Kenneth Sullivan

Steganalysis for Markov cover data with applications to images

The difficult task of steganalysis, or the detection of the presence of hidden data, can be greatly aided by exploiting the correlations inherent in typical host or cover signals. In particular, several effective image steganalysis techniques are based on the strong interpixel dependencies exhibited by natural images. Thus, existing theoretical benchmarks based on independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) models for the cover data underestimate attainable steganalysis performance and, hence, overestimate the security of the steganography technique used for hiding the data. In this paper, we investigate detection-theoretic performance benchmarks for steganalysis when the cover data are modeled as a Markov chain. The main application explored here is steganalysis of data hidden in images. While the Markov chain model does not completely capture the spatial dependencies, it provides an analytically tractable framework whose predictions are consistent with the performance of practical steganalysis algorithms that account for spatial dependencies. Numerical results are provided for image steganalysis of spread-spectrum and perturbed quantization data hiding.

Detection of hiding in the least significant bit

In this paper, we apply the theory of hypothesis testing to the steganalysis, or detection of hidden data, in the least significant bit (LSB) of a host image. The hiding rate (if data is hidden) and host probability mass function (PMF) are unknown. Our main results are as follows. a) Two types of tests are derived: a universal (over choices of host PMF) method that has certain asymptotic optimality properties and methods that are based on knowledge or estimation of the host PMF and, hence, an appropriate likelihood ratio (LR). b) For a known host PMF, it is shown that the composite hypothesis testing problem corresponding to an unknown hiding rate reduces to a worst-case simple hypothesis testing problem. c) Using the results for a known host PMF, practical tests based on the estimation of the host PMF are obtained. These are shown to be superior to the state of the art in terms of receiver operating characteristics as well as self-calibration across different host images. Estimators for the hiding rate are also developed.

Provably Secure Steganography: Achieving Zero K-L Divergence using Statistical Restoration

In this paper, we present a framework for the design of steganographic schemes that can provide provable security by achieving zero Kullback-Leibler divergence between the cover and the stego signal distributions, while hiding at high rates. The approach is to reserve a number of host symbols for statistical restoration: host statistics perturbed by data embedding are restored by suitably modifying the symbols from the reserved set. A dynamic embedding approach is proposed, which avoids hiding in low probability regions of the host distribution. The framework is applied to design practical schemes for image steganography, which are evaluated using supervised learning on a set of about 1000 natural images. For the presented JPEG steganography scheme, it is seen that the detector is indeed reduced to random guessing.

Statistical restoration for robust and secure steganography

We investigate data hiding techniques that attempt to defeat steganalysis by restoring the statistics of the composite image to resemble that of the cover. The approach is to reserve a number of host symbols for statistical restoration: host statistics perturbed by data embedding are restored by suitably modifying the symbols from the reserved set. While statistical restoration has broad applicability to a variety of hiding methods, we illustrate our ideas here for quantization index modulation (QIM) based hiding. We propose a method for significantly reducing the detectability of QIM, while preserving its robustness to attacks. We next use the framework of statistical restoration to develop a method to combat steganalysis techniques which detect block-DCT embedding by evaluating the increase in blockiness of the image due to hiding. Numerical results demonstrating the efficacy of these techniques are provided.

Steganalysis of quantization index modulation data hiding

Quantization index modulation (QIM) techniques have been gaining popularity in the data hiding community because of their robustness and information-theoretic optimally against a large class of attacks. In this paper, we consider detecting the presence of QIM hidden data, which is an important consideration when data hiding is used for covert communication, or steganography. For a given host distribution, we are able to quantify detectability compactly in terms of a parameter related to the robustness of the hiding scheme to attacks. Using detection theory we show that QIM quickly transitions from easily detectable to virtually undetectable as this parameter varies. We also obtain performance benchmarks for QIM hiding in images, indicating that a scheme designed to be robust to say a moderate degree of JPEG compression, should be easily detectable. While practical application of detection theory to images is difficult because of statistical variations across images, we employ supervised learning to show that standard QIM schemes for images are indeed quite easily detectable. However, it remains an open issue as to whether it is possible to devise QIM variants that are less vulnerable to steganalysis.

LLRT based detection of LSB hiding

In this paper we consider a hypothesis testing approach for detection of hiding in the least significant bit (LSB). This steganalysis problem is a composite hypothesis testing problem. We state a regularity condition on the image histogram, which reduces this problem to a simple hypothesis testing problem. We then develop a number of simple practical tests based on the estimation of the optimal log likelihood ratio statistic. We show that our tests significantly outperform Stegdetect, a popular hypothesis test available in the literature. Our approach also leads to good estimates of the hiding rate.

Determining Achievable Rates for Secure, Zero Divergence, Steganography

In steganography (the hiding of data into innocuous covers for secret communication) it is difficult to estimate how much data can be hidden while still remaining undetectable. To measure the inherent detectability of steganography, Cachin suggested the ϵ-secure measure, where ϵ is the Kullback Leibler (K-L) divergence between the cover distribution and the distribution after hiding. At zero divergence, an optimal statistical detector can do no better than guessing; the data is undetectable. The hiders key question then is, what hiding rate can be used while maintaining zero divergence? Though work has been done on the theoretical capacity of steganography, it is often difficult to use these results in practice. We therefore examine the limits of a practical scheme known to allow embedding with zero-divergence. This scheme is independent of the embedding algorithm and therefore can be generically applied to find an achievable secure hiding rate for arbitrary cover distributions.

Hierarchical scene understanding exploiting automatically derived contextual data

In this paper we present methods for scene understanding, localization and classification of complex, visually heterogeneous objects from overhead imagery. Key features of this work include: determining boundaries of objects within large field-of-view images, classification of increasingly complex object classes through hierarchical descriptions, and exploiting automatically extracted hypotheses about the surrounding region to improve classification of a more localized region. Our system uses a principled probabilistic approach to classify increasingly larger and more complex regions, and then iteratively uses this automatically determined contextual information to reduce false alarms and misclassifications.

An end-to-end system for content-based video retrieval using behavior, actions, and appearance with interactive query refinement

We describe a system for content-based retrieval from large surveillance video archives, using behavior, action and appearance of objects. Objects are detected, tracked, and classified into broad categories. Their behavior and appearance are characterized by action detectors and descriptors, which are indexed in an archive. Queries can be posed as video exemplars, and the results can be refined through relevance feedback. The contributions of our system include the fusion of behavior and action detectors with appearance for matching; the improvement of query results through interactive query refinement (IQR), which learns a discriminative classifier online based on user feedback; and reasonable performance on low resolution, poor quality video. The system operates on video from ground cameras and aerial platforms, both RGB and IR. Performance is evaluated on publicly-available surveillance datasets, showing that subtle actions can be detected under difficult conditions, with reasonable improvement from IQR.