News [2018.04.22] The video of Prof. Wendzel's talk at HITBSecConf2018 in Amsterdam in April 2018 is available here COMMSEC: Steganography Ante Portas
News [2018.02.19] Prof. Wendzel will talk about network information hiding techniques and CUIng initiative at HITBSecConf2018 in Amsterdam in April 2018, see: COMMSEC: Steganography Ante Portas
News [2018.02.18] CUIng is a program partner of Symposium on Policy Impediments to Cybercrime Data Exchange which is an APWG.EU event, 15-16 March 2018, Barcelona, Spain
News [2018.01.18] There is a press release describing CUIng initiative, see: Hidden In This Picture
News [2018.01.03] The first CUIng report is out! Read about real-world information hiding-capable malware and potential development trends!
News [2017.12.29] CUIng is described in the paper for CACM magazine entitled Information Hiding: Challenges for Forensic Experts and the video is available, too!
News [2017.12.23] The CUIng workshop will be again orgazined with ARES 2018 and the website is up! The deadline for submitting your paper is May 27, 2018
News [2017.03.23] CUIng is (again!) a program partner of eCRIME.EU 2017 which is an APWG.EU event, 25-27 April 2017, Scottsdale, Arizona, US
News [2017.02.10] The CUIng workshop with ARES 2017 website is up! The deadline for submitting your paper is May 14, 2017
News [2017.01.24] CUIng has now 100+ members! Thank you for your contribution and support!
News [2016.01.10] CUIng will organize a workshop co-located with ARES 2017 - more details soon!
News [2016.01.05] CUIng will organize a special seesion at IWDW 2017 - more details soon
News [2016.12.11] CUIng aims are described in European CIIP Newsletter (ECN)
in the paper by W. Mazurczyk, P. Ammann, L. Caviglione, and S. Wendzel
News [2016.10.25] CUIng was presented at SECURE 2016 which was an CERT.PL event, 25-26 October 2016, Warsaw, Poland
News [2016.10.06] CUIng panel entitled "CUIng.org, Raising Awareness on Information Hiding" has been held at eCRIME.EU 2016, 6 October 2016, Bratislava, Slovakia [slides available here]
News [2016.07.30] CUIng is a program partner of and will be also presented at eCRIME.EU 2016 which is an APWG.EU event, 5-7 October 2016, Bratislava, Slovakia
News [2016.06.23] CUIng in the media: How a Kitten Video Can Transmit Secret Instructions to Criminals
News [2016.06.17] CUIng has been officially launched! Read the statement of Head of EC3 about the initiative here
Criminal Use of Information Hiding (CUIng) Initative
Recently, various types of information hiding techniques (like steganography) are increasingly utilized by the current malware to hide its existence, communication attempts and confidential data exfiltration. This new trend is highlighted by the latest examples of malicious software that have information hiding capabilities, e.g., Hammertoss, Stegoloader, Regin or Duqu. These techniques have been utilized by cybercriminals but were also found useful by spies (e.g., the discovery of the Russian spy ring in US in 2010) and terrorists (arrest of one of al Qaeda's members in Berlin with video files containing hidden information in 2012). Information hiding has been also proved useful as a tool for insiders for sensitive data exfiltration.
Considering the sophistication of the techniques found in the wild we believe that now it is a high time to react on an EU-level.
That is why we created the Criminal Use of Information Hiding (CUIng) Initative in cooperation with the Europol European Cybercrime Centre (EC3). By working jointly and combining experiences from experts from academia, industry, law enforcement agencies, institutions etc. we will be able to tackle the highlighted problem while it is still not so widely-deployed.
The main objectives of CUIng are to: raise awareness, track progress, share strategic threat intelligence, work jointly, and educate & train.
