Solving the threat of LSB steganography within data loss prevention systems

With the recent spate of data loss breaches from industry and commerce, especially with the large number of Advanced Persistent Threats, companies are increasing their network boundary security. As network defences are enhanced through the use of Data Loss Prevention systems (DLP), attackers seek new ways of exploiting and extracting confidential data. This is often done by internal parties in large-scale organisations through the use of steganography. The successful utilisation of steganography makes the exportation of confidential data hard to detect, equipped with the ability of escaping even the most sophisticated DLP systems. This thesis provides two effective solutions to prevent data loss from effective LSB image steganographic behaviour, with the potential to be applied in industrial DLP systems

Solving the threat of LSB steganography within data loss prevention systems

With the recent spate of data loss breaches from industry and commerce, especially with the large number of Advanced Persistent Threats, companies are increasing their network boundary security. As network defences are enhanced through the use of Data Loss Prevention systems (DLP), attackers seek new ways of exploiting and extracting confidential data. This is often done by internal parties in large-scale organisations through the use of steganography. The successful utilisation of steganography makes the exportation of confidential data hard to detect, equipped with the ability of escaping even the most sophisticated DLP systems. This thesis provides two effective solutions to prevent data loss from effective LSB image steganographic behaviour, with the potential to be applied in industrial DLP systems

Human visual based perception of steganographic images

In 2014 it was estimated that 1.8 billion images were uploaded daily to the Internet, and in 2018 it is estimated that 3.2 billion images are shared daily. Some of these uploaded images may contain hidden information that can potentially be malicious (e.g. an image that contains hidden information regarding terrorism recruitment) or may cause serious damage (e.g. an employee wishing to hide sensitive company details in an image file and exporting the image to third parties). This research studied the most effective methods in manipulating images to hide information (Data Loss). Significant work has been done on computational algorithmic detection. Yet the desired output from this work was to find the point at which a human can no longer visually establish the difference between an original image and a manipulated image. This research examines the extent of use for file formats, bit depth alterations, least significant bits, message and audio concealment and watermark and filtering techniques for image steganography. The findings of this study indicated that audio insertion and picture insertion into cover image files are the strongest in deceiving the human eye. These results have been categorised for human visual perception in image-based steganography.PostprintPeer reviewe

Role of p53 in pseudorabies virus replication, pathogenicity, and host immune responses

International audienceAbstractAs a key cellular transcription factor that plays a central role in cellular responses to a broad range of stress factors, p53 has generally been considered as a host cell restriction factor for various viral infections. However, the defined roles of p53 in pseudorabies virus (PRV) replication, pathogenesis, and host responses remain unclear. In the present study, we initially constructed a p53 overexpressing a porcine kidney epithelial cell line (PK-15) to detect the effect of p53 on PRV replication in vitro. The results show that viral glycoprotein B (gB) gene copies and the titers of virus were significantly higher in p53 overexpressing PK-15 cells than in PK-15 and p53 inhibitor treated p53 overexpressing PK-15 cells. A similar result was also found in the p53 inhibitor PFT-α-treated PK-15 cells. We then examined the effects of p53 on PRV infection in vivo by using p53-knockout (p53−/−) mice. The results show that p53 knockout not only led to significantly reduced rates of mortality but also to reduced viral replication and development of viral encephalitis in the brains of mice following intracranial inoculation. Furthermore, we examined the effect of p53 knockout on the expression of the reported host cell regulators of PRV replication in the brains of mice by using RNA sequencing. The results show that p53 knockout downregulated the interferon (IFN) regulator genes, chemokine genes, and antiviral genes after PRV infection. This finding suggests that p53 positively regulates viral replication and pathogenesis both in vitro and in vivo. These findings offer novel targets of intrinsic host cell immunity for PRV infection

A novel method to prevent phishing by using OCR technology

Phishing is one of the most common attacks in the world, especially with the increasing usage of mobile platforms and e-commerce. Although many users are weary of phishing attacks from suspicious paths in the URL address, phishing still accounts for a large proportion of all of malicious attacks as it is easy to deploy. Most browser vendors mainly adopt two approaches against phishing; the blacklist and the heuristic-based. However, both have related limitations. In this paper, a novel method was proposed to protect against phishing attacks. By using image recognition (OCR) technology, phishing attacks can be distinguished from the actual website by reading the logos on the website and comparing with the site URL. An easy to implement prototype demonstrated a high accuracy of detection in the experimental trials.Postprin

Low-cost, smartphone-based instant three-dimensional registration system for infant functional near-infrared spectroscopy applications

Significance: To effectively apply functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)/diffuse optical tomography (DOT) devices, a three-dimensional (3D) model of the position of each optode on a subject’s scalp and the positions of that subject’s cranial landmarks are critical. Obtaining this information accurately in infants, who rarely stop moving, is an ongoing challenge. // Aim: We propose a smartphone-based registration system that can potentially achieve a full-head 3D scan of a 6-month-old infant instantly. // Approach: The proposed system is remotely controlled by a custom-designed Bluetooth controller. The scanned images can either be manually or automatically aligned to generate a 3D head surface model. // Results: A full-head 3D scan of a 6-month-old infant can be achieved within 2 s via this system. In testing on a realistic but static infant head model, the average Euclidean error of optode position using this device was 1.8 mm. // Conclusions: This low-cost 3D registration system therefore has the potential to permit accurate and near-instant fNIRS/DOT spatial registration

Singular value decomposition-based robust cubature Kalman filtering for an integrated GPS/SINS navigation system

A new nonlinear robust filter is proposed in this paper to deal with the outliers of an integrated Global Positioning System/Strapdown Inertial Navigation System (GPS/SINS) navigation system. The influence of different design parameters for an H∞ cubature Kalman filter is analysed. It is found that when the design parameter is small, the robustness of the filter is stronger. However, the design parameter is easily out of step in the Riccati equation and the filter easily diverges. In this respect, a singular value decomposition algorithm is employed to replace the Cholesky decomposition in the robust cubature Kalman filter. With large conditions for the design parameter, the new filter is more robust. The test results demonstrate that the proposed filter algorithm is more reliable and effective in dealing with the outliers in the data sets produced by the integrated GPS/SINS system