ASCII Art Steganography

bigearcow writes "ASCII art is nothing new, but this site takes it one step further by allowing you to embed another data file within the image. The resulting ASCII art remains printable (i.e. no special unicode symbols) — this means you can print the image out, hang it on your wall, and have it look like an innocent ASCII art when it's hiding a secret document of your choice." You'll need a small (200x200 pixel max) base image from which the ASCII art will be built.

Comments

Excellent!

[Seriousity]

Now we can hide instructions on how to pirate movies in **AA logos! Great day for freedom!

Re:Excellent!

[Aiml]

http://intersect.theintersect.org/riaa.html

Re:Excellent!

[Xest]

Or even more amusingly, hide the keys for Bluray's DRM in the Bluray logo, although it would be more fun to not hide it and just make an ASCII Bluray logo out of the keys they tried to magic off of the net claiming the string was copyrighted or whatever when they were first released.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's about time you assholes get out of your ivory tower and realize your smugness and your lousy programming language does nothing but keep Computer Science back 20 years. Big deal! your precious C language can access the hardware. Big Whoop! you have no build in print function. I think it's about time to stop masturbating to your boring interrupt calls and grow up. The world is evolving and if we keep outself stuck to that crud that is C, we will no achieve worth while computing. So many projects would be so much better if your legacy dated language wasn't chosen. Yeah, I'm looking at you Linux and GTK. Writing a successful GUI program in C is just as ridiculous and time consuming as it gets. Grow up and realize there are other languages that are better suited for work rather than self satisfactory masturbation you retards get. Fuck Kernighan and Richie, those guys wrote good stuff back in the 70s when the tool was needed for the job. So while you are hunting down malloc() calls because that GUI that took you 10 years to write and pissing on itself in memory leaks the rest of the world will actually be getting some work done.

#include <fuckyou.h>
 
    int main(){
 
/* A very useless C program */
 
        fuck_the_c_language(0);
 
        return 0;
 
    }

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

He didn't say any more, but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought--frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction--Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament."--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No--Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on to-day.

I never saw this great-uncle, but I'm supposed to look like him--with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father's office I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe--so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, "Why--ye--es," with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Easily the most boring troll EVER. Was it your intention to put us to sleep, or is it just a by-product of your penchant for unchecked verbosity?

Re:Excellent!

[mathew7]

You're like someone who drives a Ferrari and when it breaks down he has to call the service...oh wait...there is no service because all the technical people are extinct since the new ones DID NOT learn the old ways.

I'm sure this kind of (programming) thinking is why Vista had so many bad reviews from enthusiasts.

And without those boring interrupt calls and HW access you would not have any other high-level language and you would be stuck in the old platforms (compatibility). Someone still has to do the dirty work.

I so hate the idea of "everyone can be a programmer".

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I still see these when my minumum threshold is set to 1?

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Rejoice! A higher class of troll!

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

'Anyone can Program'.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really it's just a copy paste of the Great Gatsby, no originality or thought into it. I mean i'll be honest it is much better than the damn "nigger nigger nigger" posts or the random one about C programmers or even this new one in a letter format about being in Prison. I don't remember seeing so many trolls these days. That being said I am expecting to see a new sort of troll in the form of ASCII Art, just give it time, since 20% of story comments are trolls.

Re:Excellent!

[seanellis]

See how effective it is? There is a relevant comment hidden in the above post - I challenge anyone to find it!

Re:Excellent!

[hobbit]

Hmm, I think you might have posted to the wrong forum. There are no smug assholes here on Slashdot.

Re:Excellent!

[Tyrannicsupremacy]

ten bucks to whoever can figure out the hidden message in THIS ascii picture: 8===D ~ ~ ~ ~ ~O:

Re:Excellent!

[clone53421]

That being said I am expecting to see a new sort of troll in the form of ASCII Art, just give it time, since 20% of story comments are trolls.

The lameness filter doesn't like ASCII art.

Re:Excellent!

[Meski]

Is this the /. equivalent of those bayesian poisoning emails I keep getting?

Re:Excellent!

[DaVince21]

I wonder how much time is wasted on people making up stories like these rather than them actually getting some work done...

hang it on your wall?

[commodoresloat]

Who wants to hang ascii art on their wall? Besides:

2. Select data file. This will be the data file embedded in the ascii art. (Limited to around 40kb at the moment)

Hmmm, how secure can this tool be when you have to send your secure data, unencrypted, to another site to use it?

