Short answer is I don’t know. The long answer will take a little background.
I haven’t bothered to read through Decoy’s internals, but this sort of steganography usually hides its secret data in the least significant bits of the decoy image. If that data is encrypted (assuming no headers or footers or obvious block divisions), then it will appear to an attacker like random bytes. Whether or not that’s distinguishable from the original image depends on whether the low bits of the original image are observably nonrandom, and that’s not something I know offhand—although most images will be compressed in some fashion and a good compression scheme aims to maximize entropy, so that’s something. And if it’s mostly random but it does fit a known distribution, then with a little more cleverness it should be possible to write a reversible function that fits the encrypted data into that distribution.
It will definitely be different from the original image on the bit level, if you happen to have a copy of it. That could just mean the image was reencoded at some point, though, which is not unheard of—though it’d be a little suspicious if only the low bits changed.
You’re mostly correct. The data is encrypted, and then broken into a base-4 string. The least significant base-4 bit is dropped from each pixel leaving 98.4% fidelity, which is higher fidelity than the compression that gets applied. Thus in terms of image quality, the picture is indistinguishable from any other compressed image.
The encoding is deliberately reversible and also open-sourced. However, you can apply the same algorithm to any image, whether it’s a decoy or not, and get a string of possibly-encrypted-data. The only confirmation that the data is meaningful would be a successful decryption which is only possible with the correct passphrase.
All that said, the fact that the picture is indistinguishable from other non-decoy images only adds a trivial amount of entropy to the encryption. An attacker who is determined to brute force their way into your pictures can simply attempt to crack every picture in your camera roll, decoy or no.
Does it change the low bits of white (0xFFFFFF) pixels? It would be a dead giveaway to find noise in overexposed areas of a photo, at least with the cameras I’ve used.
It does. Taking a picture of a solid white or black background will absolutely make it easier for an attacker with access to your data to be more confident that steganography is at work. That said there are some factors that mitigate this risk.
The iPhone’s camera, combined with its JPG compression, inserts noise almost everywhere. This is far from exhaustive but in a series of 10 all-dark and 10 all-bright photos, the noise distribution of the untouched photos was comparable to the noise distribution of the decoy. Given that I don’t control either of these, I’m not counting on this to hold up forever.
The app forces you to take a picture (and disables the flash) rather than use an existing one, lessening the chances that someone uses a noiseless picture. Again though, someone could still take a picture of a solid black wall.
Because of this, the visual decoy aspect of it is not meant as cryptographic protection. It’s designed to lessen the chances that you will become a target. Any test designed to increase confidence in a tampered image requires access to your data which means the attacker has already targeted you in most cases. If that happens, there are other more efficient ways of determining what pictures would be worth attacking.
My original statement was that an attacker cannot confirm your image is a Decoy. They can raise their confidence that steganography is taking place. But unless a distinguishing attack against full AES exists, they can’t say with certainty that the steganography at work is Decoy.
TL;DR: the decoy aspect of things is basically security through obscurity. The cryptographic protection comes from the AES encryption.
The iPhone’s camera, combined with its JPG compression, inserts noise almost everywhere.
The fact that it distributes noise doesn’t mean that the noise is uniformly distributed. It likely doesn’t put the same noise in an area with is uniformly colored and an area that isn’t uniformly colored.
My original statement was that an attacker cannot confirm your image is a Decoy. They can raise their confidence that steganography is taking place. But unless a distinguishing attack against full AES exists, they can’t say with certainty that the steganography at work is Decoy.
I can’t say with certainty either that the sun will rise tomorrow.
I can’t say with certainty either that the sun will rise tomorrow.
This seems like deliberate misinterpretation of Nanashi’s point. You can’t say with certainty that the Sun will rise tomorrow, but you can say so with extremely high probability. An attacker can’t confirm that the image is a Decoy with a probability anywhere near as high.
Correct. I’d assign a probability of, say, 99.999999999999999999% that the sun will rise tomorrow.
If I were an attacker analyzing the noise distribution of an image, I could say with maybe 10% probability that an image has been tampered with. From there I have to further reduce the probability because there are hundreds of ways an image could have been tampered with that aren’t Decoy.
(Note that these are not the same picture, because Decoy does not save or store the original version of either photo. It’s two pictures where I held the iPhone very close against a wall. So there’s a slight color variation)
That’s pretty useless—what you want is to look at some statistical measures of the empirical distributions of lower-order bits in these images. See e.g. this outdated page.
