Improved Method of Arabic Text Steganography Using the Extension ‘Kashida’ Character

Abstract

In this paper a new Steganography approach for Arabic texts is reported. The approach hides secret information bits within Arabic letters benefiting from the redundant extension character "-" known as Kashida. To note the specific letters holding encoded secret bits, the method considers the number of the extension character inserted after any letter that can hold it. This paper introduces this new approach and discusses the additional features it possesses like bits optimization using mapping tables and dynamic assignment of letter codes. This approach is found attractive and can be modified to enhance the security and the capacity features in Arabic and other languages having similar texts such as Urdu and Persian.