Blocking Steganosonic Data In Phone Calls

psyced writes "Steganography is a technique to encode secret messages in the background noise of an audio recording or photograph. There have been attempts at steganalysis in the past, but scientists at FH St. Pölten are developing strategies to block out secret data in VoIP and even GSM phone calls by preemptively modifying background noise (link is to a Google translation of the German original) on a level that stays inaudible or invisible, yet destroys any message encoded within. I wonder if this method could be applied to hiding messages in executables, too."

Comments

Not a secret message.

[Creepy Crawler]

The butterfly flaps its wings twice.

I repeat, the butterfly flaps its wings twice.

Re:Not going to work....

[Zemran]

would result in significant audible alteration of the sound to the point of unusability....

Sounds like an average mobile phone call to me...

Re:Can I add random noise to a .exe file...?

[yoris]

Yes you can. Some examples: - replace "add 1024" with "substract -1024" - replace "if greater then 100" with "if greater then or equal to 99" - replace "copy a to b, copy c to d" by "copy c to d, copy a to b" Just have a look at any assembly language and use your imagination. To make matters even simpler, there are operators which completely ignore certain parameters (e.g. a JUMP operator which only takes 1 parameter leaves room for hidden data in the 2nd and 3rd operator field). There are plenty of instructions or combinations of instructions which leave room to such minor changes without any difference in execution. So for the steganographers, the goal would be to look for all of such instances in an executable, then agree on some kind of code (for example "add n" is a 1, "substract -n" is a 0). Semantically there is no difference, both codes will result in the exact same execution, but you found some wiggle room to leave a message. It was reported on Slashdot a few years ago.

Steganography and watermarking.

[MartinG]

I'm sure someone will correct me if I have missed something, but it seems to me that the desire by some to hide irremovable watermarks within digital streams is a similar technical challenge to adding steganographic content. Similarly, those attempting to destroy watermarks will face the same problems as those wishing to remove or destroy steganographic content.

The interesting thing is who is on which side of the battle.

Generally it's corporations who like the idea of watermarks, and individuals who don't. Individuals do however like steganography, but the authorities don't. It will be interesting to see who develops what technologies and who, if anyone, wins this arms race.

The real question is..

[lakiw]

How often do people hide data in the background noise of their phones? Is this a big enough problem that we should care about solving it? I mean, first of all you need a program to do the stego, (short of having someone talk really softly in the background). Then you would need to play back the recording during your conversation. Wouldn't it be easier for the criminal to send an encrypted e-mail instead? Given a choice, I'll pick strong crypto over stegonography any day. The only good thing about stego is it's useful if whatever authority in charge blocks all unauthorized messages.

It's along the lines of "How do you tell if there are stego images on someone's computer?"

Answer:You find the stego converter tool on their harddrive.