StegIbiza: New Method for Information Hiding in Club Music
📝 Abstract
In this paper a new method for information hiding in club music is introduced. The method called StegIbiza is based on using the music tempo as a carrier. The tempo is modulated by hidden messages with a 3-value coding scheme, which is an adoption of Morse code for StegIbiza. The evaluation of the system was performed for several music samples (with and without StegIbiza enabled) on a selected group of testers who had a music background. Finally, for the worst case scenario, none of them could identify any differences in the audio with a 1% margin of changed tempo.
💡 Analysis
In this paper a new method for information hiding in club music is introduced. The method called StegIbiza is based on using the music tempo as a carrier. The tempo is modulated by hidden messages with a 3-value coding scheme, which is an adoption of Morse code for StegIbiza. The evaluation of the system was performed for several music samples (with and without StegIbiza enabled) on a selected group of testers who had a music background. Finally, for the worst case scenario, none of them could identify any differences in the audio with a 1% margin of changed tempo.
📄 Content
StegIbiza: New Method for Information Hiding in Club Music
Krzysztof Szczypiorski 1,2
1 Cryptomage SA, Wrocław, Poland
2 Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland
e-mail: krzysztof.szczypiorski@cryptomage.io
Abstract—In this paper a new method for information hiding
in club music is introduced. The method called StegIbiza is
based on using the music tempo as a carrier. The tempo is
modulated by hidden messages with a 3-value coding scheme,
which is an adoption of Morse code for StegIbiza. The
evaluation of the system was performed for several music
samples (with and without StegIbiza enabled) on a selected
group of testers who had a music background. Finally, for the
worst case scenario, none of them could identify any
differences in the audio with a 1% margin of changed tempo.
Keywords: information hiding, audio steganography, musical
steganography, club music, StegIbiza
“Be free with your tempo, be free, be free. Surrender your ego be free, be free to yourself.” Queen – “Innuendo”
I.
INTRODUCTION
Steganography seems to be a very attractive subject area
for sharing information via the Internet around the globe
without (if possible) any trace. Recently, major attention has
been paid to constructing image [1] and network [2]
steganography methods. Lately, less effort has been applied
to audio steganography [3], so this work revisited this
attractive area for research right now. This paper will focus
on musical steganography, which is a part of audio
steganography depending naturally on a melody itself and
the musical instruments, including the voice as an
instrument. Especially, when applying information hiding to
music streaming services, this seems to be very promising as
there is an almost infinite source of traffic to hide in.
In this paper, a brand new method of information hiding
in club music, called StegIbiza (Steganographic Ibiza), is
introduced. Ibiza is the third largest of the Balearic Islands
(Spain) in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern
coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Ibiza is also one of the top
holiday destinations in Europe that is best known for its
nightclub based nightlife. The city has achieved worldwide
fame as a cultural center for club music, including house and
trance.
The proposed method of StegIbiza (Figure 1) is based on
the music tempo measured in beats per minute (bpm).
Tempo means “time” in Italian and is one of the major
parameters of mixed music by DJs (disc jockeys) in
compositions called mashups, which are created by blending
two or more pre-recorded songs. In blending music from two
or more decks (i.e., CD/MP3 players), the tempo must be
synchronized to hide the blending process.
In StegIbiza the tempo of the music is modulated by
hidden messages with a 3-value coding scheme, which is an
adoption of Morse code. It allows for changes in the tempo
that are very delicate, like +/- 1-2 bpm from the original
tempo, which was taken as a reference to be undetectable by
human hearing. For club music a typical reference tempo is
100-150 bpm and usually constant for a whole mushup.
To prove that StegIbiza is inaudible to humans, several
music samples (with and without StegIbiza enabled) were
prepared using a professional digital audio workstation
(DAW) and then an evaluation was performed on a selected
group of testers also who had a music background.
This work was inspired partially by electrocardiography
(ECG) steganography ([4], [5]), which was called in an IEEE
Spectrum article, “hiding data in a heartbeat” [6]. These
methods involve electrical signals from a heart being used to
carry hidden data. The second source of inspiration was a
song by Enrique Iglesias featuring Nicole Scherzinger –
“Heartbeat” (with lyrics: “I can feel your heartbeat.
Running through me”).
Figure 1 StegIbiza: club music as a carrier (scores are part of Snap! – “Rhythm Is a Dancer”). The paper is structured as follows: Section II briefly presents the state of the art in audio steganography, including musical steganography. Section III contains a presentation of the idea of the StegIbiza method and two typical scenarios for preparation of steganograms: one with a DAW and one with manual changing of the tempo by a DJ. In Section IV the work describes the testing environment as a proof of concept and shows the results of the evaluation for these StegIbiza OUT IN IN club music steganogram as club music hidden message 00011100011100 00111001111001 +
Tempo scenarios. Section VI includes a discussion on the possibilities of detection of the proposed system. Finally, Section VII concludes our efforts and contains future work. II. STATE OF THE ART IN AUDIO STEGANOGRAPHY Considering that at the begin of the XVI century Johannes Trithemius in “Polygraphiae” [7] presented a method based on lyrics in “Ave Maria virgo serena” (dated ca. 1485) and corresponding secret tables, we
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