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First Steganographic Image Found In The Wild

Posted by timothy on from the monkeying-with-images dept.

Niels Provos writes: "After months of searching for steganographic content on eBay and elsewhere -- downloading millions of images, we were finally able to find an image with a stegangraphic message hidden in it. Stegdetect and Stegbreak made short process with it. It took less than a second to compute the secret key necessary to extract the hidden message. Two commands at the prompt, and we found the hidden message to be an image of B-52 scrapyard. Right off Terraserver."

14 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. I found the message! by garcia · · Score: 5, Funny

    It says "host cannot be reached, click OK to continue"

    yay. It only took me 10s w/Netscape to find the message :)

  2. wow by part!cle · · Score: 1, Funny

    downloading millions of images? you think they would want to find something better than a pic off of terraserver with that kind of investment.

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  3. Oh great... by RedOregon · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...now we're going to need federal registration to download images off the web... all for the greater cause of fighting terrorism, of course!

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    1. Re:Oh great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

      we're going to need federal registration to download images off the web...


      I'll give up my images when they pry my hot, sticky fingers...


      On second thoughts, forget it.

    2. Re:Oh great... by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny
      now we're going to need federal registration to download images off the web... all for the greater cause of fighting terrorism, of course!

      Now I'm beginning to see how evil and subversive those Find the Hidden Picture's were in Highlights Magazine I read as a child! See what diabolical effect it's had on my effort to draw a picture of a simple emoticon!

      cccccccccccccccccccc
      cccccc/ccccccccEcccc
      ccccc/ccc====ccAcJcc
      cccc|ccccccccccTcOcc
      cccc|cccc====ccccEcc
      ccccc\cccccccccAc'cc
      cccccc\ccccccccTcScc
      cccccccccccccccccccc

      The horror, the horror!

      --

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  4. This lends weight to... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    ...the theory that no-one's using this technique!

  5. Nothing to see here.... move along by smnolde · · Score: 2, Funny

    This wasn't on EBay. This was a published demonstration of how steganography works.

    But if you look at the Slashdot image: http://images.slashdot.org/title.gif you'll see cmdrtaco and cowboyneal with pasty white bodies on the well tanned French Riviera.

  6. Re:Preview is my friend by srvivn21 · · Score: 2, Funny
    I think you mean:


    Preview is     now my friend
    images.


    ;o)
  7. In the wild... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I'm trying to picture this image leaping about the Serengeti, grazing amongst the gazelle, and fleeing from lions...

  8. DMCA by Spankophile · · Score: 5, Funny
    For you 'merkins out there, as long as you own the copyright on the information you "hide" in pictures, wouldn't it be illegal for people to circumvent the protection you used to hide it (i.e. steganography etc)..


    Unless of course they have a warrant, or the US government implements some more 1984 laws.

  9. Wow! That is amazing by ellem · · Score: 4, Funny

    I looked at that picture for hours and I couldn't see those B-52s

    I just kept staring at it and staring at it....

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    This .sig is fake but accurate.
  10. Re:MOD PARENT UP! by ethereal · · Score: 4, Funny

    But, eBay did grant permission for the download. Somebody's client said "GET http://www.ebay.com/image/something", and eBay said "OK, here it is, catch!". If they didn't want to spend the bandwidth to send it to you, they shouldn't have done so. At no point did eBay not have a choice.

    You may think I'm being needlessly literal here (and in a sense I am), but really this points out the fact that HTTP isn't a suitable protocol to use if you want to shape and/or limit your traffic in certain non-basic ways like eBay does. Not that I'm in favor of traffic limitations, though - anyone who can type a /. comment in less than 20 seconds will agree with me there :)

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  11. I've found the message ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Hi ! How are you?

    I send you this file in order to have your advice.

    See you later. Thanks

  12. Foil them easily! by almightyjustin · · Score: 1, Funny

    Quick! Everybody start hiding pictures of the goatse man in as many images as you can! See how eager researchers are to decode the pictures then! >:D

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