Steganography is the art to transmit information in such a way that some observer actually does not recognize that a transmission was in progress even if he has full control over the data channel. The goal of the project StegIT is to frustrate the usage of steganography in combination with Internet telephony (VoIP) and mobile communications (GSM/UMTS). Traditional methods are based on detection of steganographic attacks (embedding of additional data) within the data stream and then disruption or prevention of this data. Nowadays there are no feasible solutions for reliable detection and prevention of steganography transmission. This project directs into a new field of detecting hidden data. It tries to employ transformation methods to accomplish the task. Different from the traditional approaches it is not based on detection, furthermore it tries to prevention transmission of steganographic data from the very first by application of well-chosen methods.
But, this type of defense must not disturb transmission of the regular data within the channel like e.g. voice, audio or video streams. It's expected that investigations of the dedicated testing lab will provide sufficient results. Furthermore beside these prevention methods, feasibility studies in respect to these prevention methods and steganography transparency of such methods (systems) will be done. This is important because steganography could be used in combination with Digital Rights Management (DRM) which could be used e.g. to reconstruct original speech patterns (original bit streams). A specific test lab will be set up at the FH St. Pölten. Based on VoIP and embedded steganography within pictures it will be possible to test steganography merging algorithms and “anti steganography” solutions.
Project leader:
Fachhochschule St. Pölten GmbH, Projektleiter: Univ.-Doz. D.I. Dr. Ernst Piller
Project partner:
Bundesministerium für Landesverteidigung
Bundeskriminalamt (Bundesministerium für Inneres)
internic Datenkommunikations GmbH
Contact:
Fachhochschule St. Pölten GmbH, Matthias Corvinus-Straße 15, 3100 St. Pölten
z.H. Univ.-Doz. D.I. Dr. Ernst Piller
Tel.: +43 664 9200891 oder +43 2742 313 2280, Fax: +43 2742 313 228 209
