Proof-of-work based new encoding scheme for information hiding purposes

Steganography techniques often assume that the secret message looks randomly or is encrypted. If encryption is required, it leads to a random-looking message, but key exchange may be problematic and jeopardize covert communication. If encryption is not required, then the question arises of whether other cryptographic solutions that are "cheaper" than encryption can provide the same level of randomness. In this paper, we investigate both questions. First, we propose a proof-of- work-inspired approach to securely transfer the key with the encrypted message, avoiding a previous key exchange. Second, we introduce a scheme that uses ? -functions to substitute symmetric encryption algorithms. We implement both proposed solutions, measure the entropy of the resulting messages, and apply the Kolmogorov-Smirnoff tests. The results obtained prove that both schemes are feasible.