Countering Counter-Forensics:

The Case of JPEG Compression

ShiYue Lai and Rainer Bohme
European Research Center for Information System (ERCIS)
University of M unster, Leonardo-Campus 3, 48149 M unster, Germany
{shiyue.lai|rainer.boehme}@ercis.uni-muenster.de
Abstract. This paper summarizes several iterations in the cat-and-
mouse game between digital image forensics and counter-forensics re-
lated to an images JPEG compression history. Building on the counter-
forensics algorithm by Stamm et al. [1], we point out a vulnerability in
this scheme when a maximum likelihood estimator has no solution. We
construct a targeted detector against it, and present an improved scheme
which uses imputation to deal with cases that lack an estimate. While
this scheme is secure against our targeted detector, it is detectable by a
further improved detector, which borrows from steganalysis and uses a
calibrated feature. All claims are backed with experimental results from
2 800 never-compressed never-resampled grayscale images.
Key words: Image Forensics, Counter-Forensics, JPEG Compression
1 Introduction
Advances in information technology, the availability of high-quality digital cam-
eras, and powerful photo editing software have made it easy to fabricate digital
images which appear authentic to the human eye. Such forgeries are clearly un-
acceptable in areas like law enforcement, medicine, private investigations, and
the mass media. As a result, research on computer-based forensic algorithms to
detect forgeries of digital images has picked up over the past couple of years.
The development of digital image forensics soon became accompanied by
so-called tamper hiding [2] or digital image counter-forensics. The aim of
digital image counter-forensics, as the name suggests, is to fool current digital
image forensics by skillfully taking advantage of their limitations against intel-
ligent counterfeiters. In other words, counter-forensics challenge the reliability
of forensic algorithms in situations where the counterfeiter has a suciently
strong motive, possesses a background in digital signal processing, and disposes
of detailed knowledge of the relevant digital forensic algorithms. Hence, study-
ing counter-forensics is essential to assess the reliability of forensics methods
comprehensively, and eventually to improve their reliability.
However, almost all counter-forensic algorithms are imperfect. This means
they may successfully mislead specic forensic algorithms against which they
are designed. But their applications either skips over some traces of counterfeit
2 ShiYue Lai and Rainer B ohme
progress
standard
JPEG
compression
JPEG
quantization
estimation [7]
DCT
histogram
smoothing [1]
rst kind
detector
improved
histogram
smoothing
second kind
detector
Legend: detects
inspired by
steganalysis [46]
Fig. 1. Succession of advances in JPEG forensics and counter-forensics: contributions
of this paper are shaded in gray
uncovered or leaves additional traces in the resulting images. These traces, in
turn, can be exploited to detect that counter-forensics has been applied. This
limitation is mentioned in the early literature on counter-forensics [2] and we are
aware of one specic publication in the area of digital camera identication [3].
This paper contributes new targeted detectors of counter-forensics against the
forensic analysis of an images JPEG compression history.
Due to its popularity for storing digital images of natural scenes, JPEG com-
pression is an image processing operation that is of great interest to researchers
in both forensics and counter-forensics. In this paper, rst, by exploring features
of the high-frequency AC coecient distributions, a novel targeted detector is
presented to detect counter-forensics of JPEG compression proposed by Stamm
et al. [1]. We shall refer to this detector as rst kind detector throughout this
paper. Then we improve the original counter-forensic algorithm by estimating
the relation between the distributions of AC coecients. This novel algorithm
avoids obvious identifying traces of the original counter-forensics method and,
as a result, it is undetectable by our rst kind detector. Finally, a more powerful
second kind detector is presented, which can be used to detect both the orig-
inal method and the improved method. This novel forensic tool borrows from
techniques in steganalysis, namely the so-called calibration of JPEG DCT
coecient distributions [46]. To maintain better overview, Figure 1 visualizes
the above-described succession of advances in forensics and counter-forensics by
depicting the relations between our contributions and existing work. The eec-
tiveness of all presented methods is validated experimentally on a large set of
images for dierent JPEG quality factors.
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 briey reviews related work.
A targeted detector against Stamm et al.s [1] counter-forensics of JPEG com-
pression is presented in Section 3. An improved variant of the counter-forensics
Countering Counter-Forensics: The Case of JPEG Compression 3
method and a more powerful detector are proposed in Sections 4 and 5, respec-
tively. Section 6 concludes with a discussion.
2 Related Work
We refrain from repeating the details of standard JPEG compression here. Foren-
sics and counter-forensics of JPEG compression have attracted the interest of
researchers recently. Regarding forensic techniques, Fan and Queiroz [7] propose
a way to detect JPEG compression history of an image. The authors provide
a maximum-likelihood (ML) method to estimate the quantization factors from
a spatial domain bitmap representation of the image. Farid [8] veries the au-
thenticity of JPEG images by comparing the quantization table used in JPEG
compression to a database of tables employed by selected digital camera mod-
els and image editing software. He et al. [9] demonstrate how local evidence of
double JPEG compression can be used to identify image forgeries. Pevny and
Fridrich [10] present a method to detect double JPEG compression using a max-
imum likelihood estimator of the primary quality factor.
Note that all these fruits of researches on forensics of JPEG compression are
obtained under the assumption that no counter-forensics algorithms has been
applied to suppress evidence of image tampering or to change other forensically
signicant image properties.
Regarding counter-forensics of JPEG compression, Stamm et al. [1] propose a
counter-forensics operation capable of disguising key evidence of JPEG compres-
sion by restoring the DCT coecients according to their model distribution. In a
separate publication [11], the same team further proposes an anti-forensic opera-
tion capable of removing blocking artifacts from a previously JPEG-compressed
image. They also demonstrate that by combining this operation with the method
in [1], one can mislead a range of forensic methods designed to detect a) traces
of JPEG compression in decoded images, b) double JPEG compression, and c)
cut-and-paste image forgeries.
At the time of submission we were not aware of any prior work on countering
counter-forensics specic to an images JPEG compression history. Only after
the presentation of our work at the Information Hiding Conference we learned
about independent research of another counter-forensic technique against Stamm
et al.s [1] method: Valenzise et al. [12] present a detector based on noise measures
after recompression with dierent quality factors.
3 Detecting Stamm et al.s Counter-Forensics of JPEG
Compression
3.1 Stamm et al.s DCT Histogram Smoothing Method
The intuition of Stamm et al.s counter-forensic method is to smooth out gaps
in the individual DCT coecient histograms by adding noise according to a dis-
tribution function which is conditional to the DCT subband, the quantization
4 ShiYue Lai and Rainer B ohme
factor, and the actual value of each DCT coecient [1]. The conditional noise dis-
tribution for the AC coecients is derived from a Laplacian distribution model
of AC DCT coecients in never-quantized digital images.
1
The maximum like-
lihood estimates of the Laplacian parameter
(i,j)
for the frequency subbands
I
(i,j)
, (i, j) {0, . . . , 7}
2
, are obtained from the quantized AC coecients using
the formula:

