How Patterns Support the Novelty Evaluation of Research

The research discipline of network steganography deals with the hiding of information within network transmissions, e.g. to transfer illicit information in networks with Internet censorship.

The last decades of research on network steganography led to more than hundred techniques for hiding data in network transmissions. However, previous research has shown that most of these hiding techniques are either based on the same idea or introduce limited novelty, enabling the application of existing countermeasures.

In a new paper, Steffen Wendzel and Carolin Palmer provide a link between the field of creativity and network steganographic research. We propose a framework and a metric to help evaluating the creativity bound to a given hiding technique. This way, we support two sides of the scientific peer review process as both authors and reviewers can use our framework to analyze the novelty and applicability of hiding techniques. At the same time, we contribute to a uniform terminology in network steganography.

Publication:
S. Wendzel, C. Palmer: Creativity in Mind: Evaluating and Maintaining Advances in Network Steganographic Research, in: Journal of Universal Computer Science (J.UCS), Vol. 21, No. 12, pp. 1684--1705, 2015.

Pattern Collection Available Online

We published our collection of `hiding patterns' online for easy accessibility by the information hiding community. We hope to foster the development of novel hiding methods and countermeasures in the near future by our collection and welcome your comments.

With the best regards,

Steffen Wendzel, Sebastian Zander, Bernhard Fechner, Christian Herdin