Abstract
Developments in digital forensics investigations have occurred along with those in anti-forensics. Legal issues involving cybercrime are difficult to investigate and even more difficult to prosecute since a forensic investigator must often develop a case by examining artefacts left on a device or network. When cyber criminals became more aware of the techniques utilized in digital forensics, countermeasures to these approaches were developed. The goal of these procedures is to sabotage forensic investigations, and many of them are readily available and simple to use. The purpose of this research is to improve our understanding of these Anti-Forensic technologies by doing in-depth individual analyses and discussing the functionality and methods, as well as the possibilities of mitigation. The topic of this Anti-Forensics study is within Data Hiding; there are different ways available; however, this project focuses on a steganography tool known as Stegosploit and looks to see if embedding JPG images with malicious code without visual distortion of the image is conceivable.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Foster MA, Liu V (2005) Catch Me If You Can. Congressional Research Service
Raghavan S (2013) Digital forensic research: current state of the art. CSIT 1:91–114
Garfinkel S (2007) Anti-forensics: techniques, detection and countermeasure. In: 2nd international conference on i-warfare and security, vol 20087. pp 77–84
Rogers M (2006) Anti-forensics: the coming wave in digital forensics
Conlan K, Baggili I, Breitinger F (2016) Anti-forensics: furthering digital forensic science through a new extended, granular taxonomy. Digit Investig. 18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diin.2016.04.006
Etow TR (2020) Impact of anti-forensics techniques on digital forensics investigation. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-97116
DFRWS Technical Committee (DFRWS) (2001) A road map for digital forensic research: DFRWS technical report. DTR-T001-01
Harris R (2006) Arriving at an anti-forensics consensus: examining how to define and control the antiforensics problem. In: Proceedings of the 2006 digital forensics research workshop. Digit Investig 3(S):S44–S49. http://dfrws.org/2006/proceedings/6-Harris.pdf
Mothukur A, Balla A, Taylor D, Sirimalla S, Elleithy K (2019). Investigation of countermeasures to anti-forensic methods. 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/LISAT.2019.8816826.
Shirani B (2002) Anti-forensics. High Technology Crime Investigation Association. http://www.aversion.net/presentations/HTCIA-02/anti-forensics.ppt
Beebe N (2009) Digital forensic research: the good, the bad and the unaddressed. In IFIP International conference on digital forensics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 17–36
Vincze EA (2016) Challenges in digital forensics. Police Pract Res 17(2):183–194
Garfinkel SL (2010) Digital forensics research: the next 10 years. Digit Investig 7:S64–S73
Blunden B (2009) The rootkit arsenal escape and evasion is the dark corners of the system. Wordware Publishing
Sencar HT, Memon N (2008) Overview of state-of-the-art in digital image forensics. In: Statistical science and interdisciplinary research: algorithms, architectures and information systems security, pp 325–347. https://doi.org/10.1142/9789812836243_0015
Budimir N, Slay J (2007) Identifying non-volatile data storage areas: unique notebook identification information as digital evidence. J Digit Forensics, Secur Law 2(1):75–91
Göbel T, Baier H (2018) Anti-forensics in ext4: on secrecy and usability of timestamp-based data hiding. Digital Invest 24(Supplement), S111–S120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diin.2018.01.014
Grugq (2003) To the art of defiling. Black Hat Asia 2003 presentation. [online] http://opensores.thebunker.net/pub/mirrors/blackhat/presentations/bh-asia-03/bh-asia-03-grugq/bh-asia03-grugq.pdf
Eckstein K, Jahnke M (2005) Data hiding in journaling file systems. In: The digital forensic research conference DFRWS 2005 USA Proceedings
Abboud G, Marean J, Yampolskiy RV (2010) Steganography and visual cryptography in computer forensics. In: Fifth IEEE international workshop on systematic approaches to digital forensic engineering. https://doi.org/10.1109/sadfe.2010.14
StegoArchive.com (2005) Stego Archive Web site. http://www.stegoarchive.com
Johnson NF, Katzenbeisser S (2000) A survey of steganographic techniques. In: Information hiding. 43–78
Hamid N, Yahya A, Ahmad RB, Al-Qershi OM (2012) Image steganography techniques: an overview. Int J Comput Sci Secur (IJCSS) 6(3):168–187
Lin ET, Delp EJ (1999) A review of data hiding in digital images. In: IS&T’s 1999 PICS conference proceedings. Video and Image Processing Laboratory (VIPER), School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Hussain M, Chen D, Cheng A, Wei H, Stanley D (2013) Change detection from remotely sensed images: from pixel-based to object-based approaches. ISPRS J Photogram Remote Sens 80:91–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2013.03.006
Rustad S, Setiadi DRIM, Syukur A, Andono PN (2022) Inverted LSB image steganography using adaptive pattern to improve imperceptibility. J King Saud Univ—Comput Inf Sci 34(6, Part B):3559–3568. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2020.12.017
Warkentin M, Bekkering E, Schmidt MB (2008) Steganography: forensic, security, and legal issues. The Association of Digital Forensics, Security and Law (ADFSL)
Park B, Kim D, Shin D (2015) A study on a method protecting a secure network against a hidden malicious code in the image. Indian J Sci Technol 8(26)
Jeyasekar JJ, Saravanan P (2016) Science maps of global and Indian wildlife forensics: a comparative analysis. Libr Philos Pract 2016:519. ISSN 1522-0222
Harblson C (2015) Hacking with pictures; new stegosploit tool hides malware inside internet images for instant drive-by pwning
Vaidya N, Rughani P (2019) An efficient technique to detect stegosploit generated images on windows and Linux subsystem on windows. Int J Comput Sci Eng 7(12):21–26. https://doi.org/10.26438/ijcse/v7i12.2126
Conlan K, Baggili I, Breitinger F (2016) Anti-forensics: furthering digital forensic science through a new extended, granular taxonomy. Digital Invest 18(Supplement):S66–S75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diin.2016.04.006
Katamara Z (2020) Taxonomy for anti-forensics techniques and countermeasures. Culminating Studys in Information Assurance. 109. https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/msia_etds/109
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Gashi, H., Zargari, S., Jalali Ghazaani, S. (2024). Data Hiding in Anti-forensics—Exploit Delivery Through Digital Steganography. In: Jahankhani, H. (eds) Cybersecurity Challenges in the Age of AI, Space Communications and Cyborgs. ICGS3 2023. Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47594-8_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47594-8_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-47593-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-47594-8
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)