Overview on Hiding Data in Microsoft Office Documents

Abstract

Steganography is the science of hiding information in various types of data. Some of the most popular formats for Microsoft Office electronic documents are docx, xlsx, and pptx. The paper analyzes the structure of documents according to the OOXML standard. Algorithms for embedding data in electronic documents such as docx, xlsx and pptx, using the functionality of Microsoft office, as well as corresponding to a zip archive, are considered. There are six types of data attachments: zip comments, restricted zip fields, file embedding, additional Xml fields, hidden text, and tracking text. The stability of the data algorithm and the main advantages and disadvantages are assessed.