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Regulating Kashida Arabic steganography to improve security and capacity performance

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Abstract

This research work proposed a system that improves Arabic text steganography. The paper’s primary goal is to advance confidentiality and capacity, as important aspects of security data hiding within stego Arabic text acceptable robustness practicality. The current security performance needs research to have more capacity of hidden bits preserving the inability of attackers to find out the hidden secrets inside the intended media. The paper exploitation improves by utilizing the ‘Kashida’ redundant extension, Arabic language characters, to positively regulate hiding private data. The work proposes three different novel Kashida models for securing privacy bits in the text without destroying its content and appearance. The research is analyzed on Imam Nawawi’s forty hadith script following standard Arabic text benchmark experimentations. The proposals showed various pros and cons, remarking that the third scheme (Model 3) showing a high amount of embedding opportunity in many cases averaged to be above 33%. Model 1 provides more ambiguity, with an average of 57% figure-of-merit approximation, though all models are showing comparable similar remarks making their confidentiality approximation practically acceptable. The work comparative analysis further linked to others remarking Model 3 as the best in an interesting attractive performance trade-off remarks, to be used further for specific Arabic secrecy studies and future relevant developments and investigations to come.

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks to my brilliant student, Ms. Khulood Aljuaid (44181690), whom worked under my supervision on this related exploration as special tasks of her graduate studies course research project (1403699-6) offered by Computer Engineering Department in Winter-Term 2022. Though her hard work inspired this study publication with some confusing remarks and problems in reporting, she could not complete all the work requirements and proper write-up toward publication, but deserves this indebtedness acknowledgment. All appreciation to my other genius graduate students of Computer Engineering course: Advanced Topics in Information Security (1400519) as well as students of Computer & Information Security course (14034107-3) and Cryptography & Network Security course (14034108-3) offered both by Computer Engineering Department in Fall-Term and Winter-Term 2023, as their collaborative work remarked attractive contribution and completion used within this paper. Thanks to our great school, Umm Al-Qura University – Makkah, for supporting me by sabbatical leave year (2022–2023) to focus working out the Cybersecurity research hoping to continue offering the MS graduate program as well as allowing for PhD, approved by Ministry of Education within Saudi Arabia, opening doors for progressive scientific activities.

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Gutub, A. Regulating Kashida Arabic steganography to improve security and capacity performance. Multimed Tools Appl (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-024-18946-x

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