High-capacity DNA-based steganography

Abstract

In this paper, a Steganography algorithm is proposed to communicate data securely using basic concepts and properties of the Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA). The proposed method is implemented in two main levels: In level one, a DNA-based Playfair cipher is initially applied to encrypt the secret message. In level two; a substitution method is used to hide the encrypted secret message into some reference DNA. That is, the bases of the reference DNA are replaced with the encrypted DNA depending on a generic two-by-two complementary rule. The performance of the presented algorithm is inspected with respect to the Hiding capacity as well as robustness against attacks.