Side-Information For Steganography Design And Detection

Today, the most secure steganographic schemes for digital images embed secret messages while minimizing a distortion function that describes the local complexity of the content. Distortion functions are heuristically designed to predict the modeling error, or in other words, how difficult it would be to detect a single change to the original image in any given area. This dissertation investigates how both the design and detection of such content-adaptive schemes can be improved with the use of side-information. We distinguish two types of side-information, public and private: Public side-information is available to the sender and at least in part also to anybody else who can observe the communication. Content complexity is a typical example of public side-information. While it is commonly used for steganography, it can also be used for detection. In this work, we propose a modification to the rich-model style feature sets in both spatial and JPEG domain to inform such feature sets of the content complexity. Private side-information is available only to the sender. The previous use of private side-information in steganography was very successful but limited to steganography in JPEG images. Also, the constructions were based on heuristic with little theoretical foundations. This work tries to remedy this deficiency by introducing a scheme that generalizes the previous approach to an arbitrary domain. We also put forward a theoretical investigation of how to incorporate side-information based on a model of images. Third, we propose to use a novel type of side-information in the form of multiple exposures for JPEG steganography

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

Contribution des filtres LPTV et des techniques d'interpolation au tatouage numérique

Les Changements d'Horloge Périodiques (PCC) et les filtres Linéaires Variant Périodiquement dans le Temps (LPTV) sont utilisés dans le domaine des télécommunications multi-utilisateurs. Dans cette thèse, nous montrons que, dans l'ensemble des techniques de tatouage par étalement de spectre, ils peuvent se substituer à la modulation par code pseudo-aléatoire. Les modules de décodage optimal, de resynchronisation, de pré-annulation des interférences et de quantification de la transformée d'étalement s'appliquent également aux PCC et aux filtres LPTV. Pour le modèle de signaux stationnaires blancs gaussiens, ces techniques présentent des performances identiques à l'étalement à Séquence Directe (DS) classique. Cependant, nous montrons que, dans le cas d'un signal corrélé localement, la luminance d'une image naturelle notamment, la périodicité des PCC et des filtres LPTV associée à un parcours d'image de type Peano-Hilbert conduit à de meilleures performances. Les filtres LPTV sont en outre un outil plus puissant qu'une simple modulation DS. Nous les utilisons pour effectuer un masquage spectral simultanément à l'étalement, ainsi qu'un rejet des interférences de l'image dans le domaine spectral. Cette dernière technique possède de très bonnes performances au décodage. Le second axe de cette thèse est l'étude des liens entre interpolation et tatouage numérique. Nous soulignons d'abord le rôle de l'interpolation dans les attaques sur la robustesse du tatouage. Nous construisons ensuite des techniques de tatouage bénéficiant des propriétés perceptuelles de l'interpolation. La première consiste en des masques perceptuels utilisant le bruit d'interpolation. Dans la seconde, un schéma de tatouage informé est construit autour de l'interpolation. Cet algorithme, qu'on peut relier aux techniques de catégorisation aléatoire, utilise des règles d'insertion et de décodage originales, incluant un masquage perceptuel intrinsèque. Outre ces bonnes propriétés perceptuelles, il présente un rejet des interférences de l'hôte et une robustesse à diverses attaques telles que les transformations valumétriques. Son niveau de sécurité est évalué à l'aide d'algorithmes d'attaque pratiques. ABSTRACT : Periodic Clock Changes (PCC) and Linear Periodically Time Varying (LPTV) filters have previously been applied to multi-user telecommunications in the Signal and Communications group of IRIT laboratory. In this thesis, we show that in each digital watermarking scheme involving spread-spectrum, they can be substituted to modulation by a pseudo-noise. The additional steps of optimal decoding, resynchronization, pre-cancellation of interference and quantization of a spread transform apply also to PCCs and LPTV filters. For white Gaussian stationary signals, these techniques offer similar performance as classical Direct Sequence (DS) spreading. However we show that, in the case of locally correlated signals such as image luminance, the periodicity of PCCs and LPTV filters associated to a Peano-Hilbert scan leads to better performance. Moreover, LPTV filters are a more powerful tool than simple DS modulation. We use LPTV filters to conduct spectrum masking simultaneous to spreading, as well as image interference cancellation in the spectral domain. The latter technique offers good decoding performance. The second axis of this thesis is the study of the links between interpolation and digital watermarking.We stress the role of interpolation in attacks on the watermark.We propose then watermarking techniques that benefit from interpolation perceptual properties. The first technique consists in constructing perceptualmasks proportional to an interpolation error. In the second technique, an informed watermarking scheme derives form interpolation. This scheme exhibits good perceptual properties, host-interference rejection and robustness to various attacks such as valumetric transforms. Its security level is assessed by ad hoc practical attack algorithms