Date of Award

Spring 3-2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Cyber Operations (PhDCO)

Department

Computer Science

First Advisor

Wayne Pauli

Second Advisor

Cody Welu

Third Advisor

Christopher Olson

Abstract

Steganography in computer science refers to the hiding of messages or data within other messages or data; the detection of these hidden messages is called steganalysis. Digital steganography can be used to hide any type of file or data, including text, images, audio, and video inside other text, image, audio, or video data. While steganography can be used to legitimately hide data for non-malicious purposes, it is also frequently used in a malicious manner. This paper proposes JRevealPEG, a software tool written in Python that will aid in the detection of steganography in JPEG images with respect to identifying a targeted set of open-source embedding tools. It is hoped that JRevealPEG will assist in furthering the research into effective steganalysis techniques, to ultimately help identify the source of hidden and possibly sensitive or malicious messages, as well as contribute to efforts at thwarting the activities of bad actors.

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