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Counter-Forensics: Attacking Image Forensics

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Digital Image Forensics

Abstract

This chapter discusses counter-forensics, the art and science of impeding or misleading forensic analyses of digital images. Research on counter-forensics is motivated by the need to assess and improve the reliability of forensic methods in situations where intelligent adversaries make efforts to induce a certain outcome of forensic analyses. Counter-forensics is first defined in a formal decision-theoretic framework. This framework is then interpreted and extended to encompass the requirements to forensic analyses in practice, including a discussion of the notion of authenticity in the presence of legitimate processing, and the role of image models with regard to the epistemic underpinning of the forensic decision problem. A terminology is developed that distinguishes security from robustness properties, integrated from post-processing attacks, and targeted from universal attacks. This terminology is directly applied in a self-contained technical survey of counter-forensics against image forensics, notably techniques that suppress traces of image processing and techniques that synthesize traces of authenticity, including examples and brief evaluations. A discussion of relations to other domains of multimedia security and an overview of open research questions concludes the chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Canon Hack Development Kit, for instance, allows to run virtually arbitrary image processing routines inside most modern Canon digital cameras, http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Gang Cao, Thomas Gloe, and Miroslav Goljan for sharing the data of their original research papers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Systems, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Leonardo-Campus 3, 48149, Münster, Germany

    Rainer Böhme

  2. International Computer Science Institute, 1947 Center Street, Berkeley, CA, 94704, USA

    Matthias Kirchner

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  1. Rainer Böhme
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  2. Matthias Kirchner
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Correspondence to Rainer Böhme .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Computer Engineering Department, TOBB University of Economics and Technol, Sogutozu Cad. 43, Ankara, 06560, Turkey

    Husrev Taha Sencar

  2. Dept. Computer & Information Science, Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, 11201, New York, USA

    Nasir Memon

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Böhme, R., Kirchner, M. (2013). Counter-Forensics: Attacking Image Forensics. In: Sencar, H., Memon, N. (eds) Digital Image Forensics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0757-7_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0757-7_12

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  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-0757-7

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