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Battling Steganography

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the why-would-you-want-to dept.

An anonymous reader submitted a fairly thin little story about a researcher who is Battling Steganography. I can certainly see the appeal of the study but it really seems like a needle in a hay stack sort of project. And when you actually can detect one technique, new and better techniques will crop up and take its place.

4 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Wait a minute by imAck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Was it just me, or did the article make it seem like anyone that would use steganography would be a criminal? Since when in a 'free' country should the ability to hide a message be of interest to the "legal community"?

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    It's hard to tell the cool to chill, my favorite hotel room has a view to an ill.

    1. Re:Wait a minute by DeadVulcan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Was it just me, or did the article make it seem like anyone that would use steganography would be a criminal?

      The article didn't say this at all. In fact, the types of criminal activity that were mentioned were "political and corporate espionage or illegal pornography."

      Talking on the phone is not criminal, but wiretaps are used all the time in fighting organized crime.

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      Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
      Power in the hands of the accountable.
    2. Re:Wait a minute by twitter · · Score: 4, Insightful
      You are right, the article did have that feeling.

      We might expect this of a promotional article. Breaking crypto to fight perverts sounds more exciting than studying paterns to detect private messages. Others have proposed better promotion, like making crypto stronger by breaking weak methods.

      A good analogy to fight the underlying assumption of the negative promotion is cloathing. The assumption is that only criminals have something to hide. Bull. Try working words like "naked" and "bare" into your thoughts. Examples: "What, are you still sending naked email?", "Are you foolish enough to trust bare telnet logins?". People will get the idea.

      Society does not work, and it's individuals are debassed when privacy is eliminated. It's impossible to have frank disscusions when you may be overheard by people who may missuderstand. It's impossible to invest or plan without privacy.

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      Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

  2. This is Wonderful News by crisco · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The reason we have effective encryption (when it is implemented right) available to use is because of the large amount of research that has gone into breaking encryption. Because of the community of mathematicians and others actively trying to break weak algorithms we know the strengths and weaknesses of various ways to encrypt data.

    Now we have more people looking at steganography. This can only make it more effective. Sure, the methods we have now might be broken but what about the next ones, the ones that don't show up on the statistical analysis that he appears to be using.

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    Bleh!