ML(i,j)
=
2
Q
(i,j)
ln

(i,j)

, (1)
where
(i,j)
is dened as

(i,j)
=

Z
2
(i,j)
Q
2
(i,j)
(2V
(i,j)
Q
(i,j)
4S
(i,j)
)(2NQ
(i,j)
+ 4S
(i,j)
)
2NQ
(i,j)
+ 4S
(i,j)

Z
(i,j)
Q
(i,j)
2NQ
(i,j)
+ 4S
(i,j)
. (2)
Here, S
(i,j)
=

N
k=1
|y
k
|, y
k
is the k-th quantized coecient in subband (i, j),
N is the total number of the quantized (i, j) AC coecients. Z
(i,j)
is the number
of coecient that take value zero and V
(i,j)
is the number of nonzero coecients
in this subband. Q
(i,j)
is the quantization factor for subband (i, j) which is either
known (if the image is given in JPEG format) or has to be estimated, e. g., with
the method in [7]. Once

ML(i,j)
is known, the AC coecients can be adjusted
within their quantization step size to t the histogram as close as possible to a
Laplacian distribution with parameter

ML(i,j)
.
In the high frequency subbands, because Q
(i,j)
is high, it is more likely that
all coecients are quantized to zero. This happens more often the smaller the
overall JPEG quality factor (QF) is. If all the coecients are zero, i. e., V =
0, Z = N, S = 0, then according to Eq. (2),
(i,j)
= 0. Hence the parameter
estimate