Re:hang it on your wall?

[shitzu]

Who says you may not encrypt it first? A little AES never hurt steganography.

Re:hang it on your wall?

[commodoresloat]

Good point. I withdraw that remark. The wall comment stands, however.

Re:hang it on your wall?

[Kokuyo]

And that would be a matter of opinion and taste, making that point rather redundant.

Re:hang it on your wall?

[HonestButCurious]

Um, actually AES does hurt steganography since steganalysis tools have an easier time finding uniformly distributed payloads (such as AES ciphertexts) than somewhat biased payloads (such as standard text).

So, it would be easier to know that you have some data in there, but harder to know what the data is. Your call.

Take a look at this tutorial:
www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/papers/practical.pdf

Re:hang it on your wall?

[packeteer]

Could you inject some type of padding or filler in to make the data appear less evenly distributed when in reality the filler simply follows some pattern that can be easily removed later? I know this is not going to actually make it more secure but it could obfuscate the fact that the data exists.

Re:hang it on your wall?

[shadowknot]

True, although you could pop the file to be encrypted in a TrueCrypt container (not all that plausible right now with the 40K limit!) then encrypt it as TC containers appear as random data, no signature or common structure so it would essentially appear that the user had just encrypted junk.

Re:hang it on your wall?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, it would be easier to know that you have some data in there, but impossible to know what the data is. Your call.

fixed that for you.

Re:hang it on your wall?

[Zerth]

You could easily do so, but adding such padding either further limits the capacity of an already limited space, or greatly increases the file size needed to hide your message.

Re:hang it on your wall?

[digitalhermit]

Ahh, memories.

Back in the 80s it was the height of geek couture to have an ASCII printout of Princess Leia adorning your wall.

Re:hang it on your wall?

[Bandman]

You could wallpaper a room with it

Re:hang it on your wall?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be pretty awesome actually!

Re:hang it on your wall?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the 40k limit comes from the picture size. Generalize the algorithm to be effective for a picture of arbitrary dimensions and TC might work.

However, there's still a question, what are you going to do with a 1000x1000 Ascii Art poster. I mean, hang it on a wall? Do we have so huge walls?

Re:hang it on your wall?

[Mikkeles]

Back in the 60s we had Snoopy on his doghouse. But we had real women in place of pictures; it was the 60s after all:)

Breaking news

[Aiml]

A Catholic priest has been cleared of child pornography charges after the only evidence the prosecution could offer was a series of ROFLcopters found on his harddrive.

Re:Breaking news

[Chrisq]

That, plus being a Catholic priest should be enough to persuade most juries.

Re:Breaking news

[rm999]

An several of these were pinned up to his wall:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=585451&topic=44127983

Re:Breaking news

[IBBoard]

Being a Catholic priest persuades most people to clear them? I must have missed that one!

Re:Breaking news

[Main Gauche]

It was sitting right next to the joke.

Re:Breaking news

[imp7]

Innocent until proven guilty. Not guilty until proven innocent

Re:Breaking news

[IBBoard]

That depends on whether you're talking about the way the law works in theory or the way that criminal prosecution and the physical court room works on the human mind. While people like to think that they think "innocent until proven guilty" there are still triggers that make people assume guilty earlier than the evidence supports.

can only encode about 40kB

[OrangeTide]

Not quite big enough for a torrent, yet.

Re:can only encode about 40kB

[spintriae]

This Google App Engine application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later.

Looks like 40kB was pushing it.

Re:can only encode about 40kB

[phoenix321]

Well, encode a 40kB keyfile then. AES-40000 should be enough for anyone :)

Re:can only encode about 40kB

[roachdabug]

2GB ASCII art would seem pretty suspicious to me.

Re:can only encode about 40kB

[aceofspades1217]

This will be great, you know when you have download a movie from usenet and its encoded in ANCII art.

Take that MPAA!

They will never figure out what those 4GB collections of ANCII art could possibly be.

Re:can only encode about 40kB

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe he was referring to the actual .torrent tracker files.

Re:can only encode about 40kB

[BronsCon]

To further your point, he could also mean a series of ASCII art, titled:
1.txt
2.txt
3.txt
etc...

Similar to multipart RAR archives.

Hell, one could put the multipart ASCII-stego into a multipart RAR for extra fun!

Re:can only encode about 40kB

[RazboiniKSS]

40k ought to be enough for anybody :P

Re:can only encode about 40kB

[ElderKorean]

This will be great, you know when you have download a movie from usenet and its encoded in ANCII art.

