Follow us on:

08 Jun Launch of the H2020 Project UNCOVER

Posted at 05:30h in News by

The “UNCOVER – Development of an efficient steganalysis framework for UNCOVERing hidden data in digital media” consortium is proud to announce the official start of this joint international initiative funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Research & Innovation programme.

Brussels (May 25, 2021) – Started in May 2021, UNCOVER, the new EU-funded project under the H2020 framework programme, had its first kick-off meeting online, on May 06 2021. A consortium of 22 partners presented the strategy for the implementation of the project.

The official starting date of the project is the May 1st 2021 with a duration of 36 months and a total EU-funded budget of approximately 6,9 Million EUR. UNCOVER was granted under the programme H2020-SU-FCT02-2020 Research and Innovation Action, Technologies to enhance the fight against crime and terrorism. The project is coordinated by the Royal Military Academy of Brussels, Belgium.

About UNCOVER

UNCOVER is end-user-driven and responds to the real needs of Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) to detect hidden information in innocent looking data. Within UNCOVER, the partners are committed to push forward research within steganalysis and to substantially increase the technological autonomy of Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) in the field of digital media steganalysis. The developed detection and investigation tools will be integrated into a flexible and user-friendly platform. End-users play a key role throughout the project cycle and regular feedback cycles with LEAs, forensics institutes and external stakeholders will ensure that the developed solutions can be integrated into the daily criminal investigation pipeline of LEAs.

Project Objectives

UNCOVER sets out to outperform available steganalysis solutions in terms of performance, usability, operational needs, privacy protection, and chain-of-custody considerations. UNCOVER partners aim to join forces to achieve the following objectives:

      1. Advance the scientific state-of-the-art in steganalysis, bridging across the various technical areas of expertise involved.
      2. Develop, test and evaluate solutions for real-life LEA problems, based on their end-user requirements and expectations.
      3. Analyse and implement proper solutions for any relevant security, ethical, legal and privacy related concerns.
      4. Develop and implement interdisciplinary technical capabilities, capacity and community building.
      5. Engage and collaborate with any other relevant ongoing projects and initiatives.

CONSORTIUM PARTNERS

The UNCOVER consortium consists of 22 multidisciplinary partners from 9 different European countries, and is coordinated by the Royal Military Academy of Brussels, Belgium. The well-balanced consortium includes 7 LEAs, 2 government forensics institutes, leading researchers in the field working at 8 universities and research institutes as well as 3 SMEs and 2 industrial companies.