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An Information-Theoretic Model for Steganography

Authors:
Christian Cachin
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URL: http://eprint.iacr.org/2000/028
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Abstract: An information-theoretic model for steganography with a passive adversary is proposed. The adversary's task of distinguishing between an innocent cover message $C$ and a modified message $S$ containing hidden information is interpreted as a hypothesis testing problem. The security of a steganographic system is quantified in terms of the relative entropy (or discrimination) between the distributions of $C$ and $S$, which yields bounds on the detection capability of any adversary. It is shown that secure steganographic schemes exist in this model provided the covertext distribution satisfies certain conditions. A universal stegosystem is presented in this model that needs no knowledge of the covertext distribution, except that it is generated from independently repeated experiments.
BibTeX
@misc{eprint-2000-11372,
  title={An Information-Theoretic Model for Steganography},
  booktitle={IACR Eprint archive},
  keywords={foundations / information hiding, covert channels, steganography},
  url={http://eprint.iacr.org/2000/028},
  note={To appear in Information and Computation. cachin@acm.org 12481 received 11 Jun 2000, last revised 4 Mar 2004},
  author={Christian Cachin},
  year=2000
}