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Program Hides Secret Messages in Executables
DmuZ writes "My friend Rakan has created a new steganographic tool named Hydan which can embed messages into an executable without altering its size. He recently presented this tool to the public for the first time at codecon. This new technique was intriguing enough to get coverage on SecurityFocus.com. The code is available here."
meow!
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more inf. available at trustworthycomputing.com
First Post!
any export restriction son this one?
i always thought that the original virus was written along these lines, a neat bit of code that the writer wanted on all his programmes
But what's so amazing about not changing the size? Last time I looked every executable I ever ran through a hexeditor had more 00's than code.
Anataka suki desu. Itsumo. Itsumademo.
> El-Khalil concedes that the method is imperfect -- an application that's been impressed with a secret message has considerably more "negative subtractions" than an unadulterated program, making it easy to pick out through a statistical analysis.
Note that as far as I remember, stenography by definition is supposed to make it imposible to prove that there is data hidden there - one step further than normal encryption. It's not so much as about hiding the data as being able to deny its existance.
One reason for this is if you have encrypted data on your disk, then courts can demand the password for it. Stenography allows you to insist there is no hidden data.
As America prepares to use her righteous might to layeth the smacketh down up on Iraq, Slashdot was found to suck. Preliminary reports indicate that it sucks because there are too many whining lefty hippies that are better off dead. More to follow later...
Chicken nanny devils are taking over the world.
It exploits redundancy in the i386 instruction set by defining sets of functionally equivalent instructions.
Can someone explain to me exactly what this means? Will all i386 executable binaries have unnecessary redundancy? Could the size of the binary be harmlessly reduced by removing it? If so, then why isn't this done?
If a message is embedded in a binary with this method, can another message be embedded in the resulting binary the same way, or has the required redundancy already been eliminated?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
if you are using a relatively common binary. Then you just have to compare the MD5 checksums against a known-good (known-bad in MSFT's case ;P ) to identify a binary that could possibly contain encrypted data. Would it then be too much harder to go back through and disassemble the two and pick out the differences and hence identify the bits?
Novel idea though!
So when can we expect our first virus using this code?
where the comment ends and sig begins
First, executables are called executables because the computer interprets them. They are made of instructions, and unlike a document you cannot simply tamper with things because it will confuse the computer when it tries to run the executable.
Second, and most importantly, the size of the file is dependent on the size of the bytes within the file. Because the bytes in the file have differing values depending on the instructions they encode, altering the data will alter the size unless you're borrowing from one byte to inflate another -- and in this case, again, you run afoul of the first problem.
I'm surprised the editors didn't review this before approving it for posting. This is really pretty elementary to anyone who understands object code.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
ALG: (2+(2+(2+(2+(2+2)+2)+2)+2)+2)
28 Keystrokes
RPN: 2 Enter 10 ^
5 Koystrokes
...until somebody embeds "seineeW erA sreenignE epacsteN"?
Add -ldl to the LDFLAGS in the Makefile.
This is a well known technique that was used in the mid-80s by Eric Isaacson in his product "a86". See here: http://eji.com/a86/
Eric Isaacson used the technique to mark executables, so that he could determine if they were created with an unregistered copy of a86.
Am I the only one that read the headline and wondered how you can embed a massage into an executable?
Like what I said? You might like my music
It just means that you can encode certain stuff in equivalent ways (*). Like: mov eax, 0 xor eax, eax sub eax, eax are all equivalent in functionality to zero the eax register.
* = Taking into account flags and instruction size restrictions, etc.
The "redundancy" comes from these facts. So, it's not size redundancy as such, and you can't remove the redundancy. It's more like permutations of the instructions are equivalent (length stays the same).
so how do i add my 6MB ogg to the 526K ls?
Read the f*cking article.
No, you can't randomly tweak bytes in an executable and expect it to still work, but you can replace instructions with functionally equivalent ones, and develop a system to encode data that way (as described in the article).
For example (again, straight from the article), an instruction to add 50 can be replaced with one to subtract -50, and you can (and the program does) encode data that way.
A Minesweeper clone that doesn't suck
Nope Im wrong (Ive been doing too much ARM and MIPS)
The thing worls as using add and subtract of signed numbers.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
or bust. deepends on whois soul DOWt/your daddIE.
.commIEs?
