*Article* **Multilayer Detection of Network Steganography**

#### **Milosz Smolarczyk 1, Krzysztof Szczypiorski 1,2,\* and Jakub Pawluk 1**


Received: 19 November 2020; Accepted: 10 December 2020; Published: 12 December 2020

**Abstract:** This paper presents a new method for steganography detection in network protocols. The method is based on a multilayer approach for the selective analysis of derived and aggregated metrics utilizing machine learning algorithms. The main objective is to provide steganalysis capability for networks with large numbers of devices and connections. We discuss considerations for performance analysis and present results. We also describe a means of applying our method for multilayer detection of a popular RSTEG (Retransmission Steganography) technique.

**Keywords:** steganography; network security; steganography detection; steganalysis; machine learning; big data; IoT; pattern mining
