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An analysis of steganographic systems subject to the following perfect undetectability condition is presented in this paper. Following embedding of the message into the covertext, the resulting stegotext is required to have exactly the same probability distribution as the covertext. Then no statistical test can reliably detect the presence of the hidden message. We refer to such steganographic schemes as perfectly secure. A few such schemes have been proposed in recent literature, but they have vanishing rate. We prove that communication performance can potentially be vastly improved; specifically, our basic setup assumes independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) covertext, and we construct perfectly secure steganographic codes from public watermarking codes using binning methods and randomized permutations of the code. The permutation is a secret key shared between encoder and decoder. We derive (positive) capacity and random-coding exponents for perfectly secure steganographic systems. The error exponents provide estimates of the code length required to achieve a target low error probability. In some applications, steganographic communication may be disrupted by an active warden, modeled here by a compound discrete memoryless channel (DMC). The transmitter and warden are subject to distortion constraints. We address the potential loss in communication performance due to the perfect-security requirement. This loss is the same as the loss obtained under a weaker order-1 steganographic requirement that would just require matching of first-order marginals of the covertext and stegotext distributions. Furthermore, no loss occurs if the covertext distribution is uniform and the distortion metric is cyclically symmetric; steganographic capacity is then achieved by randomized linear codes. Our framework may also be useful for developing computationally secure steganographic systems that have near-optimal communication performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rates of reliable transmission of hidden information are derived for watermarking problems involving parallel Gaussian sources, which are often used to model host images and audio signals. Constraints are imposed on the average squared-error distortion that can be introduced by the information hider and by the attacker. When distortions are measured with respect to the original host data, the optimal covert and attack channels are two banks of Gaussian test channels. The solution to the watermarking game involves an optimal allocation of distortions by the information hider and by the attacker to the different channels. A fast algorithm is given for computing the optimal solution based on duality theory. For each channel, we derive analytical expressions for two asymptotic regimes: weak and strong host signals. Finally, we extend these results to the class of stationary Gaussian host signals with bounded, continuous spectral density. The analysis also provides an upper bound on watermarking capacity for non-Gaussian host signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An information-theoretic analysis of information hiding is presented in this paper, forming the theoretical basis for design of information-hiding systems. Information hiding is an emerging research area which encompasses applications such as copyright protection for digital media, watermarking, fingerprinting, steganography, and data embedding. In these applications, information is hidden within a host data set and is to be reliably communicated to a receiver. The host data set is intentionally corrupted, but in a covert way, designed to be imperceptible to a casual analysis. Next, an attacker may seek to destroy this hidden information, and for this purpose, introduce additional distortion to the data set. Side information (in the form of cryptographic keys and/or information about the host signal) may be available to the information hider and to the decoder. We formalize these notions and evaluate the hiding capacity, which upper-bounds the rates of reliable transmission and quantifies the fundamental tradeoff between three quantities: the achievable information-hiding rates and the allowed distortion levels for the information hider and the attacker. The hiding capacity is the value of a game between the information hider and the attacker. The optimal attack strategy is the solution of a particular rate-distortion problem, and the optimal hiding strategy is the solution to a channel-coding problem. The hiding capacity is derived by extending the Gel'fand-Pinsker theory of communication with side information at the encoder. The extensions include the presence of distortion constraints, side information at the decoder, and unknown communication channel. Explicit formulas for capacity are given in several cases, including Bernoulli and Gaussian problems, as well as the important special case of small distortions. In some cases, including the last two above, the hiding capacity is the same whether or not the decoder knows the host data set. It is shown that... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on the October 2004 issue of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. This issue is the first among three supplements on secure media. It contains ten papers which covers a broad range of topics and were selected based on their high level of technical quality, mathematical rigor, significance and novelty. The topics include steganography, watermarking codes, temporal geometric robustness of video watermarks, cryptography for multimedia, performance analysis of biometric systems.