How Hidden Can Be Even More Hidden?

TL;DR

This paper introduces Deep Hiding Techniques (DHTs) that systematically enhance the undetectability of network steganography methods by applying five general groups of techniques, making steganogram detection and extraction more difficult.

Contribution

It is the first systematic attempt to define general solutions that improve the concealment and robustness of network steganography.

Findings

Five groups of hiding techniques are defined.

Examples demonstrate applicability to existing methods.

Approach enhances undetectability and extraction difficulty.

Abstract

The paper presents Deep Hiding Techniques (DHTs) that define general techniques that can be applied to every network steganography method to improve its undetectability and make steganogram extraction harder to perform. We define five groups of techniques that can make steganogram less susceptible to detection and extraction. For each of the presented group, examples of the usage are provided based on existing network steganography methods. To authors' best knowledge presented approach is the first attempt in the state of the art to systematically describe general solutions that can make steganographic communication more hidden and steganogram extraction harder to perform.