I don’t blame you for not spotting this, since these comments have gone really all over the place. But I did describe how an attacker would use LSB or Chi^2 analysis to determine:
For posterity here is that section: “Incidentally, regarding the specific details of such a detection method:
We (and the attacker) already know that the distribution of base64 characters in an AES-encrypted ciphertext is approximately random and follows no discernible pattern. We also know that the ciphertext is encoded into the last 2 bits of each 8-bit pixel. So, we can, with X amount of confidence, show that an image is not a Decoy if we extract the last 2 bits of each pixel and discover the resulting data is non-randomly distributed.
However, because it is possible for normal, non-Decoy, compressed JPEGs to exhibit a random distribution of the data in the last 2 bits of each pixel, the presence of randomness does not confirm that an image is a Decoy.
The only viable attack here would be to pull images which are “visually similar” (a trivial task by simply using Google image search), reduce them to the same size, compress them heavily, and then examine the last 2 bits of each of their pixels. If there is a significant difference in the randomness of the control images vs. the randomness of the suspected image, you could then suggest with X% confidence that the suspected image has been tampered with.
However, because it is possible for an image to be tampered with and yet NOT be a Decoy image, even then you could still not, with any legitimate amount of confidence, use such a test to state that an image is a Decoy.”
The point you’re missing is that the purpose of steganography is not to be noticed as opposed to “you can’t prove this beyond reasonable doubt”. If I run statistical analysis on the images in your phone and enough of them show suspicious randomness in LSBs, your steganography has failed already.
I’ve already said this like, five times, but I am giving you a pass here because there are a billion comments on this post and I wouldn’t expect someone to read all of them.
The primary protection isn’t steganography, it’s the AES encryption.
The goal of the steganography is a deterrent. As you said, to help you not be noticed. If someone is suspicious enough that they steal your images and run a statistical analysis of them, the whole conversation is moot because you’ve already been noticed.
So, I just don’t get it. What is your point here? That steganography has potential weaknesses? Is anyone suggesting otherwise?
Also just for the record, here are the relevant statements I made personally about Decoy:
The “decoy” pictures are indistinguishable from any other picture on your or your recipients’ camera rolls
Which, by request I clarified:
Without the password, even a skilled attacker cannot confirm the presence of any metadata.
[I]n terms of image quality, the picture is indistinguishable from any other compressed image.
An attacker cannot confirm your image is a Decoy. They can raise their confidence that steganography is taking place.
These clarifications were provided very early on in the conversation. It has since devolved into a criticism of steganography in general, which at no point have I ever tried to insinuate that steganography is anything other than security through obscurity.
Protection against what? Your lack of the threat model is tripping you up. If all you want is protection against a Fappening, you don’t need steganography, just encrypt images to binary blobs and you’re done.
If someone is suspicious enough that they steal your images
Why steal? Imagine a scenario: you’re drove to Canada from the US for a weekend and when you’re returning, a polite TSA officer asks for your phone and plugs it into a gizmo. The gizmo displays some blinkenlights, beeps, and the polite officer tells you that your phone is likely to have hidden encrypted information and would you mind stepping inside that office to have a conversation about it?
Encrypting your images has obvious benefits, but what exactly do you gain by keeping them inside other images as opposed to random binary files?
I specifically outlined the three primary attack types: fusking, stolen-phone, targeted attacks.
Imagine a scenario...
In that scenario, I would hope the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard would apply (which this protocol passes). But if we’re assuming an evil government that doesn’t stick to that standard, the same hypothetical gizmo can be used to detect any encrypted data.
what exactly do you gain by keeping them inside other images as opposed to random binary files?
Convenience, a deterrent against attacks, and moderate protection.
Convenience: the iPhone doesn’t provide any sort of file system for you to store random binary files, and no supported protocol by which to transmit them anywhere. It does, however, have a very robust photo storage and transmission system and GUI.
Deterrent: In low-threat situations where potential attackers only have visual access to your images, there are no visual methods by which to distinguish your decoy pictures from normal pictures, and therefore make you a target.
Moderate protection: Any further compression or alteration of the decoy image will mung the data. Most (not all) means of transmitting images from an iPhone (social networking apps, email apps, online image storage services, etc.) will compress the image before sending/storing, which as mentioned will mung the encrypted data. Obviously this should not be relied on because there are means (albeit less convenient) of transmitting the data from your phone without compression.
In that scenario, I would hope the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard would apply
No need for hope here. “Beyond a reasonable doubt” is a legal standard that applies to evidence presented in criminal prosecutions. It does not apply to investigations or, for example, things like being put on the no-fly list. Or the “next target for the drone assassination” list.
Moreover, at a border crossing the Fourth Amendment basically does not apply, too. A border control official can search all your belongings including your electronic devices without needing to show any cause, never mind about “reasonable doubt”. At the border, TSA can trawl through your laptop or phone at will.
