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Trends in modern information hiding: techniques, applications, and detection

2016; Hindawi Publishing Corporation; Volume: 9; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/sec.1469

1939-0114

Wojciech Mazurczyk, Krzysztof Szczypiorski, Artur Janicki, Hui Tian,

Network Security and Intrusion Detection

As the production, storage, and exchange of information become more extensive and important in the functioning of societies, the problem of protecting the information from unintended and undesired usage becomes more complex. In modern societies, protection of information involves many interdependent technological and policy issues related to information confidentiality, integrity, anonymity, authenticity, utility, etc. Information hiding techniques are receiving much attention today. Digital audio, video, and images are increasingly furnished with distinguishing but imperceptible marks, which may contain a hidden copyright notice or serial number or even help to prevent unauthorized copying directly. Digital watermarking and steganography may protect information, conceal secrets, or are used as core primitives in digital rights' management schemes. Alongside the previously mentioned types of digital media steganography, currently, the target of increased interest is network steganography—a part of information hiding focused on modern networks. It is a method of hiding secret data in users' normal data transmissions. Steganographic techniques arise and evolve with the development of network protocols and mechanisms and are expected to be used in secret communication or information sharing. Presently, it becomes a hot topic because of the proliferation of information networks and multimedia services in networks and social networks. The purpose of establishing applications of Information Hiding may be varied—possible uses can fall into the category of legal actions or illicit activity. Frequently, the illegal aspect is accentuated—starting from the criminal communication, through information leakage from protected systems, cyber weapon exchange, up to industrial espionage. Recently discovered malware like Hammertoss or Stegoloader utilize various information hiding techniques for botnets purposes to enable covert communication for the C and C (Command and Control) channel. This makes detection of such malware even more difficult, and it poses a serious challenge also to investigators. On the other side of the spectrum lies legitimate uses, which include circumvention of web censorship and surveillance, computer forensics (tracing and identification), and copyright protection (e.g., watermarking images). In this special issue, we are delighted to present a selection of nine papers, which, in our opinion, will contribute to the enhancement of knowledge in information hiding. The collection of high-quality research papers provides a view on the latest research advances on covert communication, steganography, and steganalysis. In the first paper, Multi-bit watermarking of high dynamic range images based on perceptual models, Emanuele Maiorana and Patrizio Campisi describe a multi-bit watermarking method dedicated to high dynamic range images. The proposed method takes advantage of various perceptual features of the human eye. The authors present the results of imperceptibility and robustness tests, using a database of 15 high dynamic range images. Also two next articles concern image processing. In MDE-based image steganography with large embedding capacity, Zhaoxia Yin and Bin Luo propose a steganographic method based on modification of direction exploitation and pixel pair matching. The algorithm is explained in detail, and a numerical example is given. The authors analyze also the quality of the conveyed covert image and evaluate security of the proposed algorithm, using two steganalysis methods. Fengyong Li, Xinpeng Zhang, Hang Cheng, and Jiang Yu in Digital image steganalysis based on local textural features and double dimensionality reduction also deal with steganalysis of image steganography. They propose a spatial steganalysis scheme based on local textural features and double dimensionality reduction. The authors demonstrate effectiveness of their method using 5000 greyscale images and three different steganographic techniques. Next three articles concern using audio signals for steganographic transmission. In the first of them, Real-time audio steganography attack based on automatic objective quality feedback, Qilin Qi, Aaron Sharp, Dongming Peng, and Hamid Sharif propose an active warden steganographic attack based on discrete spring transform with the use of an objective quality assessment. The authors show effectiveness of such an attack against two different steganographic techniques—spread spectrum-based and a time-scale modification-robust steganography. Shanyu Tang, Qing Chen, Wei Zhang, and Yongfeng Huang in Universal steganography model for low bit-rate speech codec describe a universal steganography model for low bit-rate speech codec. The proposed method is based on using perceptual evaluation of speech quality algorithm to choose a proper data hiding algorithm. The authors employ proposed approach for the Internet Speech Audio Codec and present results for the steganographic bandwidth and cost. Rennie Archibald and Dipak Ghosal in Design and performance evaluation of a covert timing channel discuss covert timing channels, in which the steganographic transmission is realized by modulating the inter-packet delay times. The authors propose a method, which minimizes overruns and underruns of an Internet Protocol phone buffer, and then evaluate its performance using Skype traffic. Pawel Laka and Lukasz Maksymiuk in Steganographic transmission in optical networks with the use of direct spread spectrum technique describe their method of steganographic transmission to be used in the physical layer of optical networks. The proposed method is based on the spread spectrum technique. The authors show results of their experiments with adjusting the spreading code length and optical power level dependencies. In the next article, On importance of steganographic cost for network steganography, an analysis of steganographic cost for network steganography is presented by Wojciech Mazurczyk, Steffen Wendzel, Ignacio Azagra Villares, and Krzysztof Szczypiorski. In this paper, the metric of steganographic cost is defined as degradation or a distortion of the carrier caused by the application of the steganographic method. The authors analyze various approaches to steganographic cost in selected single-method and multi-method steganographic techniques. In the last of the presented articles, Matrix embedding in multicast steganography: analysis in privacy, security and immediacy, Weiwei Liu, Guangjie Liu, and Yuewei Dai discuss multicast steganography, in which a single sender delivers simultaneously different secret messages to several receivers within the same cover object. The authors propose both synchronous and asynchronous multicast matrix embedding frameworks, based on Slepian–Wolf coding and overlapped multi-embedding, respectively. Privacy, security, and immediacy of the proposed solutions are also discussed. To summarize, we believe that this Special Issue will contribute to enhancing knowledge in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) security and in information hiding in particular. In addition, we also hope that the presented results will stimulate further research in the important areas of information and network security, including steganography and covert communication. We also want to thank the editor-in-chief of the Security and Communication Networks journal, the leading researchers contributing to the special issue and excellent reviewers for their great help and support that made this special issue possible.