Talk:Steganography/Archive 1

message: :The name comes from Johannes Trithemius's Steganographia: a treatise on black magic disguised as a book on cryptography, and is Greek for "hidden writing."
I was under the impression that this claim - orginally made by the Catholic Church - had been refuted. It really is about cryptography - or more generally, 15th century information security, since it branches into peripheral areas such as training couriers to memorise messages. In particular, the so-called spells in Book III were shown by Jim Reed to be cryptograms. In fact many sites today invert the sense of the quote above, and say that it is ostensibly about magic but really about crypto. However I don't know all the details, so does anyone know if there are any parts of the book that are definitively about black magic? Securiger 11:28, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, there were some parts that were apparently about the occult, but it is assumed that only about 3/8 of the original manuscript survived, and then only mostly the parts about encryption. I'm reading a book by Jacques Bergier, called 'Livres maudits' in which Trithemius work is mentioned in an occult setting. Why some parts didn't survive is the subject of considerable speculation. Trithemius work in Steganography is discussed in more detail in David Kahn's book 'The Codebreakers'.Crusty007 20:58, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Steganography name

message: Two more problems(?) with factual claims here. 
1) Bacon certainly suggested the use of different type faces to carry information. Was there also discussion of hand written stego? Have removed the handwritten part pending clarification. 
2) I have heard several claims about the frequency of stego'd images on the Internet. None has been credible on second look. I have changed the claim, to an expression of indeterminacy. Can someone provide something credible on this point?
ww 16:30, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Factchecking

message: The images are named Stenography- instead of Steganography-. Arvindn 17:11, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Arvindn, Sorry. I missed that entirely. Is this in response to 2 above, or something else? ww 17:39, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Nothing related to the above. I mean the images in the article -- the tree and the cat. Typo in the filenames. Arvindn 17:43, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I created the images and wrote a short one line stenography article to go with them. Then after someone claimed that stenography was to do with handwriting, I found out that it was called steganography. "Steganography" is a good example of steganography, since the "ga" is well hidden in there and hard to see... Κσυπ Cyp     08:33, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Typo in image filenames

message: This section is based on a set of rumours. Does the definition for "airplane" include a section about the usage in terrorism?
:The section mainly debunks a currently widespread rumour, which happens to be the motive for most current public interest in this topic, including nearly all press coverage. If ninety percent of the population had no interest in aircraft other than their usage in terrorism, then that article should indeed include such a section; but unlike steganography, that is not the case. Additionally, this section notes that AQ's own training manuals claim that they do use invisible ink, which is closely related and rather interesting. Securiger 03:51, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Securiger; the terrorism rumours are relevant here. Also, although the section discusses a set of rumours, they are carefully attributed. — Matt 13:31, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: And I will chime (not chyme) in as well. Securiger is correct in my view. ww 17:02, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terrorism 

message: OK, I give up. I am trying to reveal the cat image by manipulating the tree image. I downloaded the tree image, and opened it with GraphicConverter on my Macintosh. Any hints on what the next step is? How do I perform the "logical and" step? 
Yea, n00b. :)
:There doesn't seem to be a way to do this in GC; I have version 4.x though, and if you have version 5, there _might_ be a way to do it in GC.
:Logical and is essensially this:
:The image is a 32-bit image, which means each of the colour channels (Red, Green, Blue) has one byte of information per pixel. Each of these bytes is a sequence of eight bits. When we Do a logical and with 3 (1 + 2 = 3), we keep the two lowest bits:
: byte AND 3 => result
: 01001101 & 00000011 => 00000001
:The higher bits have higher significance, and hence contribute more to the hue/brightness of each pixel; we can use the least significant bits for extra information that is hidden in the picture. ✏ Sverdrup 15:32, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trees to cat 

message: A recent news story:
:"...An internal report obtained by The Canadian Press gives credence to the long-rumoured possibility Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and other extremist groups are using a technique known as steganography to hide the existence of sensitive communications...
:...A heavily edited copy of the January 2004 report, Computer-assisted and Digital Steganography: Use by Al-Qaeda and Affiliated Terrorist Organizations, was recently obtained from the Mounties under the Access to Information Act. Among the material stripped from the document is information on how best to detect, extract and view surreptitious messages... — 
Because of this, we may soon have to update the "No corroborating evidence has been produced by any other source." note in this article 's "Rumoured usage in terrorism" section. I'd like to find out a little more about this report first, though! — Matt Crypto 15:15, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Stego/terrorism report

message: I was facinated by this article and decided to produce a quick application that would convert the tree, per the instructions, into a cat. The final result lacks a lot of color definition, so I would imagine there is still a key part of the algorytm missing from the instructions.
I'll post up the source code if someone can tell me where to put it. In the mean time here's a few bitmaps of the results.
1. Original Image
2. Image AND 3 (boolean operation)
3. Image Multiplyed by 85
John C. Lieurance -- March 2005
That's really cool. Who came up with the original images? And has anyone managed to work out the Pikes Peak Easter Egg yet? (This is way beyond my meagre technical skills). Lisiate 02:20, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tree to Cat Example in Delphi 

message: Correcting image order. The wrong order was apparently a hack, which worked fine for him, but screws it up for everyone with a browser that is in this aspect standards-compliant. Shinobu 22:44, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image order 

message: Does hiding 'images' in audio data count? See the Aphex Twin article for some links to examples of images placed in audio tracks that are viewable on a spectrogram. SHould this be included int he list of techniques? Lisiate 03:39, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If the audio file is playable, and the data is contained in the audio track, then yes, of course! Shinobu 13:56, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Audio Steganography?

message: Every now and then the c is removed and included...
but the basic question is "what makes UDP a code[c]less mandrel?".
Look up mandrel and you'll see what I mean.
I've changed it to "protocol", because that at least makes sense. Shinobu 15:11, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  code[c]less mandrel 

message: This article was referenced in OpinionJournal.com's Best of the Web Today for Friday, December 9, 2005.  | Klaw ¡digame! 04:24, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hurray, we're famous! Look ma, we're on TV!Tommstein 04:41, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Opinionjournal.com hat tip

message: Quite a while back I remeber I saw a site which had a image steganographer (java?) which allowed you to choose a file on your on computer or on the internet and "encode"  it on an image of your own choice, a shoping cart icon was placed on the finished image, that icon worked somewhat as a link to the original file, if it was a html the browser would open it, if it was a downloadable file the "save as" window was showed.
I would like  to ask if anyone knows the url for that site as I lost it. Thanx for the attention
My ascii rendition of the shopping kart icon (although not very a successfull one...)
The icon was similar to this, if I remember correctly it was the icon for "shopping kart" function of areal online store.
the actual icon was slightly rotated I think. The lines were solid, with rounded ends iirc and I am not sure about the wheels.
         /
 _______/
 \
  \_____
  ______|
   O   O
edit: as mather of fact, I would like to know about any online steganographer.
TiagoTiago 03:05, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Online image steganographer (shoping cart icon)