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Stego key recovery based on the optimal hypothesis test

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Abstract

At present, research on steganalysis is mainly focused on the existence detection of hidden messages. However, the extraction of hidden messages, i.e., extraction attacks, also plays a decisive role in tasks such as obtaining evidence of covert communication and fighting against criminal activities. For steganography using a stego key, the purpose of an extraction attack is to recover the stego key. This paper mainly studies methods of recovering the stego key for least significant bit (LSB) steganography in the JPEG domain. Firstly, based on the differences in the statistical properties of the discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients between the paths generated by the correct and incorrect keys, a stego key recovery model based on the optimal hypothesis test is proposed. Moreover, formulas are given for calculating the desired sample size and threshold in the proposed stego key recovery model. Secondly, based on the difference in the distributions of odd and even coefficients between the correct and incorrect paths, a method of recovering the stego key for OutGuess steganography using this model is proposed. Finally, based on the difference in the distributions of zero and non-zero coefficients between the correct and incorrect paths, a method of recovering the stego key for F5 steganography (modified version) using this model is proposed. Experimental results for OutGuess 0.13b, OutGuess 0.2 and modified F5 steganography show that the proposed method can successfully recover the stego key and that its performance is superior to that of existing methods.

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Notes

  1. This list includes 146 steganography programs, 85 of which are based on digital images; the other 61 programs are based on audio files, text files and so on (http://www.jjtc.com/Steganography/toolmatrix.htm).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61379151, 61572052 and U1636219).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Mathematical Engineering and Advanced Computing, Zhengzhou, 450001, China

    Che Xu, Jiufen Liu, Junjun Gan & Xiangyang Luo

  2. Zhengzhou Science and Technology Institute, Zhengzhou, 450001, China

    Che Xu, Jiufen Liu, Junjun Gan & Xiangyang Luo

  3. State Key Laboratory of Information Security, Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China

    Jiufen Liu

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  1. Che Xu
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  2. Jiufen Liu
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  3. Junjun Gan
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  4. Xiangyang Luo
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Correspondence to Che Xu.

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Xu, C., Liu, J., Gan, J. et al. Stego key recovery based on the optimal hypothesis test. Multimed Tools Appl 77, 17973–17992 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-4878-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-4878-4

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