ML(i,j)
is undened in Eq. (1). Our experiments suggest that this
happens pretty often. Table 1 shows the average share of all-zero frequency
subbands with dierent QF for 1600 tested images.
In this situation, Stamm et al.s method just allows these coecients to re-
main unmodied for that the perturbations to each DCT coecient caused by
mapping all decompressed pixel values to the integer set {0, . . . , 255} in the
spatial domain will result in a plausible DCT coecient distribution after re-
transformation into the DCT domain by the forensic investigator. However, as
we shall see, this conjecture is too optimistic. It leaves us a clue to build our
rst kind targeted detector.
1
A non-parametric model is employed for the DC coecients, which in general do not
follow any parsimonious distribution model. This part is not touched in this paper.
Countering Counter-Forensics: The Case of JPEG Compression 5
Table 1. Average share of all-zero frequency subbands for dierent JPEG qualities
JPEG quality factor (QF) 60 70 80 90
All-zero frequency subbands (in %) 23.4 19.2 11.5 2.5
i
j
Fig. 2. The high frequency subbands according to our denition (shaded cells)
3.2 Targeted Detector Based on Zeros in High Frequency AC
Coecients
Throughout this paper, we dene a high frequency subband as subband that lies
below the anti-diagonal of the 8 8 matrix of DCT subbands (cf. Fig. 2). Using
this denition, there are 28 high frequency subbands.
All high frequency subbands where

ML(i,j)
is undened exhibit a high rate of
zero coecientseven though the perturbations to each DCT coecient caused
by mapping all decompressed pixel values to the set {0, . . . , 255} will result in
a plausible DCT coecient distribution. Based on this observation, a targeted
detector with dierent threshold T can be constructed as follows. If the rate R
of zero coecients in high frequency subbands is less or equal to T (R T),
then the detector classies a given input image as unsuspicious. Otherwise, it is
agged as image after compression and counter-forensics.
All experiments reported in this paper draw on a set of 1600 test images
captured with a single Minolta DiMAGE A1 camera. The images were stored
in raw format and extracted as 12-bit grayscale bitmaps to avoid inference of
color lter interpolation or noise reduction. One test image sized 640480 pixels
has been cropped from each raw image at a random location to avoid resizing
artifacts. The test images were made available to us by Ker [13]. All JPEG
compression and decompression operations were carried out by us using libjpeg
version 6b with its default DCT method on an Intel Mac OS 10.6 platform.
The 1600 never-compressed images were randomly and equally divided into
two groups. The 800 images in the rst group were rst compressed with dierent
quality factor (QF= 60, 70, 80, 90), then subject to counter-forensics of JPEG
compression using Stamm et al.s method. Finally the original uncompressed
images in the rst group and the images after counter-forensics were tested
6 ShiYue Lai and Rainer B ohme
QF=60
QF=70
QF=80
QF=90
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
PFA
P
D
(a) ROC for dierent QF
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
PFA
P
D
(b) The average ROC
Fig. 3. The ROC of the detector based on the rate of zeros in high frequency subbands
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
T
P
F
A
Fig. 4. Empirical P
FA
as a function of threshold T
together. Let P
FA
and P
MD
(P
D
= 1 P
MD
) denote the probabilities of false
alarm and missed detection, respectively. Fig. 3 shows the receiver operation
characteristics (ROC) curve for this rst kind detector. Fig. 4 shows the empirical
P
FA
of detectors with dierent threshold T, and Fig. 5 shows P
MD
as a function
of threshold T for dierent QF.
The gures suggest that to minimize the overall error (P
E
, which is calculated
by dividing the number of the tested images by the number of misclassid im-
ages), T should be chosen around T 0.2. The 800 images in the second group
were used to test the targeted detectors with T = {0.15, 0.20, 0.25}. Table 2
reports the results.
Countering Counter-Forensics: The Case of JPEG Compression 7
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
QF=90
QF=80
QF=70
QF=60
T
P
M
D
Fig. 5. Empirical P
MD
as a function of threshold T
Table 2. P
FA
, P
MD
and P
E
for the detectors with T = {0.15, 0.20, 0.25}: (%)
T P
E
P
FA
P
MD
QF=60 QF=70 QF=80 QF=90 Average
0.15 20.6 54.6 1.4 5.4 20.0 21.6 12.1
0.20 21.8 24.7 2.3 9.9 27.5 44.5 21.0
0.25 25.0 7.6 3.8 12.1 32.8 68.8 29.3
3.3 Targeted Detector Based on the Magnitude of High Frequency
AC Coecients
Another feature of the frequency subbands whose

