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Karampidis Konstantinos

Education

Electrical Engineer - TEI of Crete

MSc in "Informatics and Multimedia" TEI of Crete

Research Interests

 Intelligent System applications, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Computer Vision and Digital Forensics.

Teaching Activities

Journals


Copyright Notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted or mass reproduced without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.


K. Karampidis, M. Rousouliotis, E. Linardos, E. Kavallieratou, A comprehensive survey of fingerprint presentation attack detection, Journal of Surveillance, Security and Safety, 2021, (to_appear), , IF =
 

Abstract
Nowadays, the number of people that utilize either digital applications or machines is increasing exponentially. Therefore, trustworthy verification schemes are required to ensure security and to authenticate the identity of an individual. Since traditional passwords have become more vulnerable to attack, the need to adopt new verification schemes is now compulsory. Biometric traits have gained significant interest in this area in recent years due to their uniqueness, ease of use and development, user convenience and security. Biometric traits cannot be borrowed, stolen or forgotten like traditional passwords or RFID cards. Fingerprints represent one of the most utilized biometric factors. In contrast to popular opinion, fingerprint recognition is not an inviolable technique. Given that biometric authentication systems are now widely employed, fingerprint presentation attack detection has become crucial. In this review, we investigate fingerprint presentation attack detection by highlighting the recent advances in this field and addressing all the disadvantages of the utilization of fingerprints as a biometric authentication factor. Both hardware- and software-based state-of-the-art methods are thoroughly presented and analyzed for identifying real fingerprints from artificial ones to help researchers to design securer biometric systems.

K. Karampidis, E. Kavallieratou, G. Papadourakis, A dilated convolutional neural network as feature extractor – A hybrid classification scheme, Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis, Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 342–358, 2020, Springer, (to_appear), , IF =
 

Abstract
Nowadays, while steganography is the main mean of illegal secret communication, the need of detecting steganographic content and especially stego images is becoming more compulsory. Since multimedia content can be easily spread over the internet and more complicated steganography algorithms in different domains i.e. spatial, transform are utilized, the task of identifying stego images becomes very difficult. Early steganalysis methods deploy statistical attacks on stego images while more recent ones use deep learning techniques. The latter ones mainly utilize convolutional neural networks and show promising results. In this paper we propose a novel method to identify stego images derived from two different steganographic algorithms S-UNIWARD (Spatial-UNIversal WAvelet Relative Distortion) and WOW (Wavelet Obtained Weights) for various embedding rates. The proposed method initially utilizes a dilated convolutional neural network as a feature extractor and afterwards the extracted feature vector trains a random forest classifier. More specifically it is proved that in steganalysis, a dilated convolutional neural network could be an excellent feature extractor and the traditional softmax layer could be replaced by another machine learning classifier. Extensive experiments were conducted, and the proposed model was also compared against state-of the-art convolutional neural networks utilized in spatial image steganalysis, and other feature extraction methods. Results showed that the proposed method achieves high classification accuracy and outperforms other analogous steganalysis approaches.

K. Karampidis, E. Kavallieratou, G. Papadourakis, A review of image steganalysis techniques for digital forensics, Journal of information security and applications, Vol. 40, pp. 217-235, 2018, Elsevier,
 

Abstract
Steganalysis and steganography are the two different sides of the same coin. Steganography tries to hide messages in plain sight while steganalysis tries to detect their existence or even more to retrieve the embedded data. Both steganography and steganalysis received a great deal of attention, especially from law enforcement. While cryptography in many countries is being outlawed or limited, cyber criminals or even terrorists are extensively using steganography to avoid being arrested with encrypted incriminating material in their possession. Therefore, understanding the ways that messages can be embedded in a digital medium –in most cases in digital images-, and knowledge of state of the art methods to detect hidden information, is essential in exposing criminal activity. Digital image steganography is growing in use and application. Many powerful and robust methods of steganography and steganalysis …

