Biography

I am Daniel Lerch Hostalot, a researcher working on image steganography and steganalysis. My work studies both sides of the problem: how information can be hidden in digital images, and how the traces left by that process can be detected.

I started working in this field during my master’s thesis in 2011 and continued this research during my PhD at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), which I completed in 2017 with the thesis Image Steganalysis and Steganography in the Spatial Domain.

Since then, I have continued collaborating with the KISON group at the UOC. I also work as a lecturer in Data Hiding and supervise master’s thesis projects related to information hiding, steganography and steganalysis.

Current Research

My current research focuses on practical image steganalysis: methods and tools that can be used when the analyst does not know the embedding algorithm, the payload, or even the source of the images being examined.

This includes the evaluation of real steganography tools, the effect of cover source mismatch, single-image and actor-based scenarios, and the limits of what modern detectors can reliably conclude. I am also interested in adaptive steganography and in the new problems introduced by AI-generated images.

Tools and Resources

I maintain this website as an entry point to my publications, tools and technical notes. The two main resources are:

  • StegoRank: a view of the current state of image steganography techniques and tools, focused on practical detectability.
  • StegoLab: research implementations, tools and experimental code for steganography, steganalysis and watermarking.

Available tools include Aletheia, an open source tool for image steganalysis, and HStego, a tool for hiding data in bitmap and JPEG images.

Contact and Profiles

I also keep a small archive of events and photographs from conferences, presentations and academic activities.