Anti-forensic Approach to Remove Stego Content from Images and Videos
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13052/2245-1439.831Keywords:
Steganography, Steganalysis, Image processing, Variational deconvolution, Markov featuresAbstract
Covert transmission of information hidden in different media to either a general or targeted audience constitutes steganography. However, this technique can be misused to transmit undesirable information. Traditionally the removal of such content necessitated the knowledge of the steganographic algorithm used. However,we address the scenario where such stego is removed using generic image processing operations along with an anti forensic method without assuming any knowledge of the steganographic algorithm used. The application of generic image processing operations also causes degradation of cover image, which can also be restored using this anti forensic method. Our procedure has been tested on a variety of steganographic algorithms including HUGO-BD,WOW, Synch and J-UNIWARD. By applying universal steganalysis we found that all images which have been subjected to our procedure have become stego free. However, a direct evaluation of the stego content assuming knowledge of the stego content and its location showed that 80 percentage of the stego is removed without significantly impacting the visual image quality. Video stream containing isolated static images have been addressed in this paper. The peak signal-to-noise ratio and structural similarity metric values of cleaned images and videos are found to be in the range 30dB–40dB and 0.81–0.99 respectively.
Downloads
References
R. Chandramouli, M. Kharrazi, N. Memon, Image steganography and steganalysis: Concepts and practice, In International Workshop on Digital Watermarking, Springer, 35–49, 2003.
X.-Y. Luo, D.-S. Wang, P. Wang, F.-L. Liu, A review on blind detection for image steganography, Signal Processing, 88(9), 2138–2157, 2008.
E. Kartaltepe, J. Morales, S. Xu, R. Sandhu, Social network based botnet command and control: emerging threats and countermeasures, in: Applied Cryptography and Network Security, Springer, 11–528, 2010.
W. Fan, K. Wang, F. Cayre, Z. Xiong, Median filtered image quality enhancement and anti-forensics via variational deconvolution, IEEE transactions on information forensics and security 10(5), 1076–1091, 2015.
P. Amritha, M. Sethumadhavan, R. Krishnan, On the removal of steganographic content from images, Defence Science Journal, 66(6), 574, 2016.
J. Fridrich, M. Goljan, Reliable detection of lsb steganography in color and grayscale images, us Patent 6, 831–991, 2004.
J. Fridrich, J. Kodovsky, Rich models for steganalysis of digital images, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 7(3), 868–882, 2012.
C. B. Smith, S. S. Agaian, On steganalysis and clean image estimation, Multimedia Forensics and Security, 212–244, 2008.
P. A. Lafferty, Obfuscation and the steganographic active warden model, The Catholic University of America, 2008.
F. A. Petitcolas, R. J. Anderson, M. G. Kuhn, Attacks on copyright marking systems, in:International workshop on information hiding, Springer, 218–238, 1998.
J. Dittmann, M. Steinebach, A. Lang, S. Zmudzinski, Advanced audio watermarking benchmarking, in: Proceedings of SPIE, Vol. 5306, 224–235, 2004.
G. Fisk, M. Fisk, C. Papadopoulos, J. Neil, Eliminating steganography in internet traffic with active wardens, in: International Workshop on Information Hiding, Springer, 18–35, 2002.
A. Whitehead, Towards eliminating steganographic communication., in: PST, 2005.
M. Sieffert, R. Forbes, C. Green, L. Popyack, T. Blake, Stego intrusion detection system, in: Proceedings of the fourth Digital forensic Research Workshop, 2004.
F. Al-Naima, S. Y. Ameen, A. F. Al-Saad, Destroying steganography content in image files, in: The 5th International Symposium on Communication Systems, Networks and DSP, 2006.
G. A. Francia III, T. S. Gomez, Steganography obliterator: an attack on the least significant bits, in: Proceedings of the 3rd annual conference on Information security curriculum development, ACM, 8591, 2006.
C. B. Smith, S. S. Agaian, Denoising and the active warden, in: Systems, Man and Cybernetics, ISIC, IEEE International Conference 3317–3322, 2007.
