Conditional Entrench Spatial Domain Steganography

Steganography is a technique of concealing the secret information in a digital carrier media, so that only the authorized recipient can detect the presence of secret information. In this paper, we propose a spatial domain steganography method for embedding secret information on conditional basis using 1-Bit of Most Significant Bit (MSB). The cover image is decomposed into blocks of 8*8 matrix size. The first block of cover image is embedded with 8 bits of upper bound and lower bound values required for retrieving payload at the destination. The mean of median values and difference between consecutive pixels of each 8*8 block of cover image is determined to embed payload in 3 bits of Least Significant Bit (LSB) and 1 bit of MSB based on prefixed conditions. It is observed that the capacity and security is improved compared to the existing methods with reasonable PSNR

Error resilient image transmission using T-codes and edge-embedding

Current image communication applications involve image transmission over noisy channels, where the image gets damaged. The loss of synchronization at the decoder due to these errors increases the damage in the reconstructed image. Our main goal in this research is to develop an algorithm that has the capability to detect errors, achieve synchronization and conceal errors.;In this thesis we studied the performance of T-codes in comparison with Huffman codes. We develop an algorithm for the selection of best T-code set. We have shown that T-codes exhibit better synchronization properties when compared to Huffman Codes. In this work we developed an algorithm that extracts edge patterns from each 8x8 block, classifies edge patterns into different classes. In this research we also propose a novel scrambling algorithm to hide edge pattern of a block into neighboring 8x8 blocks of the image. This scrambled hidden data is used in the detection of errors and concealment of errors. We also develop an algorithm to protect the hidden data from getting damaged in the course of transmission

Steganographer Identification

Conventional steganalysis detects the presence of steganography within single objects. In the real-world, we may face a complex scenario that one or some of multiple users called actors are guilty of using steganography, which is typically defined as the Steganographer Identification Problem (SIP). One might use the conventional steganalysis algorithms to separate stego objects from cover objects and then identify the guilty actors. However, the guilty actors may be lost due to a number of false alarms. To deal with the SIP, most of the state-of-the-arts use unsupervised learning based approaches. In their solutions, each actor holds multiple digital objects, from which a set of feature vectors can be extracted. The well-defined distances between these feature sets are determined to measure the similarity between the corresponding actors. By applying clustering or outlier detection, the most suspicious actor(s) will be judged as the steganographer(s). Though the SIP needs further study, the existing works have good ability to identify the steganographer(s) when non-adaptive steganographic embedding was applied. In this chapter, we will present foundational concepts and review advanced methodologies in SIP. This chapter is self-contained and intended as a tutorial introducing the SIP in the context of media steganography.Comment: A tutorial with 30 page

Data Hiding in Digital Video

With the rapid development of digital multimedia technologies, an old method which is called steganography has been sought to be a solution for data hiding applications such as digital watermarking and covert communication. Steganography is the art of secret communication using a cover signal, e.g., video, audio, image etc., whereas the counter-technique, detecting the existence of such as a channel through a statistically trained classifier, is called steganalysis. The state-of-the art data hiding algorithms utilize features; such as Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficients, pixel values, motion vectors etc., of the cover signal to convey the message to the receiver side. The goal of embedding algorithm is to maximize the number of bits sent to the decoder side (embedding capacity) with maximum robustness against attacks while keeping the perceptual and statistical distortions (security) low. Data Hiding schemes are characterized by these three conflicting requirements: security against steganalysis, robustness against channel associated and/or intentional distortions, and the capacity in terms of the embedded payload. Depending upon the application it is the designer\u27s task to find an optimum solution amongst them. The goal of this thesis is to develop a novel data hiding scheme to establish a covert channel satisfying statistical and perceptual invisibility with moderate rate capacity and robustness to combat steganalysis based detection. The idea behind the proposed method is the alteration of Video Object (VO) trajectory coordinates to convey the message to the receiver side by perturbing the centroid coordinates of the VO. Firstly, the VO is selected by the user and tracked through the frames by using a simple region based search strategy and morphological operations. After the trajectory coordinates are obtained, the perturbation of the coordinates implemented through the usage of a non-linear embedding function, such as a polar quantizer where both the magnitude and phase of the motion is used. However, the perturbations made to the motion magnitude and phase were kept small to preserve the semantic meaning of the object motion trajectory. The proposed method is well suited to the video sequences in which VOs have smooth motion trajectories. Examples of these types could be found in sports videos in which the ball is the focus of attention and exhibits various motion types, e.g., rolling on the ground, flying in the air, being possessed by a player, etc. Different sports video sequences have been tested by using the proposed method. Through the experimental results, it is shown that the proposed method achieved the goal of both statistical and perceptual invisibility with moderate rate embedding capacity under AWGN channel with varying noise variances. This achievement is important as the first step for both active and passive steganalysis is the detection of the existence of covert channel. This work has multiple contributions in the field of data hiding. Firstly, it is the first example of a data hiding method in which the trajectory of a VO is used. Secondly, this work has contributed towards improving steganographic security by providing new features: the coordinate location and semantic meaning of the object

Natural Image Statistics for Digital Image Forensics

We describe a set of natural image statistics that are built upon two multi-scale image decompositions, the quadrature mirror filter pyramid decomposition and the local angular harmonic decomposition. These image statistics consist of first- and higher-order statistics that capture certain statistical regularities of natural images. We propose to apply these image statistics, together with classification techniques, to three problems in digital image forensics: (1) differentiating photographic images from computer-generated photorealistic images, (2) generic steganalysis; (3) rebroadcast image detection. We also apply these image statistics to the traditional art authentication for forgery detection and identification of artists in an art work. For each application we show the effectiveness of these image statistics and analyze their sensitivity and robustness

Multi-Class Classification for Identifying JPEG Steganography Embedding Methods

Over 725 steganography tools are available over the Internet, each providing a method for covert transmission of secret messages. This research presents four steganalysis advancements that result in an algorithm that identifies the steganalysis tool used to embed a secret message in a JPEG image file. The algorithm includes feature generation, feature preprocessing, multi-class classification and classifier fusion. The first contribution is a new feature generation method which is based on the decomposition of discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients used in the JPEG image encoder. The generated features are better suited to identifying discrepancies in each area of the decomposed DCT coefficients. Second, the classification accuracy is further improved with the development of a feature ranking technique in the preprocessing stage for the kernel Fisher s discriminant (KFD) and support vector machines (SVM) classifiers in the kernel space during the training process. Third, for the KFD and SVM two-class classifiers a classification tree is designed from the kernel space to provide a multi-class classification solution for both methods. Fourth, by analyzing a set of classifiers, signature detectors, and multi-class classification methods a classifier fusion system is developed to increase the detection accuracy of identifying the embedding method used in generating the steganography images. Based on classifying stego images created from research and commercial JPEG steganography techniques, F5, JP Hide, JSteg, Model-based, Model-based Version 1.2, OutGuess, Steganos, StegHide and UTSA embedding methods, the performance of the system shows a statistically significant increase in classification accuracy of 5%. In addition, this system provides a solution for identifying steganographic fingerprints as well as the ability to include future multi-class classification tools