We examine whether steganographic images can be detected more reliably when there exist other images, taken with the same camera under the same conditions, of the same scene. We argue that such a circumstance is realistic and likely in practice. In `laboratory conditions' mimicking circumstances favourable to the analyst, and with a custom set of digital images which capture the same scenes with controlled amounts of overlap, we use an overlapping reference image to calibrate steganographic features of the image under analysis. Experimental results show that the analysed image can be classified as cover or stego with much greater reliability than traditional steganalysis not exploiting overlapping content, and the improvement in reliability depends on the amount of overlap. These results are curious because two different photographs of exactly the same scene, taken only a few seconds apart with a fixed camera and settings, typically have steganographic features that differ by considerably more than a cover and stego image.

Date Published: 4 March 2015
PDF: 15 pages
Proc. SPIE 9409, Media Watermarking, Security, and Forensics 2015, 94090X (4 March 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2083213

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9409:
Media Watermarking, Security, and Forensics 2015
Adnan M. Alattar; Nasir D. Memon; Chad D. Heitzenrater, Editor(s)