Introduction

Today due to increase in technology and information there is an abundant data usage this data must be
secure and one form of data securing technique is steganography, which is a mechanism of hiding a secret
message in a non-secret cover media.text Steganography is the most difficult kind of Steganography; this is
due to the lack of redundantinformation in a text file, while there is a lot of redundancy in a picture or a
sound file, which can be used inSteganography.

In this approach we present a new approach on text steganography through the white/null space
in the cover message for hiding the secret message. In this method, hiding bits of secret message is
donethroughadding extra white/null spaces in the plaintext of the cover file. These white/null spaces
placed, when the binarybit of secret message is equal to 1 in plaintext of the cover file. And white/null
spaceremains unchanged whenthe binary bit of the secret message is equal to 0.

The structure of text documents is identical with what we observe, while in other types of documents
such as in a picture, the structure of document is different from what we observe. Therefore, in such
documents,we can hide information by introducing changes in the structure of the document without
making a notablechange in the concerned output.Text steganography is the art or process of hiding one
text into another text for the purpose of securecommunication so that the illegitimateuser/unauthorized/
user can’t get the secret message for their own use.

Problem statement
The underlining problem that arises from the ever-increasing technology of the world is the flow of many
data and security associated with them. When sensitive data is sent through a medium it can be
intercepted by unwanted party which then can be exploited and used for ransom. Even though there are
security protocols that are in place to prevent such scenarios we can use other methods to ensure our
sensitive data is kept hidden. One this method is steganography which is used to hide message in a plane-
sight

Objective
The objective of the text steganography is to hide the intended text /plain-text/ by embedding it in another
form of media in our case in a text media. We can use text steganography to freely send and receive
classified information using even a platform with less privacy or less protected form attack but it is not
recommended. All in all we can use the algorithms provided below to effectively hide a text message in
another text message.

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 Methodology
Encode:

ZWCs- In Unicode, there are specific zero-width characters (ZWC) which are the spaces between each
character which is used for text wrapping. We used four ZWCs for hiding the SM through the CT.

Secret Message (SM): This can be secret or confidential information.

Cover Text (CT): This is an innocent text that can be any type of meaningful text.

The embedding algorithm contains following stages: -

For every character of the secret message: -

 We get its ascii value and we increment or decrement certain value depending on the range the ascii
value is located if the ascii value of the character is between 32 – 64 we add 48, if the ascii value of
the character is between 64 – 127 we subtract 48.
 Then xor the obtained value with 170(binary equivalent-10101010)
 For the value obtained from the steps above add "0011" if earlier it belonged to ascii value between
32 and 64 else add "0110" making it 12 bit for each character.
With the final binary equivalent, we add 111111111111 at the end to use as delimiter to find the end of
message.

Now from 12 bit representing each 2 bit character is replaced with equivalent ZWCs according to the table.
Each character is hidden after a word in the cover text.

Zero Width Character Table

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Text Steganography Encoding Algorithm

Decode:

After receiving a stego-file, the extraction algorithm discovers the contractual 2-bit of each ZWCs, every 12
bits from end of the word in the stego-file and then the binary equivalent is completely extracted and
delimiter discussed above helps us in getting to the end point. Now we divide the 12 bits into two parts first
4 bit and another 8bit on which we do the xor operation with 170(binary value 10101010). Now according to
the first 4bit if it is "0110" we increment it by 48 else we decrement by 48. At last, we convert the ascii value
into its equivalent character to get the final hidden message from the stego-file

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Text Steganography Decoding Algorithm

Result discussion

 Encoding the message in text file:

 Preview of Cover Text file and Stego Text file:

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  Decoding the message from Text file:

Conclusion
Text Steganography is one of the most difficult methods because a text file is not a proper media to
hide data in it. Above we used many steps to develop a stegno-file which contains the plain text which can
be extracted and read for its intended meaning. The algorithm we use is a little complex and confusing at
times but it gets the job done very well.

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