:~)-
lookout bullow. run for your options, should you have any?
the daze of Godless phonIE payper liesense hostage ransom scam stock markup FUDgePeddlers(tm), is just more bad ?pr? hysteria, from the ill eagle kingdumb.
whois the real
va lairIE's patentdead PostBlock(tm) device?
Hiding messages within messages are used often in many contexts, like the radio broadcasts in WW2 sending "birthday greetings" among other things
The most interesting and difficult part I get from this is how can you be sure that the modifications are not done in DATA or in executable format headers (ELF eg).
I would recon you would need to be able to disassemble the whole thing before being able to make modifications. Otherwise you could touch static data (vars initialized in the code) or the executable format (some of the metadata about the executable, the ARCH field in and ELF binary eg).
The first vorbis plugin for Nero is out.
One less thing for the mp3-lUsers to complain abou
Let's assume (correctly) that I know no more than an idiot about compiling such a program. Could someone point me to a newbie "step-by-step" for compiling on Windows?
Thanks for your l33t sk1LL5,
A.C.
Just kidding, but you KNOW that's how it will be viewed by the 'outside'..
I bet the get shut down, under the patriot act, before you can say 'what's that knock at the door'..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yey, the day had to come. Make an executable with only the needed header,
and add the rest in those 0 byte comments?
If this ain't flamebait, nothing is!
...but why?
Why would I want to hide messages in my executable files?
Because I'm a secret little squirrel who just in general likes to hide stuff, like INSIDE other stuff?
If you play Quake III with the levels in reverse order, you get a message from Bill Gates . . .
"If being a geek means being passionate about something, then I pity those who aren't geeks." - Pike65
How can one release such software without also releasing an antidote secretly to the Total Information Awareness program?
That is actually the funniest thing I've seen all day.
- Replace length fields with two fields (length of length, and length) to avoid attacks on stream cipher.
Attacks on stream cipher?
another trick microsoft can use to spy on us...
If you have control of the linker though, you can on normal systems arrange the object files in n! ways which is enough to get going on (as I said online 15 years ago). That should be safe unless you have a linker bug or a really nasty address releated program bug (I hate those!).
Thank you very much kind sir.
I'm not so sure about hiding messages in executables, but there were two interesting messages hidden in the n64 game The new tetris. The messages were hidden in 00B8FF90 of the US ROM. They were also in the PAL rom about 2k further. Anyway, here it goes:
****START MARTIST RANT**** I must say, this was a fun time coming down to San Francisco to do The New Tetris. Allthough there were a few problems. First of all being our producer.. D*N, my god.. is this guy useless or what?? I don't hate you D*N.. but you SUCK, and I mean SUCK as a producer. You should go back to testing video games, but I doubt you could even manage that properly. I feel sorry for you. During this project you just sat around and played video games.. starcraft and everquest. Don't even deny that.. when you WERE working, it was making stupid Excel (tm) spreadsheets to try and tell me how many bugs I had left to fix on a graph.. like WTF is that??? who cares.. I have the bug list in front of me, like I need to see it in freaking technicolor. So D*N, I must say this.. hold onto, and fake your job while you can, because once they find out how truely useless you are, you will be out of a job. I cannot think of any skillset you would fit into in this industry, so you better hold on tight. (This guy thought I could save a name in 8.4 BITS.. like umm.. .4 BITS?? WTF is .4 BITS?? its either ON or OFF, not in between... anyhow, Enough about you though. To Nintendo.. It has been nice working with you.. Alot of you are great or were great. Tom 'Snoop Dog' Hertzog - you were great.. one of the nicest people I have ever met at Nintendo. You and your crews bug testing was outstanding and I commend you for the excellent work. Erich Waas - You know we have been friends a long time, but I must say this. After you had accepted the ART form for The New Tetris, and later on your higher ups said it was not UNISEX enough, you slapped the blame on H2O, Chris Bretz in particular. You did not have the balls to accept blame for your mistake, and stuck our entire team under IMMENSE stress and FRENZY. This to save your A$$ from getting in trouble at Nintendo. I still like you Erich, which is more than I can say for the rest of the team that you screwed because of this. But I guess your standing at Nintendo is more important than the friendships you had here. You always knew we had telent and you recognized that. I know you wanted to work with us again one day maybe outside of Nintendo, I think you