Steganalysis methods for detecting secret message embedded in JPEG and GIF images are presented in this paper. Usually, the DCT coefficients are modified when secret data is embedded to JPEG images, and the pixel indexes are changed in GIF data hiding. No matter it is the DCT coefficients or image pixel changed in data hiding, the introduced noise deteriorates the smoothness of images. For JPEG images, the change of smoothness at the block boundary is used to distinguish the clean and stego images. For GIF images, the change of smoothness between neighbor pixels is used in steganalysis. For stego GIF images created by reordering colors in the palette, we discriminate the stego and clean images by checking the palette to see if there is a pattern existing or not.
Lossless data embedding has the property that the distortion due to embedding can be completely removed from the watermarked image without accessing any side channel. This can be a very important property whenever serious concerns over the image quality and artifacts visibility arise, such as for medical images, due to legal reasons, for military images or images used as evidence in court that may be viewed after enhancement and zooming. We formulate two general methodologies for lossless embedding that can be applied to images as well as any other digital objects, including video, audio, and other structures with redundancy. We use the general principles as guidelines for designing efficient, simple, and high-capacity lossless embedding methods for three most common image format paradigms - raw, uncompressed formats (BMP), lossy or transform formats (JPEG), and palette formats (GIF, PNG). We close the paper with examples of how the concept of lossless data embedding can be used as a powerful tool to achieve a variety of non-trivial tasks, including elegant lossless authentication using fragile watermarks. Note on terminology: some authors coined the terms erasable, removable, reversible, invertible, and distortion-free for the same concept.
In this paper, we introduce a new forensic tool that can reliably detect modifications in digital images, such as distortion due to steganography and watermarking, in images that were originally stored in the JPEG format. The JPEG compression leave unique fingerprints and serves as a fragile watermark enabling us to detect changes as small as modifying the LSB of one randomly chosen pixel. The detection of changes is based on investigating the compatibility of 8x8 blocks of pixels with JPEG compression with a given quantization matrix. The proposed steganalytic method is applicable to virtually all steganongraphic and watermarking algorithms with the exception of those that embed message bits into the quantized JPEG DCT coefficients. The method can also be used to estimate the size of the secret message and identify the pixels that carry message bits. As a consequence of our steganalysis, we strongly recommend avoiding using images that have been originally stored in the JPEG format as cover-images for spatial-domain steganography.
In this paper, we present two new methods for authentication of digital images using invertible watermarking. While virtually all watermarking schemes introduce some small amount of non-invertible distortion in the image, the new methods are invertible in the sense that, if the image is deemed authentic, the distortion due to authentication can be removed to obtain the original image data. Two techniques are proposed: one is based on robust spatial additive watermarks combined with modulo addition and the second one on lossless compression and encryption of bit-planes. Both techniques provide cryptographic strength in verifying the image integrity in the sense that the probability of making a modification to the image that will not be detected can be directly related to a secure cryptographic element, such as a has function. The second technique can be generalized to other data types than bitmap images.
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