title: Aims and methods of biosteganography.
abstract: Applications of biotechnology to information security are now possible and have potentially far reaching political and technological implications. This change in information security practices, initiated by advancements in molecular biological and biotechnology, warrants reasonable and widespread consideration by biologists, biotechnologists and philosophers. I offer an explication of the landmark contributions, developments and current possibilities of biosteganography-the process of transmitting secure messages via biological mediums. I address, (i) how information can be stored and encoded in biological mediums, (ii) how biological mediums (e.g. DNA, RNA, protein) and storage systems (e.g. cells, biofilms, organisms) influence the nature of information security, and (iii) what constitutes a viable application of such biotechnologies.
authors.affiliation: Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Dalhousie University, 6050 University Avenue, Halifax, NS, Canada B3H 1W5. Electronic address: tyler.brunet@dal.ca.
authors.forename: Tyler D P
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Brunet
mesh_terms: D001709:Biotechnology; D016494:Computer Security
keywords: Biological steganography; DNA cryptography; DNA encoding; Information security; Post-genomics