A fast and effective steganalytic technique against Jsteg-like algorithms

Detection of hidden messages in images, also known as image steganalysis, is of great significance to network information security. In this paper, we propose a fast and effective steganalytic technique based on statistical distributions of DCT coefficients which is aimed at two kinds of popular JSteg-like steganographic systems, sequential JSteg and random JSteg for JPEG images. Our approach can not only determine the existence of hidden messages in JPEG images reliably, but also estimate the amount of hidden messages exactly. Its advantages also include simplicity, computational efficiency and easy implementation of real-time detection. Experiment results show the superiority of our approach over other steganalytic techniques