ML(i,j)
are undened is that
the magnitude of the their AC coecients is very small. Experiments on the
rst 800 images indicated that the magnitude is never larger than |y
k
| 2.
Based on this observation, another targeted detector can be established like
this: for a given image, the absolute values of the (unquantized) AC coecients
are examined. If there exists a subband where the maximum absolute value of
its AC coecients is not larger than 2, then the image is judged to be a forgery.
Otherwise it can be classied as authentic. To test this detector, the second
group of 800 images were used. Table 3 shows the value of the two kinds of
errors for dierent QF. It is can be seen that the P
MD
is very high if QF is larger
than 80. This is so because with increasing QF, there are fewer subbands where

ML(i,j)
is undened.
3.4 Combination of the Two Targeted Detectors
Judging from the above discussion, it can be seen that with QF increasing, both
detectors become less sensitive to the counter-forensics operation. This is intu-
itive because the higher the QF the more similar are the original image and the
8 ShiYue Lai and Rainer B ohme
Table 3. P
FA
, P
MD
and P
E
for the second targeted detector: (%)
P
E
P
FA
P
MD
QF=60 QF=70 QF=80 QF=90 Averagel
22.9 0.3 0.8 2.5 20.3 90.4 28.5
Table 4. The performance of the detectors combining the rst targeted detector with
dierent T and the second targeted detector: (%)
T P
E
P
FA
P
MD
QF=60 QF=70 QF=80 QF=90 Average
0.15 19.6 54.1 0.8 2.5 18.9 21.6 10.9
0.20 18.4 24.3 0.8 2.5 20.2 44.4 16.9
0.25 19.6 7.3 0.8 2.5 20.2 67.5 22.8
image after counter-forensics. It is also noticeable that P
MD
for the rst detector
with proper T are lower than the second one, whereas the second detector gen-
erates a very low P
FA
. Based on this observation, a targeted detector combining
the two approaches can be built like this: we rst pass a given image though
the second detector. If the result is negative (that is, the image is considered a
forgery), then we trust the decision because P
FA
of the second detector is very
low. Conversely, if the result is positive, then the image is passed on to the rst
detector with threshold T. Table 4 reports the performance of a detector combin-
ing the rst detector with dierent T and the second detector. The experiment
is done on the second group of images. It can be seen that the performance of
the combined detector is better than of any single detector. Our detector is good
at detecting the counter-forensics operation of JPEG compression when QF is
not too high, while keeping the P
FA
reasonably low.
4 Improved Counter-Forensics of JPEG Compression
To overcome the obvious vulnerability in the high frequency subbands, which
persists in Stamm et al.s method due to undened

ML(i,j)
, we propose a way
to impute estimates for the Laplacian parameter if Eq. (1) has no solution.
This part is builts on prior research by Lam and Goodman [14]. They argue
that the distribution of DCT coecients I
(i,j)
is approximately Gaussian for
stationary signals in the spatial domain. Hence, if the variance of all 88 blocks

2
block
in a image was constant, then the variance
2
(i,j)
of frequency subband
I
(i,j)
would be proportional to
2
block
. Suppose
2
block
= K
(i,j)

2
(i,j)
and let
K
(i,j)
= k
2
(i,j)
to simplify notation. Then
block
= k
(i,j)

(i,j)
, where k
(i,j)
is a
scaling parameter. Now adding one important characteristic of natural images,
namely that the variance of the blocks varies between blocks, leads us to Lam
Countering Counter-Forensics: The Case of JPEG Compression 9
and Goodmans double-stochastic model [14]. Let p(.) denote the probability
density function, then
p(I
(i,j)
) =

0
p(I
(i,j)
|
2
block
)p(
2
block
)d(
2
block
). (3)
As discussed above, p(I
(i,j)
|
2
block
) is approximately zero-mean Gaussian, i. e.,
p(I
(i,j)
|
2
block
) =
1

2
(i,j)
exp

I
2
(i,j)
2
2
(i,j)

. (4)
Following the argument in [14] further, we can approximate the distribution
function of the variance p(
2
block
) by exponential distributions and half-Gaussian
distributions. Adapted to our notation we obtain for the exponential distribution:
p(x) = exp (x) ; (5)
and for the half-Gaussian distribution:
p(x) =

