Steganography - A review

Lidan Miao
11/03/03
Outline
History
Motivation
Application
System model
Steganographic methods
Steganalysis
Evaluation and benchmarking
Adaptive stegangraphy
History
Prisoners Problem Simmons, 1984
From Techniques for Steganography and Digital Watermarking.
S. Katzenbeisser and F. A. P. Petitcolas
Motivation

Multimedia data
Rapid growth of Internet
Publishing and broadcasting industry
Governments restriction

Application

Copyright protection
Authentication
Access control
Covert communication
Terminology
Cryptography
Scramble message to make it meaningless.
Classic steganography
Hide the existence of communication.
Watermarking
Robust data hiding, all the instances are marked in the same way.
Fingerprinting
All the instances are marked in different way to trace unlawful
provision.
System model
System requirement
Imperceptibility
Modification is invisible (HVS).
Undetectability
Statistical model is consistent.
Capacity
How many bits can be embedded in a given medium.

Steganographic techniques
LSB Insertion
Spread Spectrum
Transform domain
Other techniques
Odd-even embedding
Geometric transform
Image mosaic
Common idea
Partition image into blocks and embed certain mount of
message in each block.
Important issues:
(1) Features are different in each block
(2) Size of block
(3) Capacity in each block
(4) Distribution of message


A1: Image segmentation
The algorithm divides a binary image into noise
like region and signal region.
If a region is too simple to hide information, a
conjugate operation is introduce, which can
convert a simple pattern into a complex pattern
without lose any shape information.
A1: Image segmentation-cont
Complexity measure

e e
+ + + =
W j i W j i
j i x j i x j i x j i x C
) , ( ) , (
) , 1 ( ) , ( ) 1 , ( ) , (
) 1 2 ( 2 2
=
m m
C
o
1 0 s so
m: the size of blocks
A1: Image segmentation-cont
Conjugate operation
c
W P P =
*
Original
Result
Object
Background
Checkboard
A2: ME steganography

The algorithm takes advantage of local
characteristics of a cover-image to embed
maximal amount of message in the cover and
maintain the imperceptible alteration.

A2: ME steganography-conts
To replace the least k-LSBs, the maximum error
is .
Adjust the k+1 bit, and check its embedding error.
The maximum-error can be restricted to .


1 2
k
1
2
k
Origin 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0
Embedded
1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1
k=2
A3: Convert UEC to EEC
The distribution of embeddable pixels vary from
block to block.
Shuffling is applied, which redistribute the values
between all subsets to produce at least one bit in
each region is embeddable.
Embedding is performed in the shuffling domain
and inverse shuffling is performed to get a marked
image.
A4: Weighted matrix
Embed r bits of data into image block by
changing at most 2 bits.
The goal is to modify into to ensure the
following invariant :

is the secret message.
W is the weighted matrix, k is the secret key.
i
F
i
F
'
i
F
) 2 (mod ) ) ((
2 1
'
r
r i
b b b W K F SUM
r
b b b
2 1
A4: Weighted matrix-cont
Secret data : 001001, and r=3
SUM1 = 24 (mod 8) = 0
SUM2 = 36 (mod 8) = 4
) 2 (mod ) ) ((
2 1
'
r
r i
b b b W K F SUM
A4: Weighted matrix-cont
This algorithm can hide as many as bits of data in
the image by changing at most 2 bits in the image
block.
This scheme can provide higher security, embed
more data, and maintain higher quality of the host
image.
A5: Image Mosaic
The sender and the receiver share the same image
database.
Each tile image corresponds to an integer.
Embedding algorithm chose different tile image
according to secret message.
The Receiver extract message from tile images.
A5: Image Mosaic-cont
http://www.photomosaic.com
A6: Histogram preserve
This algorithm based on histogram preserving data
mappings (HPDM).
Cachin defined a system is perfectly secure when
the statistics of the stego-image and the cover
image are identical, i.e., the relative entropy
between the cover and stego is zero.
Based on this definition, Eggers proposed his
algorithm that preserves the histogram of the
cover image.
Steganalysis
The art of detecting and decoding hidden message
within a given object.
A steganographic system is considered broken if
an attacker can guess whether or not a given
image contains secret message with a success rate
better than random guessing.
Steganalysis
Visual attack (color images)
The idea is to remove all parts of the image
covering the message.
Statistical attack
Embedding process change the statistical
characteristics of images.
Visual attack (EzStego )
Visual attack(S-Tools)
http://wwwrn.inf.tu-dresden.de/~westfeld/attacks.html
Visual attack(Steganos)
A1: PoVs analysis(LSB)
Those pixels only differ in LSB are called pairs of
values (PoVs). (for example: 2 and 3)
LSB embedding causes the frequency of
individual elements of a PoV to flatten out with
respect to one another.
LSB embedding can only be reliably detected
when the message length becomes comparable
with the number of pixels in the image.
A2: Hypothesis testing (LSB)
The image is partitioned into 3 subsets. The pixel
value in stego-image is expressed:



