The Automation of the Extraction of Evidence masked by Steganographic Techniques in WAV and MP3 Audio Files

Antiforensics techniques and particularly steganography and cryptography have become increasingly pressing issues that affect the current digital forensics practice, both techniques are widely researched and developed as considered in the heart of the modern digital era but remain double edged swords standing between the privacy conscious and the criminally malicious, dependent on the severity of the methods deployed. This paper advances the automation of hidden evidence extraction in the context of audio files enabling the correlation between unprocessed evidence artefacts and extreme Steganographic and Cryptographic techniques using the Least Significant Bits extraction method (LSB). The research generates an in-depth review of current digital forensic toolkit and systems and formally address their capabilities in handling steganography-related cases, we opted for experimental research methodology in the form of quantitative analysis of the efficiency of detecting and extraction of hidden artefacts in WAV and MP3 audio files by comparing standard industry software. This work establishes an environment for the practical implementation and testing of the proposed approach and the new toolkit for extracting evidence hidden by Cryptographic and Steganographic techniques during forensics investigations. The proposed multi-approach automation demonstrated a huge positive impact in terms of efficiency and accuracy and notably on large audio files (MP3 and WAV) which the forensics analysis is time-consuming and requires significant computational resources and memory. However, the proposed automation may occasionally produce false positives (detecting steganography where none exists) or false negatives (failing to detect steganography that is present) but overall achieve a balance between detecting hidden data accurately along with minimising the false alarms.Comment: Wires Forensics Sciences Under Revie

Steganography Approach to Image Authentication Using Pulse Coupled Neural Network

This paper introduces a model for the authentication of large-scale images. The crucial element of the proposed model is the optimized Pulse Coupled Neural Network. This neural network generates position matrices based on which the embedding of authentication data into cover images is applied. Emphasis is placed on the minimalization of the stego image entropy change. Stego image entropy is consequently compared with the reference entropy of the cover image. The security of the suggested solution is granted by the neural network weights initialized with a steganographic key and by the encryption of accompanying steganographic data using the AES-256 algorithm. The integrity of the images is verified through the SHA-256 hash function. The integration of the accompanying and authentication data directly into the stego image and the authentication of the large images are the main contributions of the work

Data hiding techniques in steganography using fibonacci sequence and knight tour algorithm

The foremost priority in the information and communication technology era, is achieving an efficient and accurate steganography system for hiding information. The developed system of hiding the secret message must capable of not giving any clue to the adversaries about the hidden data. In this regard, enhancing the security and capacity by maintaining the Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) of the steganography system is the main issue to be addressed. This study proposed an improved for embedding secret message into an image. This newly developed method is demonstrated to increase the security and capacity to resolve the existing problems. A binary text image is used to represent the secret message instead of normal text. Three stages implementations are used to select the pixel before random embedding to select block of (64 × 64) pixels, follows by the Knight Tour algorithm to select sub-block of (8 × 8) pixels, and finally by the random pixels selection. For secret embedding, Fibonacci sequence is implemented to decomposition pixel from 8 bitplane to 12 bitplane. The proposed method is distributed over the entire image to maintain high level of security against any kind of attack. Gray images from the standard dataset (USC-SIPI) including Lena, Peppers, Baboon, and Cameraman are implemented for benchmarking. The results show good PSNR value with high capacity and these findings verified the worthiness of the proposed method. High complexities of pixels distribution and replacement of bits will ensure better security and robust imperceptibility compared to the existing systems in the literature

An Image Steganography Algorithm for Hiding Data Based on HDWT, LZW and OPAP

Image steganography is the art of information hiding, which embeds a secret data into a cover image. However, high capacity of secret data and high quality of stego image are key issues in image steganography. In this paper, an image steganography technique based on Haar Discrete Wavelet Transform (HDWT), Lempel Ziv Welch (LZW) algorithm and Optimal Pixel Adjustment Process (OPAP) is proposed. The HDWT is used to increase the robustness of stego image against attacks. To increase the hidden capacity, LZW algorithm is performed on the secret message. The OPAP is then applied to reduce the embedding error between the cover image and stego image. The experimental results are evaluated by four standard images as covers, and with two types of secret messages. The results demonstrate high visual quality of stego image with large Hidden Capacity (HC) of secret data compared with recent technique

Recent Advances in Steganography

Steganography is the art and science of communicating which hides the existence of the communication. Steganographic technologies are an important part of the future of Internet security and privacy on open systems such as the Internet. This book's focus is on a relatively new field of study in Steganography and it takes a look at this technology by introducing the readers various concepts of Steganography and Steganalysis. The book has a brief history of steganography and it surveys steganalysis methods considering their modeling techniques. Some new steganography techniques for hiding secret data in images are presented. Furthermore, steganography in speeches is reviewed, and a new approach for hiding data in speeches is introduced

Image Steganography by Using Multiwavelet Transform

Steganography is the art of secret communication. Its purpose is to hide the presence of information, using, for example, images as covers. The frequency domain is well suited for embedding in image, since hiding in this frequency domain coefficients is robust to many attacks. This paper proposed hiding a secret image of size equal to quarter of the cover one. Set Partitioning in Hierarchal Trees (SPIHT) codec is used to code the secret image to achieve security. The proposed method applies Discrete Multiwavelet Transform (DMWT) for cover image. The coded bit stream of the secret image is embedded in the high frequency subbands of the transformed cover one. A scaling factors ? and ? in frequency domain control the quality of the stego images. The proposed algorithm is compared with wavelet based algorithm which shows a favorable results in terms of PSNR reaches to 18 dB

Information Hiding in Images Using Steganography Techniques

Innovation of technology and having fast Internet make information to distribute over the world easily and economically. This is made people to worry about their privacy and works. Steganography is a technique that prevents unauthorized users to have access to the important data. The steganography and digital watermarking provide methods that users can hide and mix their information within other information that make them difficult to recognize by attackers. In this paper, we review some techniques of steganography and digital watermarking in both spatial and frequency domains. Also we explain types of host documents and we focused on types of images