2014/08/27 by Wojciech Mazurczyk, Mazurczyk, Wojciech, Luca Caviglione +1
Computer Science · #Advanced Malware Detection Techniques #Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Multimedia (cs.MM) #User Authentication and Security Systems
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1410.6796
openalex publication_date 2014/08/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
By offering sophisticated services and centralizing a huge volume of personal data, modern smartphones changed the way we socialize, entertain and work. To this aim, they rely upon complex hardware/software frameworks leading to a number of vulnerabilities, attacks and hazards to profile individuals or gather sensitive information. However, the majority of works evaluating the security degree of smartphones neglects steganography, which can be mainly used to: i) exfiltrate confidential data via camouflage methods, and ii) conceal valuable or personal information into innocent looking carriers. Therefore, this paper surveys the state of the art of steganographic techniques for smartphones, with emphasis on methods developed over the period 2005 to the second quarter of 2014. The different approaches are grouped according to the portion of the device used to hide information, leading to three different covert channels, i.e., local, object and network. Also, it reviews the relevant approaches used to detect and mitigate steganographic attacks or threats. Lastly, it showcases the most popular software applications to embed secret data into carriers, as well as possible future directions.