Because digital images can be modified with relative ease, considerable effort has been spent developing image forensic algorithms capable of tracing an image's processing history. In contrast to this, relatively little consideration has been given to anti-forensic operations designed to mislead forensic techniques. In this paper, we propose an anti-forensic technique capable of removing artifacts indicative of wavelet-based image compression from an image. Our technique operates by adding anti-forensic dither to a previously compressed image's wavelet coefficients so that the anti-forensically modified wavelet coefficient distribution matches a model of the coefficient distribution before compression. Simulation results show that our algorithm is capable of fooling current forensic image compression detection algorithms 100% of the time.
Matthew C. Stamm, K. J. Ray Liu