New steganographic method for data hiding in Microsoft Word documents by a change tracking technique

Abstract

A new steganographic method for data hiding in Microsoft Word documents by a change tracking technique is proposed. The data embedding is disguised such that the stegodocument appears to be the product of a collaborative writing effort. Text segments in the document are degenerated, mimicking to be the work of an author with inferior writing skills, with the secret message embedded in the choices of degenerations. The degenerations are then revised with the changes being tracked, making it appear as if a cautious author is correcting the mistakes. The change tracking information contained in the stegodocument allows the original cover, the degenerated document, and, hence, the secret message to be recovered. The extra change tracking information added during message embedding is vital in a normal collaboration scenario, and so hinders ignorant removals by skeptics. Experiments demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method.