Steganography: An Art of Hiding Data (2009) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Steganography: An Art of Hiding Data (2009) [pdf]

arxiv.org

53 pointsgodelmachine9 comments

(2009) "It is well known that encryption provides secure channels for communicating entities. However, due to lack of covertness on these channels, an eavesdropper can identify encrypted streams through statistical tests and capture them for further cryptanalysis. In this paper we propose a new form of steganography, on-line hiding of information on the output screens of the instrument. This method can be used for announcing a secret message in public place. It can be extended to other means such as electronic advertising board around sports stadium, railway station or airport. This method of steganography is very similar to image steganography and video steganography. Private marking system using symmetric key steganography technique and LSB technique is used here for hiding the secret information. [...]

The main goal of this method is to hide information on the output image of the instrument (such as image displayed by an electronic advertising billboard). This method can be used for announcing a secret message in a public place. In general, this method is a kind of steganography, but it is done in real time on the output of a device such as electronic billboard."

Too old (2009): "Many currently used techniques are not robust enough to prevent detection and removal of embedded data", 2019: https://digitalsynopsis.com/design/nvidia-ai-removes-noise-g...

An recent application of steganography is to create image barcodes. The challenge is recovering the data after the image has been printed. You can learn more about it at http://www.matthewtancik.com/stegastamp

Steganography is about hiding not robustness.

The point of view of this work is much more related to watermarking than steganography, as they don't really focus on detectability.

Industries have been using watermarking for a long time, for example to identify video piracy.

I always wondered what the opposite of steganography was. Perhaps it is being really overt and 'hiding in plain sight'. My only issue with this is there's always somebody clever enough to spot anomalies and in fact there is no shortage of people with too much time on their hands and will spot something if it seems out of the ordinary. Machine learning / AI / deep learning methods can be very good at spotting anomalies and this is why AI etc is regularly employed by authorities and intel agencies to spot bad actors. Many hardened criminals are resorting to hiding in plain sight because steganography can prove too tedious to implement, and there are always various tools you can use to deobfuscate steganography (by visualizing large datasets and looking for inconsistencies).

anti-steganography -- like the Voyager Golden Record https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/golden-record-cov... it was designed so the message was overt, in a medium that would survive a long time, using universal language (math).

Would anyone care to explain the difference between Steganography and Digital Watermarking?

The angle of approach is different. Steganography is about hiding a message, you want it to be as undetectable as possible (including using technology). Eventually a transformation may completely destroy the hidden message, but you are supposed to transmit the media as is. The usage is mostly for spying or crime.

Digital Watermarking, you want the "message" to be very robust to transformation. The main usage I know is to help protection against piracy, for example if somebody upload a movie online, you want to put a specific signature related to the location where you sold the movie so you can find the uploader. Eventually the uploader will try to remove the watermarking by either identifying it or by applying some transformation to the movie in hope that it will make the message unrecognizable. So it's a game between industry and the potential tricks that the uploader could apply.

The intersection between the two fields is that they both try to modify the media as little as possible.

>The usage is mostly for spying or crime.

Or protecting yourself against governments that spy on you.

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