Relevant quote: “[I]f we’re assuming an evil government that doesn’t stick to that standard, the same hypothetical gizmo can be used to detect any encrypted data.”
If that data is encrypted (assuming no headers or footers or obvious block divisions), then it will appear to an attacker like random bytes. Whether or not that’s distinguishable from the original image depends on whether the low bits of the original image are observably nonrandom, and that’s not something I know offhand
It’s super-easy to spot in a histogram, so much so that there’s ongoing research into making it less detectable.
Short answer is I don’t know. The long answer will take a little background.
I haven’t bothered to read through Decoy’s internals, but this sort of steganography usually hides its secret data in the least significant bits of the decoy image. If that data is encrypted (assuming no headers or footers or obvious block divisions), then it will appear to an attacker like random bytes. Whether or not that’s distinguishable from the original image depends on whether the low bits of the original image are observably nonrandom, and that’s not something I know offhand—although most images will be compressed in some fashion and a good compression scheme aims to maximize entropy, so that’s something. And if it’s mostly random but it does fit a known distribution, then with a little more cleverness it should be possible to write a reversible function that fits the encrypted data into that distribution.
It will definitely be different from the original image on the bit level, if you happen to have a copy of it. That could just mean the image was reencoded at some point, though, which is not unheard of—though it’d be a little suspicious if only the low bits changed.
You’re mostly correct. The data is encrypted, and then broken into a base-4 string. The least significant base-4 bit is dropped from each pixel leaving 98.4% fidelity, which is higher fidelity than the compression that gets applied. Thus in terms of image quality, the picture is indistinguishable from any other compressed image.
The encoding is deliberately reversible and also open-sourced. However, you can apply the same algorithm to any image, whether it’s a decoy or not, and get a string of possibly-encrypted-data. The only confirmation that the data is meaningful would be a successful decryption which is only possible with the correct passphrase.
All that said, the fact that the picture is indistinguishable from other non-decoy images only adds a trivial amount of entropy to the encryption. An attacker who is determined to brute force their way into your pictures can simply attempt to crack every picture in your camera roll, decoy or no.
Does it change the low bits of white (0xFFFFFF) pixels? It would be a dead giveaway to find noise in overexposed areas of a photo, at least with the cameras I’ve used.
It does. Taking a picture of a solid white or black background will absolutely make it easier for an attacker with access to your data to be more confident that steganography is at work. That said there are some factors that mitigate this risk.
The iPhone’s camera, combined with its JPG compression, inserts noise almost everywhere. This is far from exhaustive but in a series of 10 all-dark and 10 all-bright photos, the noise distribution of the untouched photos was comparable to the noise distribution of the decoy. Given that I don’t control either of these, I’m not counting on this to hold up forever.
The app forces you to take a picture (and disables the flash) rather than use an existing one, lessening the chances that someone uses a noiseless picture. Again though, someone could still take a picture of a solid black wall.
Because of this, the visual decoy aspect of it is not meant as cryptographic protection. It’s designed to lessen the chances that you will become a target. Any test designed to increase confidence in a tampered image requires access to your data which means the attacker has already targeted you in most cases. If that happens, there are other more efficient ways of determining what pictures would be worth attacking.
My original statement was that an attacker cannot confirm your image is a Decoy. They can raise their confidence that steganography is taking place. But unless a distinguishing attack against full AES exists, they can’t say with certainty that the steganography at work is Decoy.
TL;DR: the decoy aspect of things is basically security through obscurity. The cryptographic protection comes from the AES encryption.
The fact that it distributes noise doesn’t mean that the noise is uniformly distributed. It likely doesn’t put the same noise in an area with is uniformly colored and an area that isn’t uniformly colored.
I can’t say with certainty either that the sun will rise tomorrow.
This seems like deliberate misinterpretation of Nanashi’s point. You can’t say with certainty that the Sun will rise tomorrow, but you can say so with extremely high probability. An attacker can’t confirm that the image is a Decoy with a probability anywhere near as high.
Correct. I’d assign a probability of, say, 99.999999999999999999% that the sun will rise tomorrow.
If I were an attacker analyzing the noise distribution of an image, I could say with maybe 10% probability that an image has been tampered with. From there I have to further reduce the probability because there are hundreds of ways an image could have been tampered with that aren’t Decoy.
For what it’s worth, here is a sample of the noise distribution of the iPhone’s JPEG compression vs. Decoy
(iPhone on left, Decoy on right)
http://i.cubeupload.com/ujKps6.png
(Note that these are not the same picture, because Decoy does not save or store the original version of either photo. It’s two pictures where I held the iPhone very close against a wall. So there’s a slight color variation)
That’s pretty useless—what you want is to look at some statistical measures of the empirical distributions of lower-order bits in these images. See e.g. this outdated page.
