Digital audio, video, images, and documents are flying through cyberspace to their respective owners. Unfortunately, along the way, individuals may choose to intervene and take this content for themselves. Digital watermarking and steganography technology greatly reduces the instances of this by limiting or eliminating the ability of third parties to decipher the content that he has taken. The many techiniques of digital watermarking (embedding a code) and steganography (hiding information) continue to evolve as applications that necessitate them do the same. The authors of this second edition provide an update on the framework for applying these techniques that they provided researchers and professionals in the first well-received edition. Steganography and steganalysis (the art of detecting hidden information) have been added to a robust treatment of digital watermarking, as many in each field research and deal with the other. New material includes watermarking with side information, QIM, and dirty-paper codes. The revision and inclusion of new material by these influential authors has created a must-own book for anyone in this profession.

*This new edition now contains essential information on steganalysis and steganography
*New concepts and new applications including QIM introduced
*Digital watermark embedding is given a complete update with new processes and applications

Digital Watermarking and Steganography

We describe a novel general strategy for building steganography detectors for digital images. The process starts with assembling a rich model of the noise component as a union of many diverse submodels formed by joint distributions of neighboring samples from quantized image noise residuals obtained using linear and nonlinear high-pass filters. In contrast to previous approaches, we make the model assembly a part of the training process driven by samples drawn from the corresponding cover- and stego-sources. Ensemble classifiers are used to assemble the model as well as the final steganalyzer due to their low computational complexity and ability to efficiently work with high-dimensional feature spaces and large training sets. We demonstrate the proposed framework on three steganographic algorithms designed to hide messages in images represented in the spatial domain: HUGO, edge-adaptive algorithm by Luo , and optimally coded ternary ±1 embedding. For each algorithm, we apply a simple submodel-selection technique to increase the detection accuracy per model dimensionality and show how the detection saturates with increasing complexity of the rich model. By observing the differences between how different submodels engage in detection, an interesting interplay between the embedding and detection is revealed. Steganalysis built around rich image models combined with ensemble classifiers is a promising direction towards automatizing steganalysis for a wide spectrum of steganographic schemes.

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Rich Models for Steganalysis of Digital Images

Today, the most accurate steganalysis methods for digital media are built as supervised classifiers on feature vectors extracted from the media. The tool of choice for the machine learning seems to be the support vector machine (SVM). In this paper, we propose an alternative and well-known machine learning tool-ensemble classifiers implemented as random forests-and argue that they are ideally suited for steganalysis. Ensemble classifiers scale much more favorably w.r.t. the number of training examples and the feature dimensionality with performance comparable to the much more complex SVMs. The significantly lower training complexity opens up the possibility for the steganalyst to work with rich (high-dimensional) cover models and train on larger training sets-two key elements that appear necessary to reliably detect modern steganographic algorithms. Ensemble classification is portrayed here as a powerful developer tool that allows fast construction of steganography detectors with markedly improved detection accuracy across a wide range of embedding methods. The power of the proposed framework is demonstrated on three steganographic methods that hide messages in JPEG images.

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Ensemble Classifiers for Steganalysis of Digital Media

This paper presents a method for detection of steganographic methods that embed in the spatial domain by adding a low-amplitude independent stego signal, an example of which is least significant bit (LSB) matching. First, arguments are provided for modeling the differences between adjacent pixels using first-order and second-order Markov chains. Subsets of sample transition probability matrices are then used as features for a steganalyzer implemented by support vector machines. The major part of experiments, performed on four diverse image databases, focuses on evaluation of detection of LSB matching. The comparison to prior art reveals that the presented feature set offers superior accuracy in detecting LSB matching. Even though the feature set was developed specifically for spatial domain steganalysis, by constructing steganalyzers for ten algorithms for JPEG images, it is demonstrated that the features detect steganography in the transform domain as well.

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Steganalysis by Subtractive Pixel Adjacency Matrix

In this paper, we provide a unified framework for identifying the source digital camera from its images and for revealing digitally altered images using photo-response nonuniformity noise (PRNU), which is a unique stochastic fingerprint of imaging sensors. The PRNU is obtained using a maximum-likelihood estimator derived from a simplified model of the sensor output. Both digital forensics tasks are then achieved by detecting the presence of sensor PRNU in specific regions of the image under investigation. The detection is formulated as a hypothesis testing problem. The statistical distribution of the optimal test statistics is obtained using a predictor of the test statistics on small image blocks. The predictor enables more accurate and meaningful estimation of probabilities of false rejection of a correct camera and missed detection of a tampered region. We also include a benchmark implementation of this framework and detailed experimental validation. The robustness of the proposed forensic methods is tested on common image processing, such as JPEG compression, gamma correction, resizing, and denoising.