The goal is to find if the first two subsets are non-
empty.
Formulated as the following multiple hypothesis
testing problem:

A e
A e
A e +
=
3
2
1
if
if 1
if 1
i x
i x
i x
y
i
i
i
i
3 , 2 , 1 , : = + = j d x y H
i i i j
A3: RS steganalysis (LSB)
LSB flipping:
Shifted LSB flipping:

No flipping:
Discrimination function f :
255 254 , , 3 2 , 1 0 :
1
F
256 255 , 254 253 , , 4 3 , 2 1 , 0 1 :
1

F
P x x x F F e = all for ) ( :
0 0

=
+
=
1
1
1 2 1
) , , (
n
i
i i n
x x x x x f
RS steganalysis-cont
Three types of pixel groups: R, S, and U





M : an n-tuple mask with values 1, 0, 1.

) ( )) ( ( G f G F f R G > e
) ( )) ( ( G f G F f S G < e
) ( )) ( ( G f G F f U G = e
)) ( ), ( ), ( ( ) (
) ( 2 ) 2 ( 1 ) 1 ( n n M M M
x F x F x F G F =
RS steganalysis-cont
Before embedding


After embedding
The difference between and increase,
while the difference between and goes to
zero when 50% pixels are embedded.
M M
R R

~
M M
S S

~
M
R

M
S

M
R
M
S
RS steganalysis-cont
Step1: Calculate the
number of R, S.
Step2: Flip LSB of all
pixels and repeat step1.
Step3: Randomly flip
LSB and get the mean.
Step4: Fit line and
quadratic function and
estimate p.
A4: Sample pair analysis
Sample pair: (u, u+n) or (u+n, u), which means the
two values differ by n.
The algorithm can estimate the length of hidden
messages with high precision.
The image is partitioned into 4 subsets, and LSB
embedding affects the transmission between these
subsets.

Sample pair analysis-cont
The finite-state machine is closer, but the subsets are not under LSB
embedding.
:
1 2 m
X
:
1 2 + m
Y
) 2 , 1 2 2 ( k m k +
) 1 2 2 , 2 ( + m k k
) 1 2 , 2 2 ( + k m k
) 2 2 , 1 2 ( m k k +
:
2m
X
:
2m
Y
) 2 , 2 2 ( k m k
) 2 1 2 , 1 2 ( m k k + +
) 1 2 , 1 2 2 ( + + k m k
) 2 2 , 2 ( m k k
A5: Universal blind analysis
This algorithm is based on high statistical model.
Extract feature vectors based on multiple-scale
decomposition.
(1) Coefficients statistics
(2) Error statistics
Classify cover image from stego-image by means
of their feature vectors.


Comparison
Those methods targeted to a specific
steganographic method, such as RS steganalysis,
will most likely give more accurate and reliable
results than any universal blind steganalytic
method.
However, universal blind approaches are very
important because of their flexibility and ability to
be quickly adjusted to new or completely
unknown steganalytic methods.
Evaluation and benchmarking
This is an important and often neglected issue.
Some author proposed fair evaluation methods for
image watermarking systems.
Three points need to be commented.
(1) Visual quality metrics
(2) Statistic test
(3) Capacity comparison
Some thoughts on adaptive steganography
Adaptively chose embedding regions.
Adaptively determine embedding capacity.
Process stego-image to mask hidden message and
avoid detection.