Audio steganography is the process of hiding a message inside an audio container. This study aims to present a systematic review of audio steganography methods. Existing reviews of audio steganography suffer from a high overlap or a low segregation level among the methods reviewed due to poor classification criteria. These articles are also lacking in terms of depth of analysis and the number of articles reviewed. The data collection method includes surveying five databases, namely, Web of Science, IEEE Explore, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Springer, resulting in a total of 134 articles. The review focuses on the embedding process of each method. The methods can be classified into several categories based on the most prominent idea in the embedding process; hence, a new classification is proposed. The proposed classification provides a scope for summarizing and understanding the most followed approaches in audio steganography. This study then critically reviews the strengths and weaknesses of each method on the basis of its embedding behavior. Other issues on the domain of embedding, carrier types, and evaluation environments are also discussed.

Nowadays, the changes in online behavior make data privacy extremely relevant which requires a suitable approach for raising cyber-attacks awareness. Every generation is constantly relying on the cyber world to run their life and they often are lacking in knowledge on security, which exposes them to attackers. Gamification techniques is chosen to be implemented in this research as the use of gamification are increasingly used in education to improve learner’s motivation and engagement. This research introduces a cyber-attacks awareness via mobile gamification techniques known as CYBERPOLY. This quiz-based game combined with the board game concept assists in increasing cyber-attacks awareness and reduces the incidents report and victim risk of any cyber traps. CYBERPOLY promotes Naqli (Revealed knowledge) and Aqli (Rational knowledge) (iNAQ) via board game where users can learn a few Arabic terms that are related to Muslim life such as Tawakkal (hibah, infaq, waqaf, qard, sedeqah), Ta’alim, Iktikaf, Muhasabah. CYBERPOLY offers password complexity indicator feature while offering portability, accessibility, off-line service (anytime, anywhere) and fun learning. It provides four levels of interactive quiz which are beginner, moderate, advanced, and professional that implement the Bloom’s Taxonomy keyword for more effective learning process. The user will be rewarded with score by earning their own money via security awareness quiz that will be used later as their initial salary to begin the board game. The game will end when the player’s money balance reached negative. Thus, this game is mainly developed to educate netizen about cyber-attacks in fun and interactive. Based on the end user feedbacks of functional testing and security authentication, the results show that CYBERPOLY has huge potential as an education tool on cultivating cyber-attacks awareness for digital society. For future planning, the additional scope can be expanded by creating more quiz questions according to specific cyberattack topics, add multiplayer game mode, made available for the iOS platform and save the game result for monitoring the learning performance of each user.

In wireless sensor networks, nodes operating under dynamic topology are often correlated with their behavior. Correlated behavior may pose devastating impact towards network connectivity. A node may change its behaviour from cooperative node to misbehave node which directly affects the network’s connectivity. Misbehaviour nodes tend to have correlated effect which creates partitioning within the network. To improve network connectivity in providing an efficient communication in the events of the correlated behaviors, a new formulation of correlated degree to perform network clustering is required. This paper proposes a formulation on correlated degree using 3D Euclidean distance to achieve higher network connectivity under correlated node behavior. The key idea behind the 3D Euclidean distance in network clustering is to identify a set of sensors whose sensed values present some data correlation referring to correlated degree. The correlated degree is formulated based on three-point distance within a correlation region to identify the level of node correlation within neighboring nodes. In addition, the correlated degree also be able to detect the same group of node behavior which is grouped in correlated regions. 3D Euclidean distance is shown in mathematical analysis and how the new formulation calculates correlated degree is also discussed. It is also expected that the new 3D Euclidean distance formulation may help correlation region to change it cluster formation dynamically to achieve the required network connectivity.

The increasing number of smartphones users have resulted in highly distributed applications that allow users to access information and resources from all over the world. With the advancement of technology, the attacker had created more sophisticated techniques that gave negative impacts to the smartphone users. Moreover, current techniques in mobile malware classification and detection having difficulties to detect the new advanced malware exploitation and threats. Therefore, an efficient mobile malware classification and detection technique are needed. In this research study, a new mobile malware classification and detection technique have been developed and evaluated. Based on the evaluation conducted, the result showed that the current mobile malware available in market is using different technique to avoid from being detected. Therefore in this research study, a way forward to detect such mobile malware is further discussed. Furthermore, the developed mobile malware classification and detection is used as the input for the indexing android mobile malware a framework for indexing android mobile malware also is documented in this research study.

