Stego Object
Definition
The modified carrier file containing the embedded secret data. A stego object should be visually or audibly indistinguishable from the cover medium, with statistical differences detectable only by analysis.
- Composition
- Cover medium plus embedded secret data
- Perceptual quality
- Indistinguishable from the cover to eye or ear
- Detection route
- Statistical analysis, not direct observation
Common questions
How is a stego object detected if it looks and sounds identical to the original?+
Steganalysis tools look for statistical anomalies the embedding process leaves behind, such as unusual distributions of least-significant bits or altered noise patterns, rather than trying to see or hear a difference directly.
Does having the original cover file make detecting a stego object trivial?+
Yes, comparing a suspected stego object against a known-clean original cover, for example by hashing or pixel-difference analysis, is far more reliable than blind steganalysis, but the original cover is rarely available in real investigations.
Related terms
- Cover Medium
- The original, unmodified carrier file (image, audio, video, or document) into which secret data will be embedded. The cover medium is chosen...
- DCT Coefficient Embedding
- A steganographic technique that hides data in the quantised discrete cosine transform coefficients of a JPEG image after compression. Because the embedding...
- LSB Substitution
- Least-significant-bit substitution: the lowest-order bit of each sample value (pixel colour channel or audio sample) is overwritten with one bit of the...
- Spread-Spectrum Embedding
- A technique that distributes the energy of the hidden message across many frequency components at very low amplitude, similar to a wideband...
- Steganalysis
- The forensic discipline of detecting the presence of hidden data in a carrier file. Steganalysis uses statistical tests (chi-squared, RS analysis, sample...