Image statistical frameworks for digital image forensics

The advances of digital cameras, scanners, printers, image editing tools, smartphones, tablet personal computers as well as high-speed networks have made a digital image a conventional medium for visual information. Creation, duplication, distribution, or tampering of such a medium can be easily done, which calls for the necessity to be able to trace back the authenticity or history of the medium. Digital image forensics is an emerging research area that aims to resolve the imposed problem and has grown in popularity over the past decade. On the other hand, anti-forensics has emerged over the past few years as a relatively new branch of research, aiming at revealing the weakness of the forensic technology. These two sides of research move digital image forensic technologies to the next higher level. Three major contributions are presented in this dissertation as follows. First, an effective multi-resolution image statistical framework for digital image forensics of passive-blind nature is presented in the frequency domain. The image statistical framework is generated by applying Markovian rake transform to image luminance component. Markovian rake transform is the applications of Markov process to difference arrays which are derived from the quantized block discrete cosine transform 2-D arrays with multiple block sizes. The efficacy and universality of the framework is then evaluated in two major applications of digital image forensics: 1) digital image tampering detection; 2) classification of computer graphics and photographic images. Second, a simple yet effective anti-forensic scheme is proposed, capable of obfuscating double JPEG compression artifacts, which may vital information for image forensics, for instance, digital image tampering detection. Shrink-and-zoom (SAZ) attack, the proposed scheme, is simply based on image resizing and bilinear interpolation. The effectiveness of SAZ has been evaluated over two promising double JPEG compression schemes and the outcome reveals that the proposed scheme is effective, especially in the cases that the first quality factor is lower than the second quality factor. Third, an advanced textural image statistical framework in the spatial domain is proposed, utilizing local binary pattern (LBP) schemes to model local image statistics on various kinds of residual images including higher-order ones. The proposed framework can be implemented either in single- or multi-resolution setting depending on the nature of application of interest. The efficacy of the proposed framework is evaluated on two forensic applications: 1) steganalysis with emphasis on HUGO (Highly Undetectable Steganography), an advanced steganographic scheme embedding hidden data in a content-adaptive manner locally into some image regions which are difficult for modeling image statics; 2) image recapture detection (IRD). The outcomes of the evaluations suggest that the proposed framework is effective, not only for detecting local changes which is in line with the nature of HUGO, but also for detecting global difference (the nature of IRD)

Digital image forensics

Digital image forensics is a relatively new research field that aims to expose the origin and composition of, and the history of processing applied to digital images. Hence, the digital image forensics is expected to be of significant importance to our modern society in which the digital media are getting more and more popular. In this thesis, image tampering detection and classification of double JPEG compression are the two major subjects studied. Since any manipulation applied to digital images changes image statistics, identifying statistical artifacts becomes critically important in image forensics. In this thesis, a few typical forensic techniques have been studied. Finally, it is foreseen that the investigations on endless confliction between forensics and anti-forensics are to deepen our understanding on image statistics and advance civilization of our society

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

Machine learning based digital image forensics and steganalysis

The security and trustworthiness of digital images have become crucial issues due to the simplicity of malicious processing. Therefore, the research on image steganalysis (determining if a given image has secret information hidden inside) and image forensics (determining the origin and authenticity of a given image and revealing the processing history the image has gone through) has become crucial to the digital society. In this dissertation, the steganalysis and forensics of digital images are treated as pattern classification problems so as to make advanced machine learning (ML) methods applicable. Three topics are covered: (1) architectural design of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for steganalysis, (2) statistical feature extraction for camera model classification, and (3) real-world tampering detection and localization. For covert communications, steganography is used to embed secret messages into images by altering pixel values slightly. Since advanced steganography alters the pixel values in the image regions that are hard to be detected, the traditional ML-based steganalytic methods heavily relied on sophisticated manual feature design have been pushed to the limit. To overcome this difficulty, in-depth studies are conducted and reported in this dissertation so as to move the success achieved by the CNNs in computer vision to steganalysis. The outcomes achieved and reported in this dissertation are: (1) a proposed CNN architecture incorporating the domain knowledge of steganography and steganalysis, and (2) ensemble methods of the CNNs for steganalysis. The proposed CNN is currently one of the best classifiers against steganography. Camera model classification from images aims at assigning a given image to its source capturing camera model based on the statistics of image pixel values. For this, two types of statistical features are designed to capture the traces left by in-camera image processing algorithms. The first is Markov transition probabilities modeling block-DCT coefficients for JPEG images; the second is based on histograms of local binary patterns obtained in both the spatial and wavelet domains. The designed features serve as the input to train support vector machines, which have the best classification performance at the time the features are proposed. The last part of this dissertation documents the solutions delivered by the author’s team to The First Image Forensics Challenge organized by the Information Forensics and Security Technical Committee of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. In the competition, all the fake images involved were doctored by popular image-editing software to simulate the real-world scenario of tampering detection (determine if a given image has been tampered or not) and localization (determine which pixels have been tampered). In Phase-1 of the Challenge, advanced steganalysis features were successfully migrated to tampering detection. In Phase-2 of the Challenge, an efficient copy-move detector equipped with PatchMatch as a fast approximate nearest neighbor searching method were developed to identify duplicated regions within images. With these tools, the author’s team won the runner-up prizes in both the two phases of the Challenge

