Influence of Speech Codecs Selection on Transcoding Steganography

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how the choice of speech codecs affects the performance of TranSteg, a steganographic method in IP telephony, aiming to optimize voice quality and bandwidth for hidden data transmission.

Contribution

It evaluates popular codecs to identify those that best balance voice quality and steganographic bandwidth in TranSteg.

Findings

Certain codecs offer better trade-offs between quality and bandwidth.

Codec selection significantly impacts steganographic effectiveness.

Optimal codecs depend on specific network and quality requirements.

Abstract

The typical approach to steganography is to compress the covert data in order to limit its size, which is reasonable in the context of a limited steganographic bandwidth. TranSteg (Trancoding Steganography) is a new IP telephony steganographic method that was recently proposed that offers high steganographic bandwidth while retaining good voice quality. In TranSteg, compression of the overt data is used to make space for the steganogram. In this paper we focus on analyzing the influence of the selection of speech codecs on hidden transmission performance, that is, which codecs would be the most advantageous ones for TranSteg. Therefore, by considering the codecs which are currently most popular for IP telephony we aim to find out which codecs should be chosen for transcoding to minimize the negative influence on voice quality while maximizing the obtained steganographic bandwidth.