Brute Force Attack on Distributed data Hiding in the Multi-Cloud Storage Environment More Diminutive than the Exponential Computations

Abstract

Classical steganography is designed to hide data by cover media. Recent approaches fragmented the data and hide them in a distributed manner by embedding each fragmented data into a distinct cover media. This approach makes a secret message extremely difficult for an attacker to detect. However, cover media modification leaves fingerprints that could expose a secret channel to an attacker. To overcome the problem, a novel steganography concept designed by two technical contributions. I). cover media does not undergo any modification, i.e., the cover media act as a pointer to fragmented data. II). A secret message is stored in the multi-cloud storage environment. The approach claimed that it is computationally infeasible for an attacker to detect and extract the hidden message despite of having fully access to the accounts of the different clouds. In this paper, we analysed the security strength of the novel steganography concept and concluded that, attacker can get the secret value stored in multi-cloud storage environment using the brute force attacks more diminutive than exponential computations.