Special Issue on Steganography in Electronic Communications

With the rapid development of the digital multimedia technology and computer networks, information security has become a focus of research questions in today’s society. Steganography technique is playing an irreplaceable role in the society and our daily life.
Steganography includes the concealment of information within computer files. In digital steganography, electronic communications may include steganographic coding inside of a transport layer, such as a document file, image file, program or protocol. Media files are ideal for steganographic transmission because of their large size.

Digital steganography covers a broad spectrum of techniques, which include, among others:
 Digital Image Steganography - allows an average user to securely transfer text messages by hiding them in a digital image file. Especially on the Internet, and given the large amount of redundant bits present in the digital representation of an image, images are the most popular cover objects for steganography.
 Digital Audio Steganography - based on the characteristics of digital audio signals and the human auditory system (HAS). To hide information in audio files similar techniques are used as for image files. One different technique unique to audio steganography is masking, which exploits the properties of the human ear to hide information unnoticeably.
 Digital Video Steganography - embed small information in the digital video such that the message is imperceptible and robust against attempts to degrade it or remove it from the digital object. Video Steganography approaches can be classified into two main categories based on the method of hiding information in the host video. The two categories are: Spatial domain, and transform-domain.
 Steganalysis - The goal of steganalysis is to identify suspected packages, determine whether or not they have a payload encoded into them, and, if possible, recover that payload.

Topics
Original contributions, not currently under review to another journal or conference, are solicited in relevant areas including, but not limited to, the following:
• Digital Image Steganography/ Watermarking
• Digital Audio Steganography/ Watermarking
• Digital Video Steganography/ Watermarking
• Steganalysis

Submissions
 The manuscripts for this special issue have to be submitted in the form of a PDF file ONLY to the Corresponding Guest Editor - Dr. Mazdak Zamani (mazdak@utm.my) and NOT to the journal office.
 To be considered for the special issue, a paper has to be 26 to 45 pages in length (excluding a title page and authors’ biographies) using a 12pt roman font and 1.5 lines spacing.
 Guidelines for preparation of the manuscripts are provided at the Telecommunication Systems journal website, http://www.springer.com/journal/11235.
 The submission must include the title, abstract of your paper, and all the authors' names, affiliations and emails.
 All papers will be rigorously reviewed based on the quality: originality, high scientific quality, organization and clarity of writing, and support provided for assertions and conclusion.
 Regarding the printed version to appear in a hard copy of the journal, we are currently working on issues for 2018, so expect a long delay in receiving the hard copies of the printed papers unless there is a change in policy by the publisher.


Schedule
 Submission Deadline: August 31, 2013
 Notification of First Round of Review: November 30, 2013
 Submission of Revised Papers for Second Round of Review: December 31, 2013
 Notification of Second Round of Review: February 28, 2014
 Submission of Final Paper: March 31, 2014
 Publication Date: 2017/2018 (Tentative)


Guest Editors
Prof. Dr. Azizah Abd Manaf
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
54100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
E-mail: azizah07@ic.utm.my

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Isao Echizen
National Institute of Informatics
2-1-2, Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan
E-mail: iechizen@nii.ac.jp

Dr. Mazdak Zamani
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
54100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
E-mail: mazdak@utm.my

Prof. Dr. Shamsul Sahibuddin
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
54100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
E-mail: shamsul@utm.my

Prof. Dr. Yoshiro Imai
Kagawa University
2217-20 Hayashi-cho Takamatsu, Japan
E-mail: imai@eng.kagawa-u.ac.jp