Creativity in Mind: Evaluating and Maintaining Advances in Network Steganographic Research

TL;DR

This paper introduces a framework and metric to evaluate the creativity and novelty of network steganography techniques, aiming to enhance scientific review and promote innovation in the field.

Contribution

It links creativity assessment with network steganography, providing a new framework and metric for evaluating the novelty of hiding techniques.

Findings

Developed a creativity evaluation framework for steganography techniques.

Provided a metric to quantify the novelty of hiding methods.

Facilitated a more uniform terminology in the field.

Abstract

The research discipline of network steganography deals with the hiding of information within network transmissions, e.g. to transfer illicit information in networks with Internet censorship. The last decades of research on network steganography led to more than hundred techniques for hiding data in network transmissions. However, previous research has shown that most of these hiding techniques are either based on the same idea or introduce limited novelty, enabling the application of existing countermeasures. In this paper, we provide a link between the field of creativity and network steganographic research. We propose a framework and a metric to help evaluating the creativity bound to a given hiding technique. This way, we support two sides of the scientific peer review process as both authors and reviewers can use our framework to analyze the novelty and applicability of hiding techniques. At the same time, we contribute to a uniform terminology in network steganography.