Image Steganalysis in Frequency Domain Using Co-Occurrence Matrix and Bpnn

In the last two decades, steganalysis has become a fertile research area to minimize the security risks left behind by Misuse of data concealment in digital computer files. As the propagation of hidden writing increased, the need for the steganalysis emerged and grew to a large extent necessary to deter illicit secret communications. This paper introduces a steganalysis system to detect hidden information in images through using co-occurrence matrix, frequency domain transform, the first three moments, and back propagation neural network (BPNN). Four varieties of the system implemented. Firstly, the co-occurrence matrix calculated for the input image, which suspected to be a carrier of hidden secret information. Second, three levels of discrete wavelet transform (DWT) are applied resulting in 12 subbands. Then, those subbands along with the original image are transformed by discrete Fourier transform (DFT) or discrete cosine transform (DCT) to produce 13 subbands. After that, the first three moments are calculated resulting feature vector with 39 features. Finally, BPNN is used as a classifier to determine whether the image is containing hidden information or not. The system is tested with and without co-occurrence matrix, each of them once using DFT and another time using DCT. The results have shown that using co-occurrence matrix with DFT has the highest performance, which was 81.82% on the Hiding Ratio of 0.5 bit per pixel. This work demonstrates a good effect comparing to previous works

Markov bidirectional transfer matrix for detecting LSB speech steganography with low embedding rates

Steganalysis with low embedding rates is still a challenge in the field of information hiding. Speech signals are typically processed by wavelet packet decomposition, which is capable of depicting the details of signals with high accuracy. A steganography detection algorithm based on the Markov bidirectional transition matrix (MBTM) of the wavelet packet coefficient (WPC) of the second-order derivative-based speech signal is proposed. On basis of the MBTM feature, which can better express the correlation of WPC, a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier is trained by a large number of Least Significant Bit (LSB) hidden data with embedding rates of 1%, 3%, 5%, 8%,10%, 30%, 50%, and 80%. LSB matching steganalysis of speech signals with low embedding rates is achieved. The experimental results show that the proposed method has obvious superiorities in steganalysis with low embedding rates compared with the classic method using histogram moment features in the frequency domain (HMIFD) of the second-order derivative-based WPC and the second-order derivative-based Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC). Especially when the embedding rate is only 3%, the accuracy rate improves by 17.8%, reaching 68.5%, in comparison with the method using HMIFD features of the second derivative WPC. The detection accuracy improves as the embedding rate increases

Information Analysis for Steganography and Steganalysis in 3D Polygonal Meshes

Information hiding, which embeds a watermark/message over a cover signal, has recently found extensive applications in, for example, copyright protection, content authentication and covert communication. It has been widely considered as an appealing technology to complement conventional cryptographic processes in the field of multimedia security by embedding information into the signal being protected. Generally, information hiding can be classified into two categories: steganography and watermarking. While steganography attempts to embed as much information as possible into a cover signal, watermarking tries to emphasize the robustness of the embedded information at the expense of embedding capacity. In contrast to information hiding, steganalysis aims at detecting whether a given medium has hidden message in it, and, if possible, recover that hidden message. It can be used to measure the security performance of information hiding techniques, meaning a steganalysis resistant steganographic/watermarking method should be imperceptible not only to Human Vision Systems (HVS), but also to intelligent analysis. As yet, 3D information hiding and steganalysis has received relatively less attention compared to image information hiding, despite the proliferation of 3D computer graphics models which are fairly promising information carriers. This thesis focuses on this relatively neglected research area and has the following primary objectives: 1) to investigate the trade-off between embedding capacity and distortion by considering the correlation between spatial and normal/curvature noise in triangle meshes; 2) to design satisfactory 3D steganographic algorithms, taking into account this trade-off; 3) to design robust 3D watermarking algorithms; 4) to propose a steganalysis framework for detecting the existence of the hidden information in 3D models and introduce a universal 3D steganalytic method under this framework. %and demonstrate the performance of the proposed steganalysis by testing it against six well-known 3D steganographic/watermarking methods. The thesis is organized as follows. Chapter 1 describes in detail the background relating to information hiding and steganalysis, as well as the research problems this thesis will be studying. Chapter 2 conducts a survey on the previous information hiding techniques for digital images, 3D models and other medium and also on image steganalysis algorithms. Motivated by the observation that the knowledge of the spatial accuracy of the mesh vertices does not easily translate into information related to the accuracy of other visually important mesh attributes such as normals, Chapters 3 and 4 investigate the impact of modifying vertex coordinates of 3D triangle models on the mesh normals. Chapter 3 presents the results of an empirical investigation, whereas Chapter 4 presents the results of a theoretical study. Based on these results, a high-capacity 3D steganographic algorithm capable of controlling embedding distortion is also presented in Chapter 4. In addition to normal information, several mesh interrogation, processing and rendering algorithms make direct or indirect use of curvature information. Motivated by this, Chapter 5 studies the relation between Discrete Gaussian Curvature (DGC) degradation and vertex coordinate modifications. Chapter 6 proposes a robust watermarking algorithm for 3D polygonal models, based on modifying the histogram of the distances from the model vertices to a point in 3D space. That point is determined by applying Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to the cover model. The use of PCA makes the watermarking method robust against common 3D operations, such as rotation, translation and vertex reordering. In addition, Chapter 6 develops a 3D specific steganalytic algorithm to detect the existence of the hidden messages embedded by one well-known watermarking method. By contrast, the focus of Chapter 7 will be on developing a 3D watermarking algorithm that is resistant to mesh editing or deformation attacks that change the global shape of the mesh. By adopting a framework which has been successfully developed for image steganalysis, Chapter 8 designs a 3D steganalysis method to detect the existence of messages hidden in 3D models with existing steganographic and watermarking algorithms. The efficiency of this steganalytic algorithm has been evaluated on five state-of-the-art 3D watermarking/steganographic methods. Moreover, being a universal steganalytic algorithm can be used as a benchmark for measuring the anti-steganalysis performance of other existing and most importantly future watermarking/steganographic algorithms. Chapter 9 concludes this thesis and also suggests some potential directions for future work