Continuation and Expansion of DCCI Stegextraction Project

Steganography is a very effective and efficient method of hiding data and possibly passing surreptitious messages and instructions. The threat spans both the criminal and counterintelligence/counte1ierrorism domains. Steganography takes advantage of two principles: 1) digital files can be altered without reducing functionality, and 2) humans cannot notice minor alterations to digital files. There are hundreds of commercial and publicly available programs that criminals and terrorists can use to hide information in an unobtrusive manner. These programs run under many different operating systems, implement a wide variety of embedding algorithms, and use many different types of carrier files.

The work conducted by the Defense Cyber Crime Institute (DCCI) under this project includes: 1) identifying and obtaining the commercial steganographic tools that are the most likely to be used by organizations or individuals under investigation; 2) identifying sources for and types of original image files, and retaining those files in a manner that allows the source and format to be readily identified; 3) identifying features and capabilities of Steganalysis tools that must be tested; and 4) devising a naming and storage convention for the Steganalysis Test File Library.

Steganography is a very effective and efficient method of hiding data and possibly passing surreptitious messages and instructions. The threat spans both the criminal and counterintelligence/counte1ierrorism domains. Steganography takes advantage of two principles: 1) digital files can be altered without reducing functionality, and 2) humans cannot notice minor alterations to digital files. There are hundreds of commercial and publicly available programs that criminals and terrorists can use to hide information in an unobtrusive manner. These programs run under many different operating systems, implement a wide variety of embedding algorithms, and use many different types of carrier files.

The work conducted by the Defense Cyber Crime Institute (DCCI) under this project includes: 1) identifying and obtaining the commercial steganographic tools that are the most likely to be used by organizations or individuals under investigation; 2) identifying sources for and types of original image files, and retaining those files in a manner that allows the source and format to be readily identified; 3) identifying features and capabilities of Steganalysis tools that must be tested; and 4) devising a naming and storage convention for the Steganalysis Test File Library.

Steganography is a very effective and efficient method of hiding data and possibly passing surreptitious messages and instructions. The threat spans both the criminal and counterintelligence/counte1ierrorism domains. Steganography takes advantage of two principles: 1) digital files can be altered without reducing functionality, and 2) humans cannot notice minor alterations to digital files. There are hundreds of commercial and publicly available programs that criminals and terrorists can use to hide information in an unobtrusive manner. These programs run under many different operating systems, implement a wide variety of embedding algorithms, and use many different types of carrier files.

The work conducted by the Defense Cyber Crime Institute (DCCI) under this project includes: 1) identifying and obtaining the commercial steganographic tools that are the most likely to be used by organizations or individuals under investigation; 2) identifying sources for and types of original image files, and retaining those files in a manner that allows the source and format to be readily identified; 3) identifying features and capabilities of Steganalysis tools that must be tested; and 4) devising a naming and storage convention for the Steganalysis Test File Library.