/pdf/determining-image-origin-and-integrity-using-sensor-noise-375kg5mshh.pdf

Determining Image Origin and Integrity Using Sensor Noise

In this paper, a novel steganalysis scheme is presented to effectively detect the advanced JPEG steganography. For this purpose, we first choose to work on JPEG 2-D arrays formed from the magnitudes of quantized block DCT coefficients. Difference JPEG 2-D arrays along horizontal, vertical, and diagonal directions are then used to enhance changes caused by JPEG steganography. Markov process is applied to modeling these difference JPEG 2-D arrays so as to utilize the second order statistics for steganalysis. In addition to the utilization of difference JPEG 2-D arrays, a thresholding technique is developed to greatly reduce the dimensionality of transition probability matrices, i.e., the dimensionality of feature vectors, thus making the computational complexity of the proposed scheme manageable. The experimental works are presented to demonstrate that the proposed scheme has outperformed the existing steganalyzers in attacking OutGuess, F5, and MB1.

A Markov process based approach to effective attacking JPEG steganography

Image splicing detection is of fundamental importance in digital forensics and therefore has attracted increasing attention recently. In this paper, we propose a blind, passive, yet effective splicing detection approach based on a natural image model. This natural image model consists of statistical features extracted from the given test image as well as 2-D arrays generated by applying to the test images multi-size block discrete cosine transform (MBDCT). The statistical features include moments of characteristic functions of wavelet subbands and Markov transition probabilities of difference 2-D arrays. To evaluate the performance of our proposed model, we further present a concrete implementation of this model that has been designed for and applied to the Columbia Image Splicing Detection Evaluation Dataset. Our experimental works have demonstrated that this new splicing detection scheme outperforms the state of the art by a significant margin when applied to the above-mentioned dataset, indicating that the proposed approach possesses promising capability in splicing detection.

A natural image model approach to splicing detection

Computer graphics generated by advanced rendering software come to appear so photorealistic that it has become difficult for people to visually differentiate them from photographic images. Consequently, modern computer graphics may be used as a convincing form of image forgery. Therefore, identifying computer graphics has become an important issue in image forgery detection. In this paper, a novel approach to distinguishing computer graphics from photographic images is introduced. The statistical moments of characteristic function of the image and wavelet subbands are used as the distinguishing features. In addition, we investigate the influence of different image color representations on the feature effectiveness. Specifically, the efficiency of using RGB and HSV color models is investigated. The experiments have shown that the features extracted from HSV color space, which decouples brightness from chromatic components, have demonstrated better performance than that from RGB color model.

Identifying Computer Graphics using HSV Color Model and Statistical Moments of Characteristic Functions

A new approach to efficient blind image splicing detection is proposed in this paper. Image splicing is the process of
making a composite picture by cutting and joining two or more photographs. The spliced image may introduce a number
of sharp transitions such as lines, edges and corners. Phase congruency has been known as a sensitive measure of these
sharp transitions and hence been proposed as features for splicing detection. In addition to the phase information, the
magnitude information is also used for splicing detection. Specifically, statistical moments of characteristic functions of
wavelet subbands have been examined to catch the difference between the authentic images and spliced images.
Consequently, the proposed scheme extracts image features from moments of wavelet characteristic functions and 2-D
phase congruency for image splicing detection. The experiments have demonstrated that the proposed approach can
achieve a higher detection rate as compared with the state-of-the-art.

Image splicing detection using 2-D phase congruency and statistical moments of characteristic function

In this paper, a steganalysis scheme based on multiple features formed by statistical moments of wavelet characteristic functions is proposed. Our theoretical analysis has pointed out that the defined n-th statistical moment of a wavelet characteristic function is related to the n-th derivative of the corresponding wavelet histogram, and hence is sensitive to data embedding. The selection of the first three moments of the characteristic functions of wavelet subbands of the three-level Haar wavelet decomposition as well as the test image has resulted in total 39 features for steganalysis. The effectiveness of the proposed system has been demonstrated by extensive experimental investigation. The detection rate for Cox et al.'s non-blind spread spectrum (SS) data hiding method, Piva et al.'s blind SS method, Huang and Shi's 8×8 block SS method, a generic LSB method (as embedding capacity being 0.3 bpp), and a generic QIM method (as embedding capacity being 0.1 bpp) are all above 90% over all of the 1096 images in the CorelDraw image database using the Bayes classifier. Furthermore, when these five typical data hiding methods are jointly considered for steganalysis, i.e., when the proposed steganalysis scheme is first trained sequentially for each of these five methods, and is then tested blindly for stego-images generated by all of these methods, the success classification rate is 86%, thus pointing out a new promising approach to general blind steganalysis. The detection results of steganalysis on Jsteg, Outguess and F5 have further demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed steganalysis scheme.

Wen Chen

Papers

A Markov process based approach to effective attacking JPEG steganography

A natural image model approach to splicing detection

Identifying Computer Graphics using HSV Color Model and Statistical Moments of Characteristic Functions

Image splicing detection using 2-D phase congruency and statistical moments of characteristic function

Steganalysis based on multiple features formed by statistical moments of wavelet characteristic functions