ASSAF: Advanced and Slim StegAnalysis Detection Framework for JPEG images based on deep convolutional denoising autoencoder and Siamese networks

Assaf Cohen, Aviad Cohen, Nir Nissim

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

Steganography is the art of embedding a confidential message within a host message. Modern steganography is focused on widely used multimedia file formats, such as images, video files, and Internet protocols. Recently, cyber attackers have begun to include steganography (for communication purposes) in their arsenal of tools for evading detection. Steganalysis is the counter-steganography domain which aims at detecting the existence of steganography within a host file. The presence of steganography in files raises suspicion regarding the file itself, as well as its origin and receiver, and might be an indication of a sophisticated attack. The JPEG file format is one of the most popular image file formats and thus is an attractive and commonly used carrier for steganography embedding. State-of-the-art JPEG steganalysis methods, which are mainly based on neural networks, are limited in their ability to detect sophisticated steganography use cases. In this paper, we propose ASSAF, a novel deep neural network architecture composed of a convolutional denoising autoencoder and a Siamese neural network, specially designed to detect steganography in JPEG images. We focus on detecting the J-UNIWARD method, which is one of the most sophisticated adaptive steganography methods used today. We evaluated our novel architecture using the BOSSBase dataset, which contains 10,000 JPEG images, in eight different use cases which combine different JPEG's quality factors and embedding rates (bpnzAC). Our results show that ASSAF can detect stenography with high accuracy rates, outperforming, in all eight use cases, the state-of-the-art steganalysis methods by 6% to 40%.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)64-77
Number of pages14
JournalNeural Networks
Volume131
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Nov 2020

Keywords

  • Autoencoder
  • Convolution neural network
  • Deep learning
  • Siamese neural network
  • Steganalysis
  • Steganography

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Artificial Intelligence

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