screwed up those chances though. While I am screaming.. I might as well say this: Niel Voss.. your music is freaking KICK A$$.. you are one really damn talented boy. BUT, you are one of the laziest music guys I think there is You could go far if you wanted to, but you just lack the GO for it. It is a shame. I wish you all the luck and would reccomend you to ANYBODY just because even though everything is last minute, and like pulling teeth, the end result is AMAZING. I am leaving H2O after this project to work at 3DO. I hope this will be a good move for me. I love H2O, As amazingly disorganized of a company it is. I LOVE the people, I have so many good friends there. It will be hard to move on. Of course they will stay my friends. They were more than just co-workers.. they were FRIENDS. They were the people I lived with, spent my days and nights with.. went to bars with, camped with, drank with (alot), did other bad things with (wont elaborate ). They are true great friends, and I love them all and will miss them dearly. Allthough Vancouver is only a 2 hour flight away, I hope I can visit often. My best friends would include. Ross, Max, Scott, Jake, Bretz, Roland, Johnny, Sarah.. these are the people I love the most. And I wish you success. My 4.5 years at H2O were basically, making games.. drinking alot, playing pool alot, going to bars and raves and dancing while really screwed up in the head. THAT HAS TO BE THE MOST FUN I HAVE EVER HAD, and probably ever will. The good old days. These guys are in Vancouver right now because I got stuck finishing this project in San Francisco (Which by all means I LOVE and am staying (hence 3DO)) Well boys and girls, I just thought I would immortalize some thoughts I have at the moment into a rom which will be burned forever. This game sucks. The music is great but the game itself is not how we wanted it unfortunately. I mean, it is a good game, but some things could be polished, as well as sped up. Could use another month to finish this thing off AFTER all the bugs are fixed. oh well, woh is me. I would love to give special loves and kisses to the following. My Girlfriend Amy Bond, My Family (Joy, Allyson, Jon Pridie, Brant Sangster), My really really best old friends Selim Arikan, Cory Haberly, Jason Vasilash, Alfred Huger, Oliver Friedrichs. Goodbye H2O, it was a blast, and I mean that with all my heart. (C) 1999 July 1 David Pridie If you are reading this, you can obviously see this disclaimer. All this material belongs to David Pridie. If you find it and want to post it in ANY media format, you must get my permission or feel my wrath . This text if it is ever read, is intended to be read by hackers whom have dumped the contents of this rom and viewed it. That is ALL it is for. And maybe some of them will remember me from the C64 and PC days, Martial Artist of PE/TDT/RAZOR 1911/INC/FLT/TRN/FBR, I was in them all.. and I made trainers and intros mostly. I thank that scene for teaching me how to program, because without it I don't think I would be where I am today. Well that does it 4.5 years and Two games later (Tetrisphere and New Tetris). Unfortunately I wont be working on Nomans Quest.. but oh well. HAPPY CANADA DAY. ******END MARTIAL ARTIST RANT ******
*****START LUPIN RANT FOR 50 MOST HATED THINGS*****1] Idiot teens hanging out in front of 7'11s, KFC, McDonalds, Jack In The Box etc... Your life REALLY SUCKS if that's the high point of your day...2] A$$holes who spit on the sidewalk.3] Drivers who don't know how to use a turn signal. I can reach mine with my pinky while driving. It's not that hard.4] Teens with their pants around their a$$.5] People with personalized licence plates.6] BMX bikes.7] People panhandling me. Get a job losers! McDonalds is always hiring!8] Bums with dogs. I'm sure the dog loves eating cheese from old pizza boxes.9] The cheeseheads from asia who take a Honda Civic, slap some stickers on it, put a muffler on it that makes it sound like a riding lawnmower, a ridiculous sized fin on the back and think they have a formula 1 racer. 'Devastating Power!' my a$$!10] The same idiots who then drive their 'hot' civic like they are in the Indy 500 through busy traffic.11] The huge complex hairdos on african american women, 5 layers, 6000 curls, 4 sprouting areas, 200 dangling bits, 6000 beads, air conditioning and enough hairspray in it that it wouldn't move if Hurricane George hit it.12] People with Kleenex, plants, knitted blankets, stuffed animals, or lacey things in their cars rear window. I should be allowed to pull over and shoot them.13] People on the bus who talk so loud your forced to hear about their pointless lives.14] Crappy parkers who park their car REALLY close to the painted line so that you have half a foot to get out.15] Those old cars (ie, Cadillacs, Lincoln Town Cars, etc...)usually white for some strange reason... with the acient driver who always drives WAY under the speed limit.16] People who write a cheque for a $2 bag of nachos at Safeway.17] Corvettes, Comaros and Firebirds. Come on, the 80s are