2
exp

x
2

2
2

for x 0
0 for x < 0.
(6)
Plugging Eqs. (5) or (6) into Eq. (4), respectively, yields the same Laplacian
shape for the AC coecient distribution in natural images (proofs in [14]),
p(I
(i,j)
) =
k
(i,j)

2
2
exp

k
(i,j)

2|I
(i,j)
|

. (7)
So the relationship of the Laplacian parameters
(i,j)
for frequency subbands
I
(i,j)
are only determined by k
(i,j)
. For any two AC DCT subbands I
(i,j)
and
I
(m,n)
it holds that

(i,j)

(m,n)
=
k
(i,j)

2
k
(m,n)

2
=
k
(i,j)
k
(m,n)
. (8)
To learn the scaling parameters k
(i,j)
from our images, we rst select blocks
with dierent variance randomly from our image database while keeping the
number of blocks for each variance bracket approximately constant. We then
transform the selected blocks to the DCT domain and calculate the variance

(i,j)
. With
block
and
(i,j)
known for a balanced sample,

k
(i,j)
can be estimated
with the least squares method. Once

k
(i,j)
is determined,

(i,j)
can be imputed
using Eq. (8) in cases where

ML(i,j)
cannot be calculated from Eq. (1). This
procedure avoids the obvious vulnerability in the high frequency subbands that
made the original DCT histogram smoothing method of [1] detectable with our
rst kind detector. All other parts of the algorithm remain the same in our
improved variant of Stamm et al.s method.
As the obvious singularity in the high frequency subbands no longer exist
with the improved method, our targeted detector of Sect. 3.4 fails to detect it
or produces unacceptably many false positives (see Table 5).
10 ShiYue Lai and Rainer B ohme
Table 5. The performance of targeted detectors with dierent T for improved method:
(%)
T P
E
P
FA
P
MD
QF=60 QF=70 QF=80 QF=90 Average
0.15 28.7 54.1 24.0 22.1 22.0 21.0 22.3
0.20 43.1 24.3 50.1 48.2 50.0 42.3 47.8
0.25 56.5 7.3 68.8 70.1 68.7 67.5 68.8
5 Second Kind Detector Using Calibration
The nal contribution of this paper is a more powerful detector. This time we
seek inspiration from steganalysis of JPEG images, since both forensics and
steganalysis strive for closely related goals [15, 16].
The notion of calibration was coined by Fridrich et al. in 2002 in conjunction
with their attack against the steganographic algorithm F5 [4]. The idea is to
desynchronize the block structure of JPEG images, e. g., by slightly cropping
it in the spatial domain. This way one obtains a reference image which, after
transformation to the DCT domain, shares macroscopic characteristics with the
original unprocessed JPEG image. Kodovsky and Fridrich [6] give a detailed
analysis of the nature of calibration in steganalysis. While pointing out some
fallacies of calibration, they also studied in depth how, why, and when calibration
works. Based on their research and the fact that calibration has been successfully
used to construct many steganalysis schemes [4, 5, 17], we decided to investigate
the usefulness of calibrated features to set up a detector for JPEG compression
counter-forensics.
In this paper, a single calibrated feature, the ratio of the variance of high
frequency subbands, is utilized to establish a detector. For a given image I, rst,
in spatial domain, we crop it by 4 pixels in both horizontal and vertical direction
(similar to [5]) to obtain a new image J. Then we calculate the variance of 28
high frequency subbands for both images I and J. The calibrated feature F is
calculated as follows:
F =
1
28
28