C. B. Smith, S. S. Agaian, On noise, steganography, and the active warden, Multimedia Forensics and Security, 139–162, 2008.
I. S. Moskowitz, P. A. Lafferty, F. Ahmed, Stego scrubbing a new direction for image steganography, in: Information Assurance and Security Workshop, IEEE, 119–126, 2007.
R. Chandramouli, A mathematical framework for active steganalysis, Multimedia systems, 9(3), 303–311, 2003.
M. Nutzinger, Real-time attacks on audio steganography, Journal of Information Hiding and Multimedia Signal Processing, 3(1), 47–65, 2012.
Q. Qi, A. Sharp, Y. Yang, D. Peng, H. Sharif, Steganography attack based on discrete spring transform and image geometrization, in:Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference, IEEE, 554–558, 2014.
A. Sharp, Q. Qi, Y. Yang, D. Peng, H. Sharif, A video steganography attack using multi dimensional discrete spring transform, in: Signal and Image Processing Applications, pp. 182–186, 2013.
Q. Qi, A study on countermeasures against steganography: an active warden approach.
J. Blasco, J. C. Hernandez-Castro, J. M. de Fuentes, B. Ramos, A framework for avoiding steganography usage over http, Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 35(1), 491–501, 2012.
S. Y. Ameen, M. R. Al-Badrany, Optimal image steganography content destruction techniques, in: International Conference on Systems, Control, Signal Processing and Informatics, 453–457, 2013.
T. Filler, J. Fridrich, Gibbs construction in steganography, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 5(4), 705–720, 2010.
V. Holub, J. Fridrich, Designing steganographic distortion using directional filters, in: Information Forensics and Security, IEEE, 234–239, 2012.
T. Denemark, J. Fridrich, Improving steganographic security by synchronizing the selection channel, in: Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Workshop on Information Hiding and Multimedia Security, 5–14, 2015.
V. Holub, J. Fridrich, T. Denemark, Universal distortion function for steganography in an arbitrary domain, EURASIP Journal on Information Security, (1), 2014.
D.-C. Wu, W.-H. Tsai, A steganographic method for images by pixel value differencing, Pattern Recognition Letters, 24(9), 1613–1626, 2003.
A. D. Ker, Steganalysis of lsb matching in grayscale images, IEEE signal processing letters, 12(6), 441–444, (2005).
N. Provos, P. Honeyman, Hide and seek: An introduction to steganography, IEEE security privacy, 99(3), 32–44, 2003.
R. M. Haralick, K. Shanmugam, et al., Textural features for image classification, IEEE Transactions on systems, man, and cybernetics, (6), 610–621, 1973.
C. A. Stanley, Pairs of values and the chi-squared attack, Department of Mathematics, Iowa State University.
T. Zhang, X. Ping, Reliable detection of lsb steganography based on the difference image histogram, in: Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Proceedings, vol. 3, III-545, 2003.
Sherly, A. P., et al. A novel approach for compressed video steganography, in Recent Trends in Network Security and Applications, vol. 89, 567–575, 2010.
J. Kodovsky, J. J. Fridrich, Steganalysis of jpeg images using rich models., Media Watermarking, Security, and Forensics, 8303, 0A-1, 2012.
J. Kodovsky, J. J. Fridrich, Steganalysis in high dimensions: fusing classifiers built on random subspaces, Media Forensics and Security, 78800L, 2011.
T. Denemark, J. Fridrich, Steganography with Multiple JPEG Images of the Same Scene., IEEE TIFS, 12(10), 2308–2319, 2017.
T. Filler, T. Pevny, P. Bas, Break our steganography system, Available at http://www, agents, cz/boss, 2010.
Mon, S. Fepslin Athish, K. Suthendran, K. Arjun, and S. Arumugam, A Novel Reversible Data Hiding Method in Teleradiology to Maximize Data Capacity in Medical Images, International Conference on Theoretical Computer Science and Discrete Mathematics, Springer, 55–62, 2016.
