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Steganography with Flickr
yiangocy writes "Steganography
is not something new, there have been techniques and available programs for hiding data in pictures/audio files for a long time now. However, one step further is using popular online photo sharing sites, such as Flickr in hiding your data, successfully."
Nothing to see here. Please Move along.
Not exactly a new idea, goverments have been paranoid of "Terrorists" using stego on places like ebay for triggers.
More interesting projects, though off topic slightly; a method of obscuring your network communications and resolving key issues with stego (though I think the project stopped)
http://www.m-o-o-t.org/
They is also much more interesting uses for stego. in files, hdd slack space and this nice little project 4c.
http://dione.ids.pl/~shykta/
4c (or fourcrypt) is a multiple-file steganography program inspired by Michal Zalewski's twocrypt (2c) program, designed to be "subpoena-proof". It supports mixing between one and eight files with independent keys. The files are architecture-independant (tested on x86 and UltraSparc).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
owell, its probably goatse now, you guys should just put (NSFW) after all wikipedia links.
This is an interesting article, but it has nothing to do with Flickr, except for the fact that instead of saving the images on a local device, this guy uploaded them to Flickr.
Yaaaawn, -1: misleading.
there's no place like ~
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I'm Sorry, the posting you just made is against the Slashdot posting terms.
We believe you are a terrorist trying to hide data within your non-conformist post text.
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liqbase
Also, if part of the point is simply to save non-image file types into a seemingly unlimited Flickr storage space, what happens if you simply change the file extension to something like filename.pdf.jpg and upload that? Does Flickr actually validate file contents?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction have finally been found inside pictures! Call Fox STAT!
A couple of years ago newspapers and network news showed the cabin layout of a 747 shown inside the Mona Lisa, supposively used by terrorists. What supprised me was how little attention was payed to the fact that nobody was giving credit to Leonardo da Vinci for inventing the 747.
Woverly Harris Gooch, IV CTO American Fire and Bomb, LLC
Other similar techincs is hiding messages so it looks like a spam http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=hiding+me ssages+using+spam&btnG=Search
I've even read an article (can't find link right now) analizing some samples of the actual spam and concluding that they in fact used as an encripted communication medium by spam originators.
Rather than worry about trying to detect stegnography, any image posting service could just arbitrarily set all of the least significant bits of jpgs to "1" as part of the image posting process. It might slightly degrade the image, but it would also erase any potential encoded messages.
Not really, the best stego packages use error correcting codes to help mitigate this kind of attack. Some stego packages don't work by using the LSB but by swapping adjacent pixels. The cleaning of the LSB would have no real impact on this type of stego.
Simon
Ho-hum. There are much better ways to back up your data for $25 a year.
This is a general "this can be used by terrists!" freak-out. Well, you know, this is an awfully stupid and ineffective way to pass information -- something Bruce Schneier likes to call "movie plot" vulnerabilities. Why bother with steganography when there are much better means to pass encrypted data between two people? Like, I don't know, DCC'ing a file over IRC, or just plain sending an email? If you own both the sending and receiving servers, or use one of the infected army of the drones, there is a miniscule chance of your message even being observed in the ocean of the information that is the internet. Much less stupid than using a complex routine to hide data in an image, and then upload it to a central service like Flickr for all to see (it shows up immediately in the "recently uploaded" pool).
This is a fine idea for a movie plot, but utterly dumb for someone to actually try this. Thus, I assign the article a -1 Troll.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
Not necessarily. The flipside of stegonography is "digital watermarking," which is the same thing, except used for copyright enforcement. There has been a lot of work done in creating watermarks which aren't too noticeable, but which are resistant to resampling etc.
Would be to zip all your files together, encrypt them, then share them on Kazaa as "hot XXX teen pporn pr0n tryout mother daughter incest dog sex sex sex.avi." You data will never be lost completely ;-)
Warning: this novel is a demanding read. It is a higher-brow---and markedly dystopian---treatment of the same themes as Neil Stephensen's Cryptonomicon. In writing it, Mr. Scholz seems to have received considerable help from insiders at the national laboratories.
With luck, the following link to Google Print will show you a sample page that is reasonably representative of the entire book.
http://print.google.com/print?id=kVP7pIA9TYUC&pg=P A382&lpg=PA382&dq=steganography&prev=http://www.go ogle.com/search%3Fclient%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den-us%26 q%3DRadiance%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8&sig=-uyML9j p9G4JsUZOCa59fPI6YpM
I ran the image through stegdetect and it came up with a "false possitive". This utility detects images encoded with jsteg, jphide, invisible secrets, outguess, F5(header analysis), AppendX, and Camouflage. Although, steghide is not listed, I have found that false possitives are shown with images that I know to have an embeded file.
I played around with steganography at one time and setup a script to create embed images via the web using Outguess
From: Joe
To: Michelle
Subject: No stego here
<attachment: cutedoggy.jpg>
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