OVER!18] A$$hole tailgaters.19] Idiots who think they can pedal a bike as fast as a car, so they ride in the middle of a traffic lane. You should be allowed to run them over, it looks like natural selection to me.20] Teenagers on television news reports expressing their opinions on something. If your under 18 I don't give a sh1t about what you have to say...21] The singer Brandy, Celine Dion, all the divas....22] Twits who wear a huge parka outside when its sunny and a mild 5-10 C. The same thing goes with the whole scarf thing.23] Muni busses that smell like urine. Which is most of them.24] Corporate Broadcasting logos in the corner of the channel your watching.25] Web pages that pop open other pages and windows and then disable your 'back' button.26] People who walk around with a huge 'portable' stereos blaring, sharing their music with everyone around them. Usually crap rap.27] Junk mail.28] Peice of sh1t cars that spew out huge noxious clouds behind them.29] People that throw out huge items on the curb expecting the garbage people to remove it. Like old dirty matresses. They don't of course, and it sits on the curb for weeks.30] Budweiser beer and the people who drink it. I'd rather suck the piss out of a pig... Its time to poison the bud.31] Drivers who turn onto the road RIGHT in front of you causing you to slam on the brakes, even though there is no one for hundereds of feet behind you.32] People who drive 3/4 in one lane and 1/4 in another... what the hell is that????33] Religous people who push their drivel on you when your walking down the street. Or come knocking on your door.34] Dead web page links and 'Document not found' errors.35] Racisist people and the crap they spew out.36] Those stupid add banners from Geocities on the Internet when you hit someones home page going through them...37] All country music.38] Minivans.39] People who spray paint their names on rocks, signs, trees etc, in national parks. Like I care that Bill graduated in 86.40] Small yappy 'feeder' dogs. Like little Yorkies, poodles, etc...41] People in the fast lane who drive just 2 km/hr faster than the guy in the 'slow' lane, dawdling along.42] Film crews making bad movies most people doent want to see blocking the streets and being annoying.43] Big fat bugs that splat on my windshield.44] Those really tight spandex cycling pants on men, they are usually sooooo tight, you can tell if they are cirumcised.45] Those really tight spandex cycling pants on 90% of the women. Big fat a$$es and *wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide* camel toes.46] Those really annoying commericals from Rogers Cable that tell you all about the 'evils' of satalite tv and how lucky you are to be getting cable for a mere $65 a month.47] Commercials that are SO bad on tv, you have to wonder about the sh1t for brains who thought them up. Like the Old Navy commericals, or the old as hell commercial for Sarah Lee, that is STILL ON THE AIR, 'let them eat cake' and 'But Patrick, I'm to old for life insurance.' Shoot them ALL!48] Losers that listen to totally cheezy radio stations and then slap dozens of their stupid stickers all over thier car.49] Lilith Fair. I say when they are all hugging, listening to the music, sharing tampons, and bitching about how evil men are, toss in a few hundered grenades while recording it on camera. Sell the video as a 'To Hot for TV' tape late at night.50] Cheap a$$ manufacturers of DVDs who list as 'features' chapters, interactive menues, and the time. These arent features. Thats like calling your computers keyboard a 'feature'. Lame a$$ marketing people.51] DVD manufactureres that sell their DVDs for $40 and up, just because they know people will pay for it. DVDs have actually become MORE expensive than when they first came out.52] Nintendo and everything about them.53] Old people who clog up the sidewalk walking super slow when you want to get somewhere.54] Looking at demo-reels at work that are so incredibly bad, that I just want to call them up and tell them to go f*ck their demo reel and to never EVER send another one out to anybody. EVER.55] Spiders. All spiders. Everyone of them.56] How on the Nintendo 64 game machine, half the damn titles for it are called 'miscvidgame 64'. Why not come up with a real name? Why is everyone just slapping a 64 on all the games?**********END LUPIN RANT******** I got these rants from dextrose
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
This would be great for spreading the word about Ninnle Linux in all those Windoze binaries!
This like any solution is not fool proof. The catch is if you have managed to get hold of both the orginal and the modified copy. A quick MD5 check will reveal that both are different and could lead someone to suspect that something has been done. Now which one is the modified version? You could do this using a statistical method, by finding out which occurrence appears more often on the net. So to achieve the trick correctly you need to make the modification to an executable that does not exist on the net.
