Multi-class classification averaging fusion for detecting steganography

Multiple classifier fusion has the capability of increasing classification accuracy over individual classfier systems. This paper focuses on the development of a multi-class classification fusion based on weighted averaging of posterior class probabilities. This fusion system is applied to the steganography fingerprint domain, in which the classifier identifies the statistical patterns in an image which distinguish one steganography algorithm from another. Specifically, we focus on algorithms in which jpeg images provide the cover in order to communicate covertly. The embedding methods targeted are F5, JSteg, Model Based, OutGuess, and StegHide. The developed multi-class steganalysis system consists of three levels: (1) feature preprocessing in which a projection function maps the input vectors into a separable space, (2) classfier system using an ensemble of classifiers, and (3) two weighted fusion techniques are compared, the first is a well known variance weighted fusion and an Gaussian weighted fusion. Results show that through the novel addition of the classfier fusion step to the multi-class steganalysis system, the classification accuracy is improved by up to 12%.