Steganography and steganalysis: data hiding in Vorbis audio streams

The goal of the current work is to introduce ourselves in the world of steganography and steganalysis, centering our efforts in acoustic signals, a branch of steganography and steganalysis which has received much less attention than steganography and steganalysis for images. With this purpose in mind, it’s essential to get first a basic level of understanding of signal theory and the properties of the Human Auditory System, and we will dedicate ourselves to that aim during the first part of this work. Once established those basis, in the second part, we will obtain a precise image of the state of the art in steganographic and steganalytic sciences, from which we will be able to establish or deduce some good practices guides. With both previous subjects in mind, we will be able to create, design and implement a stego-system over Vorbis audio codec and, finally, as conclusion, analyze it using the principles studied during the first and second parts

Digital watermarking, information embedding, and data hiding systems

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (p. 139-142).Digital watermarking, information embedding, and data hiding systems embed information, sometimes called a digital watermark, inside a host signal, which is typically an image, audio signal, or video signal. The host signal is not degraded unacceptably in the process, and one can recover the watermark even if the composite host and watermark signal undergo a variety of corruptions and attacks as long as these corruptions do not unacceptably degrade the host signal. These systems play an important role in meeting at least three major challenges that result from the widespread use of digital communication networks to disseminate multimedia content: (1) the relative ease with which one can generate perfect copies of digital signals creates a need for copyright protection mechanisms, (2) the relative ease with which one can alter digital signals creates a need for authentication and tamper-detection methods, and (3) the increase in sheer volume of transmitted data creates a demand for bandwidth-efficient methods to either backwards-compatibly increase capacities of existing legacy networks or deploy new networks backwards-compatibly with legacy networks. We introduce a framework within which to design and analyze digital watermarking and information embedding systems. In this framework performance is characterized by achievable rate-distortion-robustness trade-offs, and this framework leads quite naturally to a new class of embedding methods called quantization index modulation (QIM). These QIM methods, especially when combined with postprocessing called distortion compensation, achieve provably better rate-distortion-robustness performance than previously proposed classes of methods such as spread spectrum methods and generalized low-bit modulation methods in a number of different scenarios, which include both intentional and unintentional attacks. Indeed, we show that distortion-compensated QIM methods can achieve capacity, the information-theoretically best possible rate-distortion-robustness performance, against both additive Gaussian noise attacks and arbitrary squared error distortion-constrained attacks. These results also have implications for the problem of communicating over broadcast channels. We also present practical implementations of QIM methods called dither modulation and demonstrate their performance both analytically and through empirical simulations.by Brian Chen.Ph.D

Recent Advances in Signal Processing

The signal processing task is a very critical issue in the majority of new technological inventions and challenges in a variety of applications in both science and engineering fields. Classical signal processing techniques have largely worked with mathematical models that are linear, local, stationary, and Gaussian. They have always favored closed-form tractability over real-world accuracy. These constraints were imposed by the lack of powerful computing tools. During the last few decades, signal processing theories, developments, and applications have matured rapidly and now include tools from many areas of mathematics, computer science, physics, and engineering. This book is targeted primarily toward both students and researchers who want to be exposed to a wide variety of signal processing techniques and algorithms. It includes 27 chapters that can be categorized into five different areas depending on the application at hand. These five categories are ordered to address image processing, speech processing, communication systems, time-series analysis, and educational packages respectively. The book has the advantage of providing a collection of applications that are completely independent and self-contained; thus, the interested reader can choose any chapter and skip to another without losing continuity

Intelligent Circuits and Systems

ICICS-2020 is the third conference initiated by the School of Electronics and Electrical Engineering at Lovely Professional University that explored recent innovations of researchers working for the development of smart and green technologies in the fields of Energy, Electronics, Communications, Computers, and Control. ICICS provides innovators to identify new opportunities for the social and economic benefits of society.　 This conference bridges the gap between academics and R&D institutions, social visionaries, and experts from all strata of society to present their ongoing research activities and foster research relations between them. It provides opportunities for the exchange of new ideas, applications, and experiences in the field of smart technologies and finding global partners for future collaboration. The ICICS-2020 was conducted in two broad categories, Intelligent Circuits & Intelligent Systems and Emerging Technologies in Electrical Engineering