Another method to detecting an executable that contains hidden data is to work out whether the executable uses the most unusual method of implementing its assembly.
Of course just like in the film 'A Beutiful Mind', you could just end up seeing encrypted data left right and center, whether or not it is really there.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
... I do doubt that he understands object code
Ripped off from9 9-01/0 091.html ...
http://www.cni.org/Hforums/cni-copyright/19
16 bits 8 bits 2 Mini/Micro Intel,Moto,DEC,DG
24 bits 6 bits 8 PDP?? DEC
24 bits ?????? ? DSPs TI,Moto
36 bits 6 bits 6 1100 Univac/Sperry/Unisys
36 bits 6 bits 6 GCOS 8 GE/Honeywell/Bull
36 bits 9 bits 4 1100/2200 Sperry/Unisys
36 bits 9 bits 4 GCOS 8 Honeywell/Bull
48 bits 6 bits 8 A/B series Burroughs/Unisys
48 bits 8 bits 6 A/B series Burroughs/Unisys
60 bits 6 bits 10 6000 CDC
60 bits 7 bits 8 6000 CDC
Surely, a declaration of independence should be stored in a non Microsoft product.
.. you're a genius. Or, if you just read the article: "Hydan could also break programs that are self-modifying or employ other unconventional techniques".
So, uh, "so fucking what?" How have you "outsmarted" it?
...after these hidden messages.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
;p
I hide all sorts of stuff in my C comments.
Nobody can detect them in my executables.
HA! I'm so sneaky!
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Redundancy was the problem and redundancy was the answer. Microsoft realized that their operating system was simply a 32 bit GUI bolted onto a 16 bit extention of an 8 bit OS. Their code, when viewed in this light was massivly redundant and users could fit their data inside the code itself! They could even fit code within code this way. So, in this way, the engineers have saved the company from the marketing department without confrontation.
It's a joke, laugh.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Ahhh! If my byte moved from 8 bits to 16 bits, did my nibble become 8 bits instead of 4? Did my bit beceome 2 bits? If my bits can double, I'm in trouble! - Head Explodes -
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Those guys of SecurityFocus must be really stupid, since cavity virus have been around for ages.
There is no "byte" data type in C
There are distinct "byte" and "char" data types in the Java programming language. The "byte" is 8-bit as expected in PC-type and RISC architectures, but because the Java programming language's native character encoding is UTF-16 Unicode, "char" is 16-bit.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Is your friend normally in the habit of writing trojans and giving them to the public?
A word is 36 bits aned a "byte" is 9 bits which leads to a lot of fun for FTP'ing. So much for the 8 bits being the standard.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"The SUB instruction
Which means that the CF stays the same for both instructions since their results are the same.Is the same as:So, "Hydan" works.
-j
The same size executable, and it still works doesn't mean the CRC is the same. The executable will have a different footprint and will be seen by any virus scanner nowadays.
"two sticks, a dash and a cake with a stick down"
-- 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta notifying Ramzi Bin-al-shibh by telephone of the date of the attacks. If I wanted to get a message to someone, using a riddle over the phone is a simple, low-tech solution which worked for them.
Sheetrock's posting makes no sense unless you he's talking about compressed files. On my windows 2000 machine I keep lots of directories compressed, so if I ran this program over my files, they'd get bigger in actual disk space in compressed size because the amount of redundancy would be less.
Most people have their browsers set to only show the uncompressed size of files even if they have disk compression turned on, so they'd never notice the difference.
Microsoft has been doing this for ages
;)
That would apply a lot more if open-source didn't exist. For example, I've done some hacking on Bind in the past, and still have the modified binaries, but have long since lost the sources, so there's no easy way to see what a clean version would look like - without the steganographic data. It would also be pretty simple to apply this to development snapshots.
Does this mean the US goverment will ban the distribution of binary executables and will only allow distribution in sourcecode form?
It's easy, and it's fun! Just run the following command:
dd if=/dev/random of=/tmp/encrypted-terrorist-plans.txt.encrypted bs=1024k count=5
If everyone does this on all their network connected machines, it will keep big brother busy. And it'll show those damn courts who's boss when you CAN'T give them the password.
PUSH A000
POP ES
Were you trying to embed a message about children's lollipops?
