Hybrid technique for steganography-based on DNA with n-bits binary coding rule

The information capacity is growing significantly as well as its level of importance and its transformation rate. In this paper, a blind data hiding hybrid technique is introduced using the concepts of cryptography and steganography in order to achieve double layer secured system. The proposed method consists of two phases: phase one is converting the message to DNA format using the proposed n-bits binary coding rule leading to high algorithm´s cracking probability compared with those of other algorithms. Followed by applying the Playfair cipher based on DNA and amino acids to encrypt the secret message which generates ambiguity. Phase two is hiding the cipher secret message parts with the ambiguity results from from the first phase. The data is hidden using the least significant base (LSBase) only of each codon of a selected DNA reference sequence using 3:1 hiding strategy. The proposed technique achieves hiding the data in DNA with preserving its biological functions as possible without requiring any extra data to be sent to the receiver.