K. Karampidis, E. Kavallieratou, G. Papadourakis, Comparison of Classification Algorithms for File Type Detection A Digital Forensics Perspective, Polibits, Vol. 56, pp. 15-20, 2017,
 

Abstract
Computer Science and it focuses on the acquisition, preservation and analysis of digital evidence, in a way that that these evidences are suitable for presentation in a court of law. Forensic investigators follow a standard set of procedures. One major and difficult problem is the correct identification of file types. Criminals often hide evidence in a digital device, by changing the file type. It is very common, a child predator to try to hide image files with immoral content in order to fool police authorities. In this paper we examine a methodology for file type identification, which uses computational intelligence techniques for feature selection and classification. This methodology was applied to the three most common image file types (jpg, png and gif). In order to ascertain the method’s accuracy, different machine learning classifiers were utilized. A three stage process involving feature extraction (Byte Frequency Distribution), feature selection (genetic algorithm) and classification (decision tree, support vector machine, neural network, logistic regression and k-nearest neighbor) was examined. Experiments were conducted having files altered in a digital forensics perspective and the results are presented. The examined methodology showed-in most casesvery high and exceptional accuracy in file type identification.

Conferences


Copyright Notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted or mass reproduced without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.


K. Karampidis, E. Linardos, E. Kavallieratou, StegoPass – Utilization of Steganography to Produce a Novel Unbreakable Biometric Based Password Authentication Scheme, Computational Intelligence in Security for Information Systems Conference, (ed), (eds), (to_appear), Sep, 2021, Springer, Cham,
 

Abstract
In the digital era we live, trustworthy verification schemes are required to ensure security and to authenticate the identity of an individual. Traditional passwords were proved to be highly vulnerable to attacks and the need of adopting new verification schemes is compulsory. Biometric factors have gained a lot of interest during the last years due to their uniqueness, ease of use, user convenience, and ease of deployment. However, recent research showed that even this unique authentication factors are not inviolable techniques. Thus, it is necessary to employ new verification schemes that cannot be replicated or stolen. In this paper we propose the utilization of steganography as a tool to provide unbreakable passwords. More specifically, we obtain a biometric feature of a user and embed it as a hidden message in an image. This image is then utilized as a password, the so-called StegoPass. Reversely, when a legit user or an attacker tries to unlock a device or an application, the same biometric feature is captured and embedded with the same steganography algorithm into the picture. The hash key of the resulted stego image in both cases is produced and if there is a complete match, user is considered as authenticated. To ensure that the proposed StegoPass cannot be replicated, we have conducted experiments with state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms. Moreover, it was examined whether Generative Adversarial Networks could produce exact copies of the StegoPass to fool the suggested method and the results showed that the proposed verification scheme is extremely secure.

K. Karampidis, N. Vasilopoulos, Carlos Cuevas, Carlos R del-Blanco, E. Kavallieratou, Narciso García, Overview of the ImageCLEFsecurity 2019: File Forgery Detection Tasks, Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum, (ed), (eds), (to_appear), Sep, 2019,
 

Abstract
The File Forgery Detection tasks is in its first edition, in 2019. This year, it is composed by three subtasks: a) Forged file discovery, b) Stego image discovery and c) Secret message discovery. The data set contained 6,400 images and pdf files, divided into 3 sets. There were 61 participants and the majority of them participated in all the subtasks. This highlights the major concern the scientific community shows for security issues and the importance of each subtask. Submissions varied from a) 8, b) 31 and c) 14 submissions for each subtask, respectively. Although the datasets were small, most of the participants used deep learning techniques, especially in subtasks 2 & 3. The results obtained in subtask 3 -which was the most difficult one- showed that there is room for improvement, as more advanced techniques are needed to achieve better results. Deep learning techniques adopted by many researchers is a preamble in that direction, and proved that they may provide a promising steganalysis tool to a digital forensics examiner.

Books


Copyright Notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted or mass reproduced without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.


Chapters in Books


Copyright Notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted or mass reproduced without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.


Conferences Proceedings Editor


Copyright Notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted or mass reproduced without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.