Springer, 2001. — 148 p.Steganography (literally, covered writing) is the hiding of secret messages within another seemingly innocuous message, or carrier. The carrier can be anything used to transfer information, including, for example, wood or slate tablets, hollow heels, images under stamps, tiny photographs, or word arrangements. Digital carriers include e-mail, audio, and video messages, disk space, disk partitions, and images.
Steganography, like cryptography, is a means of providing secrecy. Yet steganography does so by hiding the very existence of the communication, while cryptography does so by scrambling a message so it cannot be understood. A cryptographic message can be intercepted by an eavesdropper, but the eavesdropper may not even know a steganographic message exists.
Digital watermarking addresses issues related to intellectual property and copyright protection. Digital watermarks can be thought of as commercial applications of steganography and may be used to trace, identify, and locate digital media across networks. Digital watermarks are attributes of the carrier, as a watermark typically includes information about the carrier or the owner.
The goal of steganography is to avoid drawing suspicion to the transmission of a secret message. Detecting the secret message-an attack against steganography-relies on the fact that hiding information in digital media alters the carriers and introduces unusual characteristics or some form of degradation to the carrier. The characteristics introduced by the embedded data may be the key to such an attack. A successful attack against a digital watermark, on the other hand, renders the watermark useless or unreadable.
In general, attacks against embedded data can include various combinations of cryptanalysis, steganalysis, image processing techniques, or other attempts to overwrite or remove the embedded information. These attacks may reveal a steganographic message or confuse a watermark reader as to the authenticity of the watermark. Based on the understanding of the impact data embedding has on carriers and the corresponding attacks, countermeasures can be devised to aid in the survivability of the embedded information.
This monograph presents the research contributions in three fundamental areas with respect to image-based steganography and watermarking: analysis of data hiding techniques, attacks against hidden information, and countermeasures to attacks against digital watermarks. Analysis of data hiding techniques involves investigating available tools and techniques for hiding information, classifying these techniques, and understanding the impact steganography software has on various carriers.Introduction
Exploring Steganography
Steganalysis: Attacks against Hidden Data
Countermeasures to Attacks
A: Hiding Data in Network Traffic
B: Glossary of Methods to Distort Stego-Images
