JPEG Steganalysis Based on Steganographic Feature Enhancement and Graph Attention Learning

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel JPEG steganalysis method combining graph attention learning and feature enhancement to improve detection accuracy of hidden information in JPEG images, outperforming previous methods.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new representation learning algorithm with graph attention and feature enhancement modules, and utilizes pretraining on large datasets for improved discriminative feature extraction.

Findings

Outperforms previous methods in detection accuracy

Effective in enhancing weak steganographic signals

Pretraining improves feature extraction capabilities

Abstract

The purpose of image steganalysis is to determine whether the carrier image contains hidden information or not. Since JEPG is the most commonly used image format over social networks, steganalysis in JPEG images is also the most urgently needed to be explored. However, in order to detect whether secret information is hidden within JEPG images, the majority of existing algorithms are designed in conjunction with the popular computer vision related networks, without considering the key characteristics appeared in image steganalysis. It is crucial that the steganographic signal, as an extremely weak signal, can be enhanced during its representation learning process. Motivated by this insight, in this paper, we introduce a novel representation learning algorithm for JPEG steganalysis that is mainly consisting of a graph attention learning module and a feature enhancement module. The graph attention learning module is designed to avoid global feature loss caused by the local feature learning of convolutional neural network and reliance on depth stacking to extend the perceptual domain. The feature enhancement module is applied to prevent the stacking of convolutional layers from weakening the steganographic information. In addition, pretraining as a way to initialize the network weights with a large-scale dataset is utilized to enhance the ability of the network to extract discriminative features. We advocate pretraining with ALASKA2 for the model trained with BOSSBase+BOWS2. The experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm outperforms previous arts in terms of detection accuracy, which has verified the superiority and applicability of the proposed work.