Automated Detection of Steganographic Content

Given the ubiquitous nature of the Intenet and the pervasiveness of multimedia content on the network, a typical user downloads an enormous number of media files daily and routinely via many mechanisms including web browsing, email, file sharing, and so on. The easy availability of high quality steganography software, both public domain and commercial, media files can be easily used to deliver malicious payloads to unsuspecting users or to carry prohibited content across firewalls and proxy gateways. As a result, the threat of steganography has become a very real and increasing concern among government, business, and personal users. We propose in this project to develop an anti-steganography application that can automatically detect the presence of hidden information in media files. The anti-steganography software system consists of a client application and a server application. The client application is installed on client computers, and it will intercept and examine media files that go into the machine. For each media file, the client application executes steganography detection algorithms, and takes appropriate action is hidden messages are detected. The server portion of the system is provided to allow the user to automatically upgrade the client application as new steganography detection algorithms are developed. The client application is designed to be extendable so that the steganography detection capability can continuously be enhanced and updated. Specifically, an external Application Program Interface (API) is defined so that as long as any steganography detection module conforms to the API, then the application will be able to integrate and make use of the capability in the external module. In this Phase I project, we will develop a comprehensive API for the anti-steganography application. Prototype client and server applications will be built and tested.