And when you edit or execute the file the filesystem decompresses it to a useable state. So really your arguement and the one your replying to are still fucking bull shit uninformed uneducated garbage. Shut the fuck up and go home.
The point of a language is to communicate. Virtually everyone uses the word byte to mean eight bits. If you purchased 4 gigabytes of RAM, only to discover the vender redefined byte to mean one bit, you'd be hopping mad.
The picture had a caption that said, "Everytime you masturbate, God kills a kitten... and a plane full of infidels."
About 15 YEARS ago, I was reading the documentation for the A86 assembler. The author warned that any non-trivial amount of code compiled with his assembler could be identified and proven in court from the compiler's unique 'footprint'.
Same concept as this except that it was added by the assembler itself, hiding a simple pattern to identify the compiler, and I think it was a bit more subtle than this example.
Just in case anyone thought this was a new idea...
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Hmm, The comment on stenography is just plain daft. It no more reasonable to claim stenography be 100% undetectable than it would be to claim that an encryption technique must be uncrackable. We have two main techniques available to us throughout history when it comes to transferring information in privacy. One such set of techniques is encryption i.e. the message is in plain view but encoded and stenography in which the message is plainly coded but in some sense hidden.
Don't many EULAs say that you can't alter the binary without prior arangments with the company? You could be charged with dissasembling or reverse-engineering the binary.
http://pixelcort.com/
you're a FUCKING idiot who can't even spell FAHRENHEIT!!!
you're so full of shit. you're probably one of those dipshit americans of 4th or 5th generation german or french decent that refuses to let go of your "heritage" by putting on this facade of being european. stupid dipshit.
Referring to a language specification (such as the ISO C99 spec) or the Jargon File doesn't really work when you're defining words in common use. Although historically the byte has varied in size (as many other posters have pointed out), the commonly accepted definition among laymen and most computer scientists alike is that a byte consists of eight bits of data, and a nybble consists of four bits.
If you open any dictionary such as the OED or Webster's, you'll find such a definition.
To disprove the validity of using a language specification as a proof of how big a data type is defined to be, one only needs to pick up another language specification. I do much of my programming in Java, and in Java, the byte data type is defined to always be a signed, eight-bit number. (In many C implementations, byte is equivalent to an unsigned char; in other C implementations, byte is equivalent to char, and can be signed or unsigned.) In Java, a char is a unicode character, sixteen bits in size, and not at all equivalent to a byte.
In general computer science classes, a byte is treated as an eight-bit entity. It was taught this way at MIT. A nybble was similarly taught to always be a four-bit entity. Then again, at MIT, the CS professors emphasized the distinction between computer science concepts in general and implementation details of languages in specific. Since I have built discrete component computers for the infamous MIT 6.003 course, which rely on ALU chips that process data in discrete nybble (four-bit) sized chunks, I have a pretty solid grasp of what the common parlance is.
The fact that C tries to redefine a byte to be some data size that's processor dependent is interesting, but does not agree with common use among most computer professionals or laymen. Therefore, the more common use should be considered the correct one, regardless of whether you personally agree with this position. That's how dictionaries get written -- consensus and common use.
Back when I was learning C, there was no "byte" data type, only char.
"But now consider a computer that can address eight-bit-wide areas of store, but my OS uses 16-bit Unicode. The byte is now 16 bits, as that's the smallest chunk of memory that can hold a single char." This quote makes no sense. A char does not define a byte, nor does the operating system's choice of how to represent characters internally.
Clearly, in the world of Platonic ideals, there's an entity called a byte that is invariant and unchanging. And then there are crappy implementations of languages and operating systems in the real world, as well as some really questionable fluff in language specifications. Sorry, but I don't buy argument by redefinition. And the later posts that follow up, appealing to the Jargon File and other storehouses of historical trivia, do not in any way reflect common usage, which again should be the arbiter of how language is defined and used. It's nice to know that old IBM machines represented a byte as anywhere from one to six bits, but today, a byte is an octet of data, and that's that.
Get over it and move on. Find a more fruitful battle to fight.
Hmmm....Think about it....Usenet...
30GB a day of grainy porn...
Why again do the terrorists need encryption?
http://www.fourmilab.ch/stego/
Dan
The most advantageous, pre-eminent thing thou canst do is not to exhibit
nor display thyself within the limits of our galaxy, but rather depart
instantaneously whence thou even now standest and flee to yet another rotten
planet in the universe, if thou canst have the good fortune to find one.
-- Carlyle
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