Abstract
As the popularity of social network service (SNS) messengers (such as Telegram, WeChat or KakaoTalk) grows rapidly, cyberattackers and cybercriminals start targeting them, and from various media, we can see numerous cyber incidents that have occurred in the SNS messenger platforms. Especially, according to existing studies, a novel type of botnet, which is the so-called steganography-based botnet (stego-botnet), can be constructed and implemented in SNS chat messengers. In the stego-botnet, by using various steganography techniques, every botnet communication and control (C&C) messages are secretly embedded into multimedia files (such as image or video files) frequently shared in the SNS messenger. As a result, the stego-botnet can hide its malicious messages between a bot master and bots much better than existing botnets by avoiding traditional botnet-detection methods without steganography-detection functions. Meanwhile, existing studies have focused on devising and improving steganography-detection algorithms but no studies conducted automated steganography image-detection system although there are a large amount of SNS chatrooms on the Internet and thus may exist many potential steganography images on those chatrooms which need to be inspected for security. Consequently, in this paper, we propose an automated system that detects steganography image files by collecting and inspecting all image files shared in an SNS chatroom based on open image steganography tools. In addition, we implement our proposed system based on two open steganography tools (Stegano and Cryptosteganography) in the KakaoTalk SNS messenger and show our experimental results that validate our proposed automated detection system work successfully according to our design purposes.
Highlights
The usage of social network service (SNS) applications is growing rapidly owing to the rapid advancement of mobile smartphones and 4G/5G wireless networks technologies
Many recent studies [4,5,6,7] report that cyberattackers can construct a stealthy botnet using steganography techniques in SNS instant messengers (SNS IMs) such as WeChat or KakaoTalk, and such novel type of the botnet is known as steganography-based botnet or stego-botnet [8,9]
In this study, we propose and devise an automated detection system of steganography image shared in an SNS IM, which has two major components such as automated collection component (ACC) and automated detection component (ADC)
Summary
The usage of social network service (SNS) applications is growing rapidly owing to the rapid advancement of mobile smartphones and 4G/5G wireless networks technologies. Many recent studies [4,5,6,7] report that cyberattackers can construct a stealthy botnet using steganography techniques in SNS instant messengers (SNS IMs) such as WeChat or KakaoTalk, and such novel type of the botnet is known as steganography-based botnet or stego-botnet [8,9]. In the image stego-botnet constructed in an SNS IM, a bot master sends its command and control (C&C) messages to bots in a stealthy way as follows [14,15]. The bot master hides a secret message containing its commands into a plain image file (cover image) by using an image steganography method or tool such as Steghide or Openstego, and shares the image file (stego-image) in an SNS.
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