Universal Audio Steganalysis Based on Calibration and Reversed Frequency Resolution of Human Auditory System

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel audio steganalysis method that leverages calibration, reversed frequency resolution of the human auditory system, and the sensitivity of the LSB to detect subtle data hiding in audio signals, outperforming existing techniques.

Contribution

It proposes a new set of calibrated features based on re-embedding and human auditory system modeling, enhancing detection of low-rate data hiding in audio.

Findings

Detects steganography at 0.06 BPS with high sensitivity

Outperforms state-of-the-art RMFCC-based methods

Effective on both music and speech signals

Abstract

Calibration and higher order statistics (HOS) are standard components of many image steganalysis systems. These techniques have not yet found adequate attention in audio steganalysis context. Specifically, most of current works are either non-calibrated or only based on noise removal approach. This paper aims to fill these gaps by proposing a new set of calibrated features based on re-embedding technique. Additionally, we show that least significant bit (LSB) is the most sensitive bit-plane to data hiding algorithms and therefore it can be employed as a universal embedding method. Furthermore, the proposed features are based on a model that has the maximum deviation from human auditory system (HAS), and therefore are more suitable for the purpose of steganalysis. Performance of the proposed method is evaluated on a wide range of data hiding algorithms in both targeted and universal paradigms. Simulation results show that the proposed method can detect the finest traces of data hiding algorithms and in very low embedding rates. The system detects steghide at capacity of 0.06 bit per symbol (BPS) with sensitivity of 98.6% (music) and 78.5% (speech). These figures are respectively 7.1% and 27.5% higher than state-of-the-art results based on RMFCC.