i=1

v
I,i
v
J,i
v
I,i

, (9)
where v
I,i
is the variance of i-th high frequency subband in I and v
J,i
is the
variance of i-th high frequency subband in J.
According to Lam and Goodman [14], the variance of frequency subbands is
determined by the variance of pixels in the spatial domain (see also Sect. 4). In
digital images of natural scenes, the variances of pixels in spatial proximity are
often very similar. Hence, cropping the image can be treated as a transposition
of the spatial pixels. So, for a authentic image, the changes of the variance of fre-
quency subbands should be negligible. However, for images that have undergone
counter-forensics, even though DCT coecients have been smoothed to match
Countering Counter-Forensics: The Case of JPEG Compression 11
QF=60
QF=70
QF=80
QF=90
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
PFA
P
D
(a) ROC for dierent QF
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
PFA
P
D
(b) The average ROC
Fig. 6. The ROC of detectors with dierent G
the marginal distribution of authentic images, this variance feature is violated
after cropping. The change of the variance of frequency subbands is notable,
especially in high frequency subbands.
Our second kind detector with threshold G works as follows. If F G, then
the detector decides for a normal image. Otherwise the detector ags an image
as after compression and counter-forensics.
To test our new detector, the rst 800 images are rst compressed with dif-
ferent quality factor (QF= 60, 70, 80, 90), then processed with counter-forensics
of JPEG compression using our improved method of Sect. 4. Finally the original
uncompressed images, together with images after counter-forensics are used for
testing. Figure 6 shows the ROC curve for the new detector. Figure 7 shows the
P
FA
of detectors with dierent G and Fig. 8 reports the information of P
MD
for
dierent QF of detectors with dierent G.
It can be seen from the ROC curve (Fig. 6) that our new detector is pretty
good at detecting our improved method of JPEG compression counter-forensics.
The two kinds of errors P
FA
and P
MD
can be kept very low simultaneously.
Table 6 shows the result using the second group of 800 images with G =
{0.10, 0.15, 0.20}. Observe that both P
FA
and P
MD
are very low for our choice of
G. Even for QF=95, with G = 0.1, P
MD
is below 0.2 %, which is a satisfactory
value.
We also tested our new detector against the original histogram smoothing
method by Stamm et al. [1]. Table 7 reports the results, which are also very sat-
isfactory. We have no explanation, though, why the calibrated feature produces
slightly higher P
MD
for the original methods compared to the improved method
which uses imputed values if