You only had to ask.

VLC Media Player can set the output device to be ASCII text.

You can probably send that stream to a file.

Checkout his phone number - total nerd!

[Anonymous Coward]

Phone Number: The 10191th prime x (10 x a + b) where a-b = the month I was born

slashdot v google slashdot wins

[Anonymous Coward]

google has been slashdotted.. well only that users app, but still, slashdot > google ;-)

"App Engine Error

        Over Quota
        This Google App Engine application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later. "

Though it is intermittent.

Re:slashdot v google slashdot wins

[the100rabh]

for me its permanent....seems like slashdotters have used up all the bandwidth available

Re:slashdot v google slashdot wins

[slimey_limey]

Omnomnomnomnom.

Coral doesn't have the static content for most of the pages, but I'm working on that.

Re:slashdot v google slashdot wins

[Yvan256]

If we read the text long enough, maybe we'll be able to decode the secret message inside that weird ASCII Art? It does look like a regular sentence to me, but isn't that the point?

Seriously?

[jadedoto]

This just up and slashdotted already?

Re:Seriously?

[im_thatoneguy]

Behold Cloud Computing! Fast, Efficient, Scalab.. errr--hold that thought.

Re:Seriously?

[m0i]

Behold Cloud Computing! Fast, Efficient, Scalab.. errr--hold that thought.

It does if you can justify the need to Google, for now they have quotas (see http://code.google.com/intl/fr/appengine/articles/quotas.html).

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cloud computing is nothing more than nickel and diming gone batshit insane.

Re:Seriously?

[BenoitRen]

And they say people don't RTFA...

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is not required to provide unlimited resources for free. Sorry.

Huh?

[Frosty Piss]

From the application linky:

This Google App Engine application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later.

From Google App Engine web site:

Google App Engine makes it easy to design scalable applications that grow from one to millions of users without infrastructure headaches.

Maybe not...

Re:Huh?

[Fruit]

Quota is about money headaches, not infrastructure headaches. Google can't help you with that.

Re:Huh?

[m0i]

AppEngine quotas explained

Re:Huh?

[spintriae]

I didn't realize scalability was analogous with free unlimited bandwidth. I'll keep that in mind.

Re:Huh?

[wisty]

Still, it's good to know we slashdotted google. I bet that hasn't happened for a while.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not slashdotted. Slashdotted would mean "down".

The owner of the application probably didn't pay enough for Google to allow to serve more pages. That's all. Not a technical issue...

Re:Huh?

[HonestButCurious]

The App Engine cluster is not just a big dump truck of cycles you dip into on demand. The processing power is quantized into discrete machines. There's actually a nice scheduler there that checks how busy your app is and assigns new processors to handle it. This isn't a real-time process so there are transient periods with overload. On the long run, GAE will scale fine.

There are some nice vids about the architecture on the Google developer youtube channels.

Re:Huh?

[MrZaius]

>Quota is about money headaches, not infrastructure headaches. Google can't help you with that.

No, it's about infrastructure. They allow for users to "apply" for more if the app is cool enough, and presumably award some free access to a higher quota - Read the grandparent post link. Google does at least offer to consider helping. Regardless, though, money buys and maintains infrastructure, and that's all that really is the issue here even if they are trying to milk most developers that use the service of a bit of cash.

Re:Huh?

[Kent Recal]

Well, at a market cap of 100 billions I think this should rather read: Google doesn't want to help you with that. :P

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google App Engine is not like a truck? So I guess it's a series of Tubes then huh?

Re:Huh?

[hobbit]

You think Google got rich by giving their customers unlimited quota?

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's not a big truck, it's a series of youtubes?

Re:Huh?

[ATMD]

Meh, close enough. I for one am willing to gloss over such technicalities for the ego boost =)

already /.ed

[Yanimal]

at 2 in the morning on a sunday.

Re:already /.ed

[Copley]

You might have a little bit of a narrow world-view...

It's midday here, and I hear that the time in other places is even more different!

;-)

Re:already /.ed

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be American.

Re:already /.ed

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? Everybody knows that whole /. audience consists of only North Americans. It even says that majority of them do in the FAQ entry from 2002! So there can't be very big differences...

Re:already /.ed

[jonaskoelker]

[subj: already /.ed] at 2 in the morning on a sunday.

Posted on Monday, Jan 12th, at 10:00. (TZ=CET=GMT+1) ;)

Re:already /.ed

[Anonymous Coward]

at 2 in the morning on a sunday.

