Duplicate file names - A novel steganographic data hiding technique

Abstract

Data hiding has been an integral part of human society from the very early days dating back to BC. It has played its role for both good and bad purposes. First instances of data hiding dates back to 440 B.C. and has been cited in several works as one of the first known and recorded use of steganography. Several complicated Steganographic techniques have been proposed in the past decade to deceive the detection mechanisms. Steganalysis has also been one of the corner stones of research in the recent past to thwart such attempts of the adversary to subterfuge detection. In this paper we present a novel, simple, and easy to implement data hiding technique for hiding files with duplicate names. The proposed file hiding technique Duplicate File Names uses an innocuous file as the cover medium exploiting its name and reputation as a good file. This vulnerability was first discovered on a Windows 98 machine with DOS 6.1. We have tested this vulnerability on several different file systems to confirm that the vulnerability exists across file systems and not specific to older Windows file systems. Finally, we have discussed using this method for legitimate data hiding as well as detecting when employed for illegitimate data hiding. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.