DNA-Chip-Based Information Hiding Scheme Achieving Information-Theoretic Security

Abstract

Previously a DNA-chip-based asymmetric encryption and signature system DNA-PKC was proposed. In this paper we prove that DNA-PKC enjoys a special feature: for two distinct messages which are of identical length, the corresponding ciphertexts can be identical. Taking advantage of this feature, we present DNA-IH, which is the first DNA-chip-based information hiding scheme. In our scheme, given an ordinary message M o , a secret message M s is incorporated into the microarray C which represents the signature of M o . Only the intended recipient can retrieve the secret message M s , while other members can only read the ordinary message M o without knowing whether there exists any other secret message. Conventional information hiding process changes the statistical properties of the original data. The existence of secret messages embedded can be detected using statistical steganalysis schemes. In DNA-IH, for secret message and ordinary message, the corresponding DNA microarrays can be identical, statistical steganalysis is no longer able to detect whether or not a given DNA chip contains a secret message, i.e., in the aspect of preventing the adversary from distinguishing between the ordinary message microarray and the secret message microarray, information-theoretic security is achieved in DNA-IH.