Dakota State University Beadle Scholar Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations Spring 3-2021 JRevealPEG: A Semi-Blind JPEG Steganalysis Tool Targeting Current Open-Source Embedding Programs Charles A. Badami Dakota State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.dsu.edu/theses Part of the Databases and Information Systems Commons, Data Science Commons, and the Other Computer Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Badami, Charles A., "JRevealPEG: A Semi-Blind JPEG Steganalysis Tool Targeting Current Open-Source Embedding Programs" (2021). Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations. 366. https://scholar.dsu.edu/theses/366 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Beadle Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses & Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Beadle Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A dissertation submitted to Dakota State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Cyber Operations March 2021 By Charles A. Badami Dissertation Committee: Dr. Wayne Pauli Dr. Cody Welu Dr. Christopher Olson iii I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my doctoral committee, to all of my professors and mentors at DSU, and to my friends and colleagues at Northwest Missouri State University for all of your help and support throughout this process. I especially want to thank my wife and children for putting up with me and tolerating my frequent disappearances while I obsessed over this project. iv Steganography in computer science refers to the hiding of messages or data within other messages or data; the detection of these hidden messages is called steganalysis. Digital steganography can be used to hide any type of file or data, including text, images, audio, and video inside other text, image, audio, or video data. While steganography can be used to legitimately hide data for non-malicious purposes, it is also frequently used in a malicious manner. This paper proposes JRevealPEG, a software tool written in Python that will aid in the detection of steganography in JPEG images with respect to identifying a targeted set of open-source embedding tools. It is hoped that JRevealPEG will assist in furthering the research into effective steganalysis techniques, to ultimately help identify the source of hidden and possibly sensitive or malicious messages, as well as contribute to efforts at thwarting the activities of bad actors. v I hereby certify that this dissertation constitutes my own product, that where the language of others is set forth, quotation marks so indicate, and that appropriate credit is given where I have used the language, ideas, expressions or writings of another. I declare that the dissertation describes original work that has not previously been presented for the award of any other degree of any institution. Signed, _____________________________ Charles A. Badami vi DISSERTATION APPROVAL FORM .............................................................................................. III ACKNOWLEDGMENT ...................................................................................................................... III ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................................... IV DECLARATION ....................................................................................................................................V TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................................................... VI LIST OF TABLES ...............................................................................................................................IXI LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................................. IX INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................... 1 PROBLEM STATEMENT ........................................................................................................................... 2 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY ......................................................................................................................... 3 MOTIVATION ......................................................................................................................................... 4 SIGNIFICANCE AND CURRENT INTEREST ................................................................................................ 5 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ........................................................................................................................... 6 SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS ....................................................................................................................... 7 INTRODUCTION: SUMMARY .................................................................................................................... 8 LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................................................................... 9 RECENT EFFORTS IN GENERAL IMAGE STEGANOGRAPHY/STEGANALYSIS ............................................ 9 STEGANOGRAPHY FOCUS .................................................................................................................. 9 STEGANALYSIS FOCUS .....................................................................................................................10 JPEG COMPRESSION ............................................................................................................................11 JPEG IMAGE STEGANALYSIS: RECENT TECHNIQUES ...........................................................................13 MACHINE LEARNING .......................................................................................................................13 DCT AND MACHINE LEARNING .......................................................................................................13 CONTENT-ADAPTIVE STEGO, IMAGE FILTERS, AND MACHINE LEARNING ........................................15 NON-MACHINE-LEARNING TECHNIQUES .........................................................................................16 LITERATURE REVIEW: SUMMARY ........................................................................................................17 THEORY AND ARTIFACT DESIGN ................................................................................................19 PROBLEM INVESTIGATION ...................................................................................................................20 TREATMENT DESIGN ...........................................................................................................................20 JREVEALPEG ARCHITECTURE AND COMPONENTS ..............................................................................22 vii OVERVIEW OF JREVEALPEG STRUCTURE AND BEHAVIOR ..............................................................22 THE MAIN MODULE: JRPEG.PY ........................................................................................................24 CUSTOM JPEG PROCESSING: COEFX.PY ...........................................................................................26 JSTEG AND JSDEC.PY ........................................................................................................................32 STEGANPEG AND SPDEC.PY ............................................................................................................34 OUTGUESS AND OGDEC.PY ..............................................................................................................39 THEORY AND ARTIFACT DESIGN: SUMMARY.......................................................................................46 EXPERIMENT RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ................................................................................47 DESIGN VALIDATION ...........................................................................................................................47 CONTEXT AND RESEARCH PROBLEM ...............................................................................................47 OBJECT OF STUDY ...........................................................................................................................48 TREATMENT DESIGN........................................................................................................................48 MEASUREMENT DESIGN ..................................................................................................................48 INFERENCE DESIGN .........................................................................................................................49 EXPERIMENT SETUP AND EXECUTION ..................................................................................................49 SETUP ..............................................................................................................................................50 EXECUTION ......................................................................................................................................51 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ..................................................................................................................53 DATA ANALYSIS ..............................................................................................................................53