ML(i,j)
is undened.
Note that all results refer to detection rates of counter-forensics. Our new
methods do not aim to detect JPEG compression as such, but attempts to con-
12 ShiYue Lai and Rainer B ohme
0.05 0.15 0.25 0.35
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
G
P
F
A
Fig. 7. The P
FA
of detectors with dierent G
0.5 1.0 1.5
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
G
P
M
D
QF=60
QF=70
QF=80
QF=90
Fig. 8. The P
MD
of detectors with dierent G
ceal it. Therefore, in practice, our detectors should be used in combination with
existing methods to detect plain JPEG compression, e. g., [7].
6 Discussion and Conclusion
The contribution of this paper is to document several incremental advances in
the area of forensics and counter-forensics of JPEG compression. We decided to
cut the dialectical iterations at a stage where a suciently powerful detector
of counter-forensics could be found. This second kind detector uses a single
calibrated feature, which was inspired from the literature on JPEG steganalysis.
According to the performance measures of this second kind detector and
the preceding analysis, it is reasonable to state that our second kind detector
is eective in detecting counter-forensics of JPEG compression, which modies
Countering Counter-Forensics: The Case of JPEG Compression 13
Table 6. P
FA
, P
MD
and P
E
for the detector with G = {0.10, 0.15., 0.20}: (%)
G P
E
P
FA
P
MD
QF=60 QF=70 QF=80 QF=90 Average
0.10 0.3 1.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.3 0.1
0.15 0.8 0.4 0.0 0.0 0.1 3.8 1.0
0.20 2.9 0.3 0.0 0.1 1.5 12.4 3.5
Table 7. Performance of the detectors with G = {0.10, 0.15, 0.20} for detecting the
method by Stamm et al. [1]: (%)
G P
E
P
FA
P
MD
QF=60 QF=70 QF=80 QF=90 Average
0.10 0.5 1.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.3 0.3
0.15 1.7 0.4 0.0 0.0 0.8 7.5 2.0
0.20 4.2 0.3 0.0 0.3 1.5 18.9 5.2
DCT coecients independently to smooth the marginal distributions of AC sub-
bands. In reaction to this detector, future research on counter-forensic of JPEG
compression needs to nd way to keep both our calibrated feature F and the
distribution of frequency subbands similar to authentic (i. e., never-compressed)
images. This is a similar problem as faced by steganographic embedding func-
tions for JPEG images. As for JPEG compression forensics, it is likely that more
reliable and distinguishable calibrated features can be found so that detectors
keep on a level playing eld with advances in counter-forensics. Like in almost
any security eld, the cat-and-mouse game between attackers and defenders will
continue.
Another open research question is a systematic comparison of the detection
performance of our method and the more recent approach by Valenzise et al. [12].
As for every digital forensics paper, we deem it appropriate to close with
the usual limitation that digital forensics, despite its mathematical formalisms,
remains an inexact science. Hence the results of its methods should rather be un-
derstood as indications (subject to underlying technical assumptions and social
conventions), never as outright proofs of facts.
Acknowledgements
The rst author gratefully receives a CSC grant for PhD studies in Germany
and an IH student travel grant supporting her trip to Prague.
References
1. Stamm, M., Tjoa, S., Lin, W., Ray Liu, K.J.R.: Anti-forensics of JPEG compres-
sion. In: IEEE International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing
14 ShiYue Lai and Rainer B ohme
(ICASSP), 2010, IEEE Press (2010) 16941697
2. Kirchner, M., B ohme, R.: Tamper hiding: Defeating image forensics. In Furon, T.,
Cayre, F., Doerr, G., Bas, P., eds.: Information Hiding, 9th International Workshop,
IH 2007. Volume 4567 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science., Berlin, Heidelberg,
Springer-Verlag (2007) 326341
3. Goljan, M., Fridrich, J., Chen, M.: Sensor noise camera identication: Countering
counter-forensics. In Memon, N.D., Dittmann, J., Alattar, A.M., Delp, E.J., eds.:
Media Forensics and Security II. Volume 7541 of Proceedings of SPIE., Bellingham,
WA, SPIE (2010) 75410S
4. Fridrich, J., Goljan, M., Hogea, D.: Steganalysis of JPEG images: Breaking the
F5 algorithm. In Petitcolas, F.A.P., ed.: Information Hiding, 5th International
Workshop. Volume LNCS 2568., Berlin Heidelberg, Springer-Verlag (2002) 301
323
5. Fridrich, J.: Feature-based steganalysis for JPEG images and its implications for
future design of steganographic schemes. In: Information Hiding, 6th International
Workshop. Volume LNCS 3200., Springer (2004) 6781
6. Kodovsky, J., Fridrich, J.: Calibration revisited. In: Proceedings of the 11th ACM
workshop on Multimedia and Security, New York, ACM Press (2009) 6373
7. Fan, Z., Queiroz, R.: Identication of bitmap compression history: JPEG detection
and quantizer estimation. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing 12 (2003) 230
235
8. Farid, H.: Digital image ballistics from JPEG quantization. Tech.Rep. TR2006-583
(2006)
9. He, J., Lin, Z., Wang, L., Tang, X.: Detecting doctored JPEG images via DCT
coecient analysis. Proc. of ECCV 3593 (2006) 425435
10. Pevny, T., Fridrich, J.: Detection of double-compression in JPEG images for appli-
cations in steganography. IEEE Tansactions on Information Forensics and Security
3 (2008) 247258
11. Stamm, M., Tjoa, S., Lin, W., Ray Liu, K.J.R.: Undetectable image tampering
through JPEG compression anti-forensics. In: IEEE Int. Conf. on Image Processing
(ICIP). (2010)
12. Valenzise, G., Nobile, V., Tagliasacchi, M., Tubaro, S.: Countering JPEG anti-
forensics. In: IEEE Int. Conf. on Image Processing (ICIP). (2011) (to appear)
13. Ker, A.D., B ohme, R.: Revisiting weighted stego-image steganalysis. In Delp, E.J.,
Wong, P.W., Dittmann, J., Memon, N.D., eds.: Security, Forensics, Steganography
and Watermarking of Multimedia Contents X (Proc. of SPIE). Volume 6819., San
Jose, CA (2008)
14. Lam, E.Y.and Goodman, J.: A mathematical analysis of the DCT coecient
distributions for images. IEEE Transactions on image processing 9 (2000) 1661
1665
15. Kirchner, M., Bohme, R.: Hiding traces of resampling in digital images. IEEE
Transactions on Information Forensics and Security 3 (2008) 582592
16. Barni, M., Cancelli, G., Esposito, A.: Forensics aided steganalysis of heteroge-
neous images. In: IEEE International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal
Processing (ICASSP), 2010, IEEE Press (2010) 16901693
17. Pevny, T., Fridrich, J.: Merging Markov and DCT features for multi-class JPEG
steganalysis. In: Proceeding SPIE, Electronic Imaging, Security, Steganography,
and Watermarking of Multimedia Contents( IX ). (2007) 313314