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Proofs of the Undecidability of Stegananalysis Techniques

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Data Analysis and Optimization for Engineering and Computing Problems

Abstract

Steganalysis comprises a set of techniques that strive to find concealed information within diverse types of digital media. On the contrary, Steganography involves a group of methods that, by manipulation of a cover object, aims to hide information to make it imperceptible. Current Steganalysis techniques suffer from a certain degree of failure in the detection of a payload and, frequently, the impossibility to discover if a media hides some information. In this chapter, we prove that the detection of hidden material within a media, or a Steganalysis procedure, is an undecidable problem. Our proof comprises two sets of tests: first, we demonstrate the undecidability by the principle of Diagonalization of Cantor, and second, we applied a reduction technique based on the undecidability of malware detection. For this part, we outline the hypothesis that there exists a similitude between Steganography techniques and the generation of an innocuous computer virus. Both demonstrations proved that Steganalysis procedures are undecidable problems.

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Correspondence to Juan Gutierrez-Cardenas .

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Gutierrez-Cardenas, J. (2020). Proofs of the Undecidability of Stegananalysis Techniques. In: Vasant, P., Litvinchev, I., Marmolejo-Saucedo, J.A., Rodriguez-Aguilar, R., Martinez-Rios, F. (eds) Data Analysis and Optimization for Engineering and Computing Problems. EAI/Springer Innovations in Communication and Computing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48149-0_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48149-0_17

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-48148-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-48149-0

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