It was 4AM Monday here (EST), exactly where in the world was it 2AM Sunday?

Bandwidth fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol - it's already over the limit. As /. tends to do to small sites... pity, it sounded like a cool app.

Re:Bandwidth fail

[Frosty Piss]

As /. tends to do to small sites...

Yes, Google is just a little upstart, but they'll grow...

Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm SO going to store the Wikipedia article on Linux underneath Windows' logo. *maniacal laugh*

An example of what it can do...

[Copley]

      ilovet
    ow      at
   c   h  d   o
  n            k
  e  y      p  o
  r   nbutdo   n
   t          e
    ll      my
      mother

Re:An example of what it can do...

[shird]

dont ell my mother?

But yes, it's not exactly difficult to have ascii art embed a message. It's text afterall.

Re:An example of what it can do...

[spintriae]

dont ell my mother?

Don tell my mother.

Re:An example of what it can do...

[Copley]

It's beta code... there's bound to be a few errors in the encryption algorithm!

Re:An example of what it can do...

[evan_arrrr!]

I love to watch donkey porn but don't tell my mother. That's actually what it says. Hardly steganography.

Re:An example of what it can do...

[Anonymous Coward]

oh dear, humor failer.

Re:An example of what it can do...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks rain man. I'd have been puzzling over that for weeks.

Re:An example of what it can do...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh, you'd have thought Copley would have realised that, but evidently not. What an ass! Just as well you were here to point it out.

Re:An example of what it can do...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whooosh!

Re:An example of what it can do...

[evan_arrrr!]

Yes, whoosh indeed. Shortly after posting, I realized my fatal mistake.

Can be done for code, too

[Anonymous Coward]

The programming language Spoon (http://www.bluedust.com/spoon/) demonstrated this, as well. Hiding crypto, anyone?

Previous art

[dee.cz]

We r0mb ya d0nt - 256b intro from 1999, has 200 bytes of additional code hidden in file_id.diz

Re:Previous art

[Anonymous Coward]

The secret message is....

Over Quota
This Google App Engine application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later.

Re:Previous art

[Fred_A]

Another vaguely similar hack at
http://www.ollydbg.de/Paperbak/index.html
Backing up your data on paper (and restoring with a scanner). Author claims 500K bytes of uncompressed data per standard page (A4). You can store it as ain image file if you like I think (it's a Windows app so I didn't actually try it)

You din't get any pretty pictures (unless you're very lucky) though.

huh

[pondermaster]

who needs steganography when you can hide whole sites with slashdotting at least for a while...

Real Men don't make backups

[andyn]

Real Men don't make backups. They embed their private data into ASCII art and let the world mirror it.

Help me! 5 Minutes of Computer time

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Slashdot

My name is Mike and I am serving the first week of a 10 year sentence in Federal Prison for severe SEC violations. I am very scared and I didn't know what else to do. I guess I have 5 good minutes to type this cry out for help until Tyrone and the crew come for me and give me what they call "Mandatory Showertime". I mean I have been exposed to more male cock in the first 3 days here than I have ever cared to know in my first 30 years of life. I guess it was some sort of sick joke that they gave me a big black cell mate named Tyrese who also part of Tyrones crew. As such he has first dibs on me or as he says "first dick in me". The nigger has beaten me senseless the first day here as he seems to get a real kick out of it and has repeatedly raped me and that's not even the worst of it. I never knew a man could cum 7 times in a row and with that I hadn't been able to get any sleep in the past day or so. The first time I met Tyrone was at our first shower time. Tyrese had "persuaded" me to go into the shower room and that's when I met the whole crew. There must have been 19 prison niggers in there and when the guards pulled out, thats when I was given a gangraping that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Could you imagine 19 giant black cocks repeatedly ass raping and mouth fucking you? I think not, and don't think these guys went in one at a time. I swear it must have been 3 in my ass and 2 in my mouth at one point. I was in tears hearing Tyrone laughing at me saying "This be your life now cracka, you our bitch now". I still have the sharpie mark on my ass that says "Tyrone's ho". Uh oh it looks like it's mandatory shower time again. I think I am going to hang myself when Tyrese is out raping another white prisoner. Thanks for listening.

Re:Help me! 5 Minutes of Computer time

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

Version 3, 29 June 2007

Copyright (c) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. <http://fsf.org/>

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Preamble

The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works.

The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free software for all its users. We