Data transmissions between smartphone users require security solutions to protect communications. Hence, encryption is an important tool that must be associated with smartphones to keep the user’s data safe. One proven solution to enhance the security of encryption algorithms is by using 3D designs on symmetric block ciphers. Although a 3D cipher design could improve the algorithms, the existing methods enlarge the block sizes that will also expand the key sizes and encryption rounds, thus decreasing their efficiency. Therefore, we propose the LAO-3D block cipher using a 3D permutation that offers security by providing confusion and diffusion characteristics. Five security analyses were conducted to assess the strengths of LAO-3D. The findings suggest that LAO-3D achieves better results compared to other existing lightweight block ciphers, with 98.2% non-linearity, 50% bit error rates for both plaintext and key modifications, surpasses 100% of the randomness test, and is immune to differential and linear cryptanalysis attacks. Moreover, the block cipher obtains competitive performance results in software applications. From the security analyses and performance tests, it is proven that LAO-3D can provide sufficient security at low costs in mobile encryption applications.

Audio steganography is implemented based on three main features: capacity, robustness, and imperceptibility, but simultaneously implementing them is still a challenge. Embedding data at the Least Significant Bit (LSB) of the audio sample is one of the most implemented audio steganography methods because the method will give high capacity and imperceptibility. However, LSB has the lowest robustness among all common methods in audio steganography. To cater to this problem, researchers increased the depth of the embedding level from fourth to sixth and eighth LSB level to improve its robustness feature. However, consequently, the imperceptibility feature, which is commonly measured by Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), is reduced due to the trade-off between imperceptibility and robustness. Currently, the lack of study on the estimation of the PSNR for audio steganography has caused the early assessment of the imperceptibility-robustness trade-off difficult. Therefore, a method to estimate PSNR, known as PSNR Estimator (PE), is introduced to enable early evaluation of imperceptibility feature for each stego-file produced by the audio steganography, which is important for the utilisation of embedding. The proposed PE estimates the PSNR based on the pattern collected from the embedment at different levels. From the evaluation, the proposed method has 99.9% of accuracy in estimating PSNR values at different levels. In comparison with the Mazdak Method, the proposed method performs better in all situations. In conclusion, the proposed PE can be used as a reference for embedding and further reducing the calculation complexity in finding the feasible value to minimise the trade-off between robustness and imperceptibility.

RECTANGLE lightweight algorithm is a 64-bit block cipher using 80-bit and 128-bit key variants. A lightweight algorithm takes lesser computational power than a conventional algorithm. Implementing a lightweight algorithm in low-resource devices is more effective. To ensure the output has no pattern, randomness is an essential property for an algorithm. The NIST Statistical Test Suite is used to execute the randomness analysis. To produce 1,000 input sequences for each algorithm, nine data categories are implemented. RECTANGLE-80 and RECTANGLE-128 passed the randomness analysis with 98.73% and 98.48%. The results reveal that RECTANGLE appears to be non-random based on the 0.1% significance level. The analysis findings found weaknesses that can be explored in future research.

Lightweight block ciphers have become a standard for security protections on IoT devices. Advanced technology is required to secure the data, thus encryption is the method that can provide information security. From previous studies, comparisons of lightweight algorithms in various literature focus on their performance and implementation. However, a lack of analysis has been done on the relationship between the algorithm components and their security strength. This information is crucial for developers in designing secure algorithms. In this paper, a comprehensive systematic literature review on 101 existing lightweight algorithms is presented. This review focuses on the security aspect of lightweight algorithms that cover the identification of secure design components based on substitution and permutation. Security analysis and the evolution of lightweight algorithms are also presented. This research includes the results and discussions to observe the selections of substitution and permutation functions to analyse their impact on the security strength. Recommendations from the developer's insight on methods and considerations for designing an algorithm are also presented. Findings from the research indicate that various techniques can be used to develop a secure algorithm. Most importantly, an algorithm must be provided with confusion and diffusion properties in the design to ensure sufficient security

Now a days, a proper method for presenting information is crucial due to the increase of mass volume and complexity of information. As for Muslim, Quran is referred as one of the main resources for guidance and reference for their daily life. Currently, there are many methods have been used for Quran verses retrieval. However, there is still lack of studies on the scientific way for Quran verses retrieval. As a consequence, it is quite hard to obtain accurate information and might lead to wrong information being retrieved. Therefore, this study investigates and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of existing works. Furthermore, a case study on a new Quran ontology alignment model by integrating the upper ontology (Quran corpus) and domain ontology (general medical) for Quran verses extraction is discussed in this study. Based on the findings, ontology remodeling is required to fix the inconsistency of the ontology by integrating ontology alignment technique and fuzzy algorithm.