I don’t blame you for not spotting this, since these comments have gone really all over the place. But I did describe how an attacker would use LSB or Chi^2 analysis to determine:
For posterity here is that section: “Incidentally, regarding the specific details of such a detection method:
We (and the attacker) already know that the distribution of base64 characters in an AES-encrypted ciphertext is approximately random and follows no discernible pattern. We also know that the ciphertext is encoded into the last 2 bits of each 8-bit pixel. So, we can, with X amount of confidence, show that an image is not a Decoy if we extract the last 2 bits of each pixel and discover the resulting data is non-randomly distributed.
However, because it is possible for normal, non-Decoy, compressed JPEGs to exhibit a random distribution of the data in the last 2 bits of each pixel, the presence of randomness does not confirm that an image is a Decoy.
The only viable attack here would be to pull images which are “visually similar” (a trivial task by simply using Google image search), reduce them to the same size, compress them heavily, and then examine the last 2 bits of each of their pixels. If there is a significant difference in the randomness of the control images vs. the randomness of the suspected image, you could then suggest with X% confidence that the suspected image has been tampered with.
However, because it is possible for an image to be tampered with and yet NOT be a Decoy image, even then you could still not, with any legitimate amount of confidence, use such a test to state that an image is a Decoy.”
The point you’re missing is that the purpose of steganography is not to be noticed as opposed to “you can’t prove this beyond reasonable doubt”. If I run statistical analysis on the images in your phone and enough of them show suspicious randomness in LSBs, your steganography has failed already.
I’ve already said this like, five times, but I am giving you a pass here because there are a billion comments on this post and I wouldn’t expect someone to read all of them.
The primary protection isn’t steganography, it’s the AES encryption.
The goal of the steganography is a deterrent. As you said, to help you not be noticed. If someone is suspicious enough that they steal your images and run a statistical analysis of them, the whole conversation is moot because you’ve already been noticed.
So, I just don’t get it. What is your point here? That steganography has potential weaknesses? Is anyone suggesting otherwise?
Also just for the record, here are the relevant statements I made personally about Decoy:
Which, by request I clarified:
These clarifications were provided very early on in the conversation. It has since devolved into a criticism of steganography in general, which at no point have I ever tried to insinuate that steganography is anything other than security through obscurity.
Protection against what? Your lack of the threat model is tripping you up. If all you want is protection against a Fappening, you don’t need steganography, just encrypt images to binary blobs and you’re done.
Why steal? Imagine a scenario: you’re drove to Canada from the US for a weekend and when you’re returning, a polite TSA officer asks for your phone and plugs it into a gizmo. The gizmo displays some blinkenlights, beeps, and the polite officer tells you that your phone is likely to have hidden encrypted information and would you mind stepping inside that office to have a conversation about it?
Encrypting your images has obvious benefits, but what exactly do you gain by keeping them inside other images as opposed to random binary files?
I specifically outlined the three primary attack types: fusking, stolen-phone, targeted attacks.
In that scenario, I would hope the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard would apply (which this protocol passes). But if we’re assuming an evil government that doesn’t stick to that standard, the same hypothetical gizmo can be used to detect any encrypted data.
Convenience, a deterrent against attacks, and moderate protection.
Convenience: the iPhone doesn’t provide any sort of file system for you to store random binary files, and no supported protocol by which to transmit them anywhere. It does, however, have a very robust photo storage and transmission system and GUI.
Deterrent: In low-threat situations where potential attackers only have visual access to your images, there are no visual methods by which to distinguish your decoy pictures from normal pictures, and therefore make you a target.
Moderate protection: Any further compression or alteration of the decoy image will mung the data. Most (not all) means of transmitting images from an iPhone (social networking apps, email apps, online image storage services, etc.) will compress the image before sending/storing, which as mentioned will mung the encrypted data. Obviously this should not be relied on because there are means (albeit less convenient) of transmitting the data from your phone without compression.
No need for hope here. “Beyond a reasonable doubt” is a legal standard that applies to evidence presented in criminal prosecutions. It does not apply to investigations or, for example, things like being put on the no-fly list. Or the “next target for the drone assassination” list.
Moreover, at a border crossing the Fourth Amendment basically does not apply, too. A border control official can search all your belongings including your electronic devices without needing to show any cause, never mind about “reasonable doubt”. At the border, TSA can trawl through your laptop or phone at will.
Relevant quote: “[I]f we’re assuming an evil government that doesn’t stick to that standard, the same hypothetical gizmo can be used to detect any encrypted data.”
It’s super-easy to spot in a histogram, so much so that there’s ongoing research into making it less detectable.