ID Photograph hashing : a global approach

This thesis addresses the question of the authenticity of identity photographs, part of the documents required in controlled access. Since sophisticated means of reproduction are publicly available, new methods / techniques should prevent tampering and unauthorized reproduction of the photograph. This thesis proposes a hashing method for the authentication of the identity photographs, robust to print-and-scan. This study focuses also on the effects of digitization at hash level. The developed algorithm performs a dimension reduction, based on independent component analysis (ICA). In the learning stage, the subspace projection is obtained by applying ICA and then reduced according to an original entropic selection strategy. In the extraction stage, the coefficients obtained after projecting the identity image on the subspace are quantified and binarized to obtain the hash value. The study reveals the effects of the scanning noise on the hash values of the identity photographs and shows that the proposed method is robust to the print-and-scan attack. The approach focusing on robust hashing of a restricted class of images (identity) differs from classical approaches that address any imageCette thèse traite de la question de l’authenticité des photographies d’identité, partie intégrante des documents nécessaires lors d’un contrôle d’accès. Alors que les moyens de reproduction sophistiqués sont accessibles au grand public, de nouvelles méthodes / techniques doivent empêcher toute falsification / reproduction non autorisée de la photographie d’identité. Cette thèse propose une méthode de hachage pour l’authentification de photographies d’identité, robuste à l’impression-lecture. Ce travail met ainsi l’accent sur les effets de la numérisation au niveau de hachage. L’algorithme mis au point procède à une réduction de dimension, basée sur l’analyse en composantes indépendantes (ICA). Dans la phase d’apprentissage, le sous-espace de projection est obtenu en appliquant l’ICA puis réduit selon une stratégie de sélection entropique originale. Dans l’étape d’extraction, les coefficients obtenus après projection de l’image d’identité sur le sous-espace sont quantifiés et binarisés pour obtenir la valeur de hachage. L’étude révèle les effets du bruit de balayage intervenant lors de la numérisation des photographies d’identité sur les valeurs de hachage et montre que la méthode proposée est robuste à l’attaque d’impression-lecture. L’approche suivie en se focalisant sur le hachage robuste d’une classe restreinte d’images (d’identité) se distingue des approches classiques qui adressent une image quelconqu

Image and Video Forensics

Nowadays, images and videos have become the main modalities of information being exchanged in everyday life, and their pervasiveness has led the image forensics community to question their reliability, integrity, confidentiality, and security. Multimedia contents are generated in many different ways through the use of consumer electronics and high-quality digital imaging devices, such as smartphones, digital cameras, tablets, and wearable and IoT devices. The ever-increasing convenience of image acquisition has facilitated instant distribution and sharing of digital images on digital social platforms, determining a great amount of exchange data. Moreover, the pervasiveness of powerful image editing tools has allowed the manipulation of digital images for malicious or criminal ends, up to the creation of synthesized images and videos with the use of deep learning techniques. In response to these threats, the multimedia forensics community has produced major research efforts regarding the identification of the source and the detection of manipulation. In all cases (e.g., forensic investigations, fake news debunking, information warfare, and cyberattacks) where images and videos serve as critical evidence, forensic technologies that help to determine the origin, authenticity, and integrity of multimedia content can become essential tools. This book aims to collect a diverse and complementary set of articles that demonstrate new developments and applications in image and video forensics to tackle new and serious challenges to ensure media authenticity

Introductory Computer Forensics

INTERPOL (International Police) built cybercrime programs to keep up with emerging cyber threats, and aims to coordinate and assist international operations for ?ghting crimes involving computers. Although signi?cant international efforts are being made in dealing with cybercrime and cyber-terrorism, ?nding effective, cooperative, and collaborative ways to deal with complicated cases that span multiple jurisdictions has proven dif?cult in practic