Searching for the stego-key

Jessica Fridrich; Miroslav Goljan; David Soukal

doi:10.1117/12.521353

22 June 2004 Searching for the stego-key

Jessica Fridrich, Miroslav Goljan, David Soukal

Proceedings Volume 5306, Security, Steganography, and Watermarking of Multimedia Contents VI; (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.521353
Event: Electronic Imaging 2004, 2004, San Jose, California, United States

Abstract

Steganalysis in the wide sense consists of first identifying suspicious objects and then further analysis during which we try to identify the steganographic scheme used for embedding, recover the stego key, and finally extract the hidden message. In this paper, we present a methodology for identifying the stego key in key-dependent steganographic schemes. Previous approaches for stego key search were exhaustive searches looking for some recognizable structure (e.g., header) in the extracted bit-stream. However, if the message is encrypted, the search will become much more expensive because for each stego key, all possible encryption keys would have to be tested. In this paper, we show that for a very wide range of steganographic schemes, the complexity of the stego key search is determined only by the size of the stego key space and is independent of the encryption algorithm. The correct stego key can be determined through an exhaustive stego key search by quantifying statistical properties of samples along portions of the embedding path. The correct stego key is then identified by an outlier sample distribution. Although the search methodology is applicable to virtually all steganographic schemes, in this paper we focus on JPEG steganography. Search techniques for spatial steganographic techniques are treated in our upcoming paper.

Citation Download Citation

Jessica Fridrich, Miroslav Goljan, and David Soukal "Searching for the stego-key", Proc. SPIE 5306, Security, Steganography, and Watermarking of Multimedia Contents VI, (22 June 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.521353

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available