Multimedia Security, Volume 1

8Steganalysis: Detection of Hidden Data in Multimedia Content

Rémi COGRANNE¹, Marc CHAUMONT² and Patrick BAS³

¹ LIST3N, University of Technology of Troyes, France

² LIRMM, Université de Montpellier, CNRS, University of Nîmes, France

³ CRIStAL, CNRS, University of Lille, France

In Chapter 5, we presented the concept of steganography, that is, methods of hiding information in digital images. In particular, we concentrated on the fact that steganography methods are constructed in a context where an enemy seeks to identify images used to spread hidden information (Stego images) from a list of images. In this chapter, we will see how to perform an analysis of a digital image to obtain information about the data that may have been hidden there.

8.1. Introduction, challenges and constraints

Before getting to the heart of the matter, we will briefly remind you that the purpose of steganography is to hide secret information in digital media so that the latter remain visually and statistically “as close as possible” to the original media. The example of the prisoner problem¹ (Simmons 1984) helps to illustrate this situation. The aim of steganalysis can seem quite simple at first glance: it is a matter of “only” detecting media containing hidden information to prevent their transmission. In practice, the subject matter is much broader than that. In reality, as very often in the field of security, the goal of steganalysis largely depends on the scenario considered and, in particular, ...