A minesweeper game-based steganography scheme

Steganography is a way of communication between the transceivers by hiding the secret message in innocuous medium, so that no one doubts the secret communication. In this paper we put forth a novel method to embed secret data in the game, “Minesweeper”, as minesweeper is a very popular game in standalone system and is also available to be played online. The proposed method generates a minesweeper grid which is visually indistinguishable by humans from other minesweeper games currently present online. The game has several properties, using which, steganography can be performed. Here, we have used position of mines present in the minesweeper grid to hide the secret message. The phenomenon of camouflage starts with the player's first click on the minesweeper grid. To place the mines on the minesweeper grid in a scattered way, different matrix traversal approaches and rules to be followed are also designed to prevent the game from raising suspicion to the intermediary. The statistical analysis of different properties also shows resemblance of the proposed game to other online and offline minesweeper games. The game simulator is given with embedded message within it.