Use of Steganography and Stegoanalysis Methods in Information Transmission Systems

Information transmission systems (ITS), including those intended for military purposes to ensure a sufficient level of radio-electronic protection against the enemy’s radio-electronic intelligence, must meet high requirements for the quality of communication. One of these criteria is stealth, which in turn consists of energy, structural and informational. One of the directions of increasing the stealth of the ITS is the use of steganographic methods of hiding information, which, unlike cryptographic methods, ensure the concealment of the very fact of information transmission. The steganographic methods of hiding information in ITS (radio communication systems) include the use of broadband (noise-like) signals, that is, work under “noise”, when the intelligence receiver cannot detect the signal transmitted due to the similarity of the signal with a random process during visual, correlation and spectral analyses. Signals formed by discrete chaotic mappings have a high level of noise-likeness, which gives them potential advantages over traditional spread-spectrum systems based on pseudo-random sequences. In addition, they allow for a simpler hardware implementation with greater energy stealth. The paper proposes a method of steganographic information transmission, the essence of which is to change the control parameter of a discrete chaotic mapping with an information signal. A low bit errors rate of the transmitted message with a relatively high level of noise is achieved due to the correlation reception procedure.