. One more feature we are intending to add is the flexibility to the user to decide the letters to be used for coding instead of the above discussed letters. Then the list will vary according to the users and it is impossible to find the hidden message. There is no list of acronyms stored as in the SMS-Texting method. So memory usage is minimal. The above method is in its nascent stage and can be further enhanced using combinations of any characters. There will be an encoder and decoder program. The encoder program gives the user the flexibility to code the letters as per his choice or retain the parent method. A hashed key is send if the user selects his own letters. The SMS is decoded at the receivers end and displayed on the screen. Once the receiver views the code and deletes it, the message looses its stego status and is just like any other normal message. IV. APPLICATIONS This method is very ideal for sending short, secret messages like passwords, usernames, VIP details (name, timings, places etc) etc. V. ADVANTAGES 1. Larger quantity of data can be send than in the SMS-Texting method. 2. The message will be more normal than in the SMSTexting method since in this method there is restriction that abbreviations have to be used which might not be possible in all cases. 3. There is no list of acronyms stored. So memory used is very less. 4. Stealth feature ensures the safety of the code after the reception of the message 5. High flexibility since user can choose his own letters for encoding 6. In black/white picture messages, sensitivity is an issue. Here there is no such issue. 7. It is a frills-free method. VI. DISADVANTAGES The biggest restriction is the size of SMS messages. So amount of hidden information which can be send is very less. VII. CONCLUSION As said in the beginning, since SMS has become a strong, fast and reliable medium of communication, certainly there is a need to find methods to send sensitive data over SMS such

that it becomes an official and authenticated medium of communication. One great constraint is the security feature. This paper discusses a new approach for SMS steganography using letters. It is very flexible and can be easily implemented on both higher and lower end models. Memory requirement is very less making it very ideal for SMS communication. Since SMS has emerged as a very popular and strong medium of communication it is very ideal to send short, secret information across SMS. Though these methods as of now only support few bytes of data, it is sure that in the long run these methods when further enhanced can become a strong medium for Steganography. More computations and enhanced techniques as discussed in the new approaches will certainly make this new methodology a great success. ACKNOWLEDGMENT First Author thanks her husband, Mr. Balakrishnan K, for his unstinted support, her mother, Mrs. M. Chandrika for her constant encouragement and her daughter, Baby Shreenaya M for her selfless love which helped me in completing this paper successfully. First Author also thanks Mr. P. M. Kamde for his support in completing this paper. REFERENCES
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Mrs. Shimna Balakrishnan is a Post Graduate student of Information Technology of the University of Pune. She completed her under graduation in Computer Science and Engineering from Jerusalem College of Engineering, Chennai, India in the year 1999. As soon as she completed her engineering she joined as a Lecturer in an engineering college and has been continuing in this profession for the past six years. She is currently working as a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Engineering at Sinhgad College of Engineering, Pune

She has already presented papers as a undergraduate student in varied topics like Sensors and Robots, Pattern Recognition, Sensors and Actuators etc and won many prizes. Mrs. Shimna Balakrishnan is a life time member of ISTE from the year 2005. Her areas of interest include Information Security, Artificial Intelligence and Data Base Management Systems etc. Mr. P. M. Kamde, has completed his post graduation from Walchand college of engineering, Sangli. He is currently working as a Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Engineering at Sinhgad College of Engineering in Pune. He has published 16 international and national papers including International journals. He is also a life time member of ISTE. Mrs. Kirti S Korabu is Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Technology at Sinhgad College of Engineering in Pune. She completed her Post Graduation from the University of Pune in the year 2005. She has been in teaching from the year 1994. She has worked in various professional colleges and also has published papers in the area of Bioinformatics in the year 2005.