CAREER: Practice-oriented provably secure information hiding

Nicholas Hopper

Minnesota-Twin Cities

0546162

Abstract

Protocols for Information Hiding attempt to mitigate information leakage that encryption cannot prevent: steganography protocols attempt to conceal sensitive communication within innocent messages, anonymity protocols attempt to conceal the true sender and recipient of messages, and watermarking or fingerprinting protocols attempt to indelibly mark objects to allow tracing of leaks. A gap exists between current theory and practice of information hiding, leaving currently used systems vulnerable to leakage of personal information.

This project is focused on applying recently developed cryptographic techniques to develop and implement efficient and provably secure protocols for information hiding. A secondary focus of the project is applying cryptographic proof techniques to improve understanding of the relationships between, and the inherent limitations of, steganography, watermarking, and anonymity protocols.

The project is expected to produce protocols that exhibit direct benefits to society, by improving the protection of personal privacy, national security, and intellectual property. Furthermore, an important contribution of this work is the theoretical attack models under development, which are expected to feed back into evaluation of future protocols, enhancing the infrastructure for research in information hiding.