2013 International Conference on Recent Trends in Information Technology (ICRTIT)
Highly Secure DNA-based Audio Steganography
Shyamasree C M, Sheena Anees
Department of Computer Science, KMEA Engineering College
Aluva
shyamasreecm@gmail.com,sheenanees@gmail.com
Abstract— Security is the important criteria relevant to
information in transit as well as in storage. This paper
proposes a highly secure method to hide the secret
messages to prevent unauthorized access. The proposed
method works in three levels. Single level of encryption
and two levels of steganography are used. First level
makes use of a DNA based playfair encryption. Second
level hides the encrypted secret file in a randomly
generated DNA sequence. In the third level, embedded
DNA is hidden in an audio file. The main objective of the
proposed method is that no one could be able to find the
existence of the secret file.
Keywords— Information security, steganography,
cryptography, DNA computing, playfair encryption.
I. INTRODUCTION
The explosive growth of computer systems and their
interconnections via networks such as internet has led to a
heightened need for information and data security. The
growing use of the internet has led to a continuous increase
in the amount of data that is being exchanged and stored in
various digital media[1]. In the current internet community,
secure data is limited due to its attack made on data
communication [2]. Security is the main concern of any type
of communication. The objective of secure communication
is that actual data should not be revealed to any third party.
Steganographic techniques are the most successful
technique in supporting hiding of critical information in
ways that prevent the detection of hidden messages. While
cryptography scrambles the message so that it cannot be
understood, steganography hides the data so that it cannot
be observed [1]. In steganography the existence of the
information is hiding so that it is hard for attackers to find
that the hidden information is existing. Steganography is the
science that involves communicating secret data in an
appropriate multimedia carrier, e.g., image, audio, and video
files. It comes under the assumption that if the feature is
visible, the point of attack is evident, thus the goal here is
always to conceal the very existence of the embedded data
[3].
DNA computing is a new method of simulating
biomolecular structure of DNA and computing by means of
molecular biological technology which is a novel and
potential growth. In a pioneering study, Adleman
demonstrated the first DNA computing. It marked the
beginning of a new stage in the era of information DNA
ISBN: 978-1-4799-1024-3/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE
(Deoxyribonucleic Acid) is the germ plasm of all life styles.
It is a kind of biological macromolecule made up of
nucleotides. Each nucleotide contains a single base. There
are four kinds of bases, which are adenine (A), thymine (U
or T), cytosine (C) and guanine (G). In a double helix DNA
string, two strands are complementary in terms of sequence,
that is A to T and C to G according to Watson-Crick rules
[4].
.
A number of methods have been proposed over the last
decade for encoding information using deoxyribonucleic
acid (DNA), giving rise to the emerging area of DNA data
embedding. Since a DNA sequence is conceptually
equivalent to a sequence of quaternary symbols (bases),
DNA data embedding (diversely called DNA watermarking
or DNA steganography) can be seen as a digital
communications problem where channel errors are
analogous to mutations of DNA bases [5].
DNA was proposed for computation by Adlemann in
1994. After that many approaches have been investigated. A
single strand DNA consist of four different base nucleotides
including adenine(A), thymine(T), cytosine(C),and
guanine(G). After attached to deoxyribose, those
nucleotides could be strung together to generate long
sequences. The DNA computing gives a new way to
cryptography [6] Leonard Adleman [13], proposed the
computation ability of DNA. The field of cryptography has
evolved, which is DNA cryptography. DNA is used as
information carrier. High randomness and storage capacity
of DNA made it efficient to be used as basic computational
tool [14], [15], [16].
Mona Sabry in [7] proposed a significant modification to
the old playfair cipher by introducing DNA-based and
amino acids-based structure to the core of the ciphering
process. A binary form of data are transformed into
sequences of DNA nucleotides subsequently these
nucleotides pass through a playfair encryption process based
on amino-acids structure. The relationship between the
nucleotide sequences of genes and the amino acid sequences
of proteins is determined by the rules of translation, known
collectively as genetic code. The genetic code consists of
three-letter words called codons formed from a sequence of
three nucleotides (e.g. ACT, CAG, TTT). Since there are 4
bases in 3-letter combinations, there are 64 possible codons.
These encode the twenty standard amino acids, giving most
amino acids more than one possible codon [7].
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 2013 International Conference on Recent Trends in Information Technology (ICRTIT)
Catherine Taylor Clelland proposed a hiding technique
using DNA. The evolution of DNA steganography takes its
idea from the microdots. The microdot is a means of
concealing messages i.e. steganography that was developed
by Professor Zapp and used by German spies in the Second
World War to transmit secret information. The microdot
have been taken a step further and developed a DNA-based,
doubly steganographic technique for sending secret
messages. A DNA encoded message is first camouflaged
within the enormous complexity of human genomic DNA
and then further concealed by confining this sample to a
microdot [8]. From this technique several methods are
proposed in the field of DNA steganography [9], [10], [11].
One of the latest techniques is proposed by Amal Khalifa
[12]. In this the carrier is a randomly generated DNA
sequence. The high randomness and effective storage
capacity of DNA has given it high potential to act as cover
medium to hide secret information.
Most steganography jobs have been carried out on
different storage cover media like text, image, audio or
video [17]. Steganography and encryption are both used to
ensure data confidentiality however the main difference
between them is that with encryption anybody can see that
both parties are communicating in secret. Steganography
hides the existence of a secret message and in the best case
nobody can see that both parties are communicating secrets
[18].
Audio files are considered to be excellent carriers for the
purpose of steganography due to presence of redundancy.
Audio steganography requires a text or audio secret message
to be embedded within a cover audio message. Due to
availability of redundancy, the cover audio message before
steganography and stego message after steganography
remains same. However, audio steganography is considered
more difficult than video steganography because the Human
Auditory System (HAS) is more sensitive than Human
Visual System (HVS) [18]. Least Significant Bit (LSB)
modification technique is the most simple and efficient
technique used for audio steganography [18].
The objective of this paper is to come up with an efficient
method to preserve security of secret messages ina a text file
against unauthorized access by hiding the presence of the
text file. The method proposed in this paper uses a three
levelled security. The three levels are Encryption, DNA
steganography and audio steganography. For encrypting the
text file the proposed method uses a DNA based playfair
encryption algorithm. In the second level, the encrypted
secret file is hidden in a randomly generated DNA
sequence. In the third level the DNA sequence which is
embedded with the encrypted file is hidden inside an audio
file using Least Significant Bit modification technique.
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The motivation of preparing this paper is given in the
next section. The section III gives the detailed description of
encryption phase. The section IV illustrates a detailed
overview of the DNA steganography phase of the proposed
method. Details of audio steganography are given in section
V. The details of the extraction of original text file from the
stego audio file are given in section VI. Section VII gives
the experimental results of the proposed method.
II. MOTIVATION
Information security is one of the important fields in
which so many researches are taking place. Steganography
is a main method to provide security.
DNA due to its immense storage capacity and high
randomness is used now in the field of steganography. This
can be considered as the recent technique in steganography.
DNA based algorithms can be used in various fields such as
job scheduling for clusters, GPU applications, multi-core
architectures, etc [20], [21], [22] and hence there is a need
of more new techniques in this field.
Since the Human Auditory System (HAS) is more
sensitive than Human Visual System (HVS) [23], and since
the audio files are redundant and highly available, audio
steganography is of high importance in the field of
steganography. Hence more techniques are to be found out
in this field [18].
III. DNA BASED ENCRYPTION
In this section the detailed overview of the encryption
technique is illustrated which is used to convert the secret
file in to encrypted DNA sequence.
Encryption is the first level of the proposed
method.DNA based playfair encryption is used to hide the
secret message stored in a file called secret file . Text files
can be used as the secret file. This secret file is the input to
the encryption algorithm.
DNA digital coding is used to convert the raw data in the
secret file in to DNA sequence. From a computational point
of view, any DNA sequence can be encoded using a binary
coding scheme, in which anything can be encoded by a
combination of the two sates 0 and 1. Therefore, the
simplest coding patterns to encode the 4 nucleotide bases
(A, U, C, G) is: 0(00), 1(01), 2(10), 3(11) respectively.
Obviously, there are 4!. So, among these 24 patterns, only 8
kinds of patterns (0123/CUAG, 0123/CAUG, 0123/GUAC,
0123/GAUC, 0123/UCGA, 0123/UGCA, 0123/ACGU and
o123/AGCU) which are topologically identical fit the
complementary rule of the nucleotide bases. It is suggested
that the coding pattern in accordance with the sequence of
molecular weight, 0123/CUAG, is the best coding pattern
for the nucleotide bases[25], as illustrated in table 1 [12]
 2013 International Conference on Recent Trends in Information Technology (ICRTIT)
TABLE 2: A MAPPINGOF THE DNA CODONS INTO 26 AMINO
ACIDS
TABLE 1: DNA DIGITAL CODING [12] Codons Character Codons Character
GCU, GCC, A AAU, AAC N
DNA Nucleotide Decimal Binary GCA, GCG
A 0 00 UAA.UAG,UGA B UUA,UUG O
C 1 01 UGU,UGC C CCU,CCC, P
G 2 10 CCA,CCG
U 3 11 GAU,GAC D CAA,CAG Q
GAA,GAG E CGU,CGC,CGA R
. The process of DNA based encryption has the CGG,AGA,AGG
following steps: UUU,UUC F UCU,UCC,UCA, S
UCG,AGU,AGC
1. Convert the contents of the secret file in to binary GGU,GGC,GGA, G ACU,ACC,ACA, T
form by taking the ASCII value. GGG ACG
2. Group the binary data into groups of two bits and CAU,CAC H AGA,AGG U
Code binary data into DNA sequence using table 1. AUU,AUC,AUA I GUU,GUC,GUA, V
3. Group the alphabets in the DNA sequence into GUG
groups of three letters(i.e., codons) and Map the J UGG W
AAA,AGG K AGU,AGC X
codons into amino acids using table 2.
UUA,UUG,CUU, L UAU Y
4. Store the ambiguity numbers in a file. CUC,CUA,CAG
5. Encrypt the amino acid sequence using playfair AUG M UAC Z
cipher method.
6. Convert the amino acids in the encrypted sequence
into binary form. By takin the Ascii value.
7. Group the binary form of encrypted amino acid
TABLE 3: A LEGAL TWO-BY-TWO COMPLEMENTARY RULE [
sequence into groups of two bits and Code the
groups into DNA sequence using table 1.
TOKEN COMPLEMENT
8. Store the resulting sequence in a text file.
AA TC
TC CG
Table 2 is used to map the DNA sequence into amino CG TG
acid sequence. There are 1 to 6 possible codons to represent TG GC
each amino acid in table 2. This fact will create confusion GC TT
on decryption that which codon should be selected TT TA
corresponding to a particular amino acid. To counter this TA GT
GT GG
problem ambiguity numbers are used which are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4
GG AT
and 5 corresponding to the first, second, third, fourth, fifth AT CT
and sixth codon respectively. These ambiguity numbers are CT CC
stored in a separated file to be used in the decryption CC CA
process [7]. CA AC
AC AG
Hence the output of the DNA based encryption is two AG GA
GA AA
files, one file containing the ambiguity numbers useful for
later decryption and the other file containing the encrypted
DNA sequence. IV. DNA STEGANOGRAPHY
This section gives the idea about the second level of the
proposed method which is the DNA steganography. The
encrypted DNA sequence obtained from the first level is
hidden inside a randomly generated reference DNA. Two by
two generic complementary rule is used for hiding a DNA
sequence in other. A condition for applying the proposed
algorithm for DNA steganography is that the randomly
generated reference DNA sequence should have a length

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 2013 International Conference on Recent Trends in Information Technology (ICRTIT)
which is double of the length of the DNA sequence to be
hidden in the reference DNA. Table 3 shows the legal
complementary rule used in the proposed algorithm. For
each pair of bases there is a complement. Also double
complement can be taken by taking the complement of the
complement. In this way triple complement, quaternary
complement etc can be taken.
In the proposed algorithm for DNA steganography DNA
bases in the encrypted DNA sequence which is the input to
the algorithm is treated one DNA base at a time while DNA
bases in the randomly generated reference DNA is treated as
DNA base pairs. For each DNA base in the input the
corresponding base pair in the reference sequence is
processed. The DNA sequence to be hidden is represented
by DS and reference DNA is represented by Ref. The
algorithm has the following steps:
1. Let the length of DS is N and hence that of Ref is
2N.
2. For i = 1 to N by step 1and j = 2 to 2N by step 2.
if DSi is ‘A’, do not change rj and rj+1 of Ref .
if DSi is ‘C’, change ([rj], [rj+1]) to be
C([rj], [rj+1]).
If DSi is G, change ([rj], [rj+1]) to be CC([rj],
[rj+1]).
If DSi is ‘U’, change ([rj], [rj+1]) to be
CCC([rj], [rj+1]).
3. Now the new DNA sequence is Ref.
The actual reference DNA should be stored for later use
in the extraction process. And the processed reference DNA
is the output of DNA steganography. It is the embedded
DNA sequence in which actual encrypted DNA sequence is
hidden. So in this level of steganography two files are to be
stored, one file containing the reference DNA sequence
which is randomly generated in the algorithm and the other
file containing the output of the DNA steganography which
is the embedded DNA sequence.
V. AUDIO STEGANOGRAPHY
This section illustrates the third level of the proposed
method, audio steganography. The embedded DNA
sequence obtained as the output of DNA steganography is
hidden in an audio file to hide the existence of the secret
data.
Least Significant Bit (LSB) modification is used for
audio steganography. A password is provided in addition to
the embedded DNA sequence to provide additional security.
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This password is encrypted and hidden in the audio file
along with the embedded DNA sequence.
Audio files used should be in .AU format since it is the
standard audio file format used by Sun, Unix and Java. The
audio file is read in binary format and the encrypted
password end the embedded DNA sequence are stored in
the lower half of each byte of the audio file. This will create
no distortion to the sound.
The process of audio steganography has the following
steps:
1. Read the embedded DNA sequence and the audio
file in binary format.
2. Read the password Sample the audio file.
3. Encrypt the password and embedded sequence
together using DES to form cipher
4. Sample the audio file.
5. Encode the length of the cipher in lower half of the
first 32 audio samples.
6. Encode the cipher in lower half of the remaining
audio samples.
VI. EXTRACTION OF SECRET FILE FROM AUDIO DATA
This section illustrates how the secret file is extracted
from the stego audio file. The extraction process consists of
the reverse of all the process that had been done to hide the
secret file containing the secret message.
After the encryption phase and two steganography
phases, there are files as output. First file contains the
ambiguity numbers from the encryption phase which is
necessary in the decryption phase. Second file contains
reference DNA used in the DNA steganography phase
which is to be used to extract the actual DNA sequence. The
third file is the audio file in which the embedded DNA
sequence is hidden. The password used in audio
steganography phase should be remembered in order to
extract the embedded DNA sequence from the audio file.
As the first step the stego audio file is sampled. From the
first 32 samples the length of the cipher embedded in it is
decoded. Then from the remaining samples, in which the
cipher is encoded, is decoded. This cipher is decrypted to
obtain embedded DNA sequence.
To extract the actual DNA sequence from the embedded
DNA sequence a comparison between the reference DNA
and the embedded sequence is needed. The DNA bases in
both DNA sequences are treated as pairs of bases. The
length of both DNA sequences is the same. The reference
DNA sequence is annotated as Ref, the embedded sequence
is annotated as DC and the output sequence which is the
 2013 International Conference on Recent Trends in Information Technology (ICRTIT)
actual DNA sequence embedded in the reference DNA is TABLE 4: RESULTS OF HIDING TEXT FILES
annotated as OP. The extraction process has the following
steps: Size of text file Size of file after Number of audio
1. Let the length of the DNA sequences is N. containing secret DNA samples required
2. Ste k =1. message(Kb) steganography(kb) to embed the file
3. For i = 1 to N by step 2. 1 10.7 10968
2 21.4 21976
If ([ri], [ri+1]) of DC is equal to ([di], [di+1]) of Ref,
3 32.1 32920
OPk is ‘A’. 4 42.6 43704
If ([ri], [ri+1]) of DC is equal to C([di], [di+1]), OPk 5 53.3 54680
is ‘C’. 6 64.0 65632
If ([ri], [ri+1]) of DC is equal to CC([di], [di+1]) , 7 74.7 76512
OPk is ‘G’.
If ([ri], [ri+1]) of DC is equal to CCC([di], [di+1]) , Advantages of the proposed method:
OPk is ‘U’. • The proposed method takes advantages of both
Set k = k+1. encryption and steganography.
• Since the last step is to hide the secret text file in an
4. Now the actual DNA sequence is OP.
audio file, it will not attract unwanted attention.
This actual DNA sequence is then decrypted to obtain • It is difficult to prove that there exists a secret
the secret file. The ambiguity numbers from obtained from message and to interpret the message inside the
the encryption phase is needed for decryption. The audio file since the message has gone through
decryption process has the following steps: encryption as well as two steps of steganography.
1. Convert the DNA sequence in to binary form using
table 1.
VIII. CONCLUSION
2. Group the binary data into groups of 8 bits and
This paper proposed a method to hide the secret messages
covert each group into alphabets corresponding to store in text files from unauthorized access. The method can
the ASCII values to obtain the encrypted amino be applied to text files. The proposed method has three
acid sequence. levels. The first level is DNA based encryption of secret
3. Decrypt this amino acid sequence using playfair file. In level 2 the encrypted file is hidden in a randomly
cipher method to obtain the actual amino acid generated DNA sequence. This embedded DNA sequence is
sequence. hidden in an audio file in level 3.
4. Using ambiguity numbers and table 2 convert each
The proposed method was tested on different secret
amino acid in the sequence into corresponding messages stored in different text files. Advantages of the
DNA codons to obtain the DNA sequence. proposed method are listed. In conclusion, in the proposed
5. Using table 1 convert the DNA sequence into scheme the message is encrypted, hidden in a DNA
binary form. sequence and as the third step hidden in an audio file.
6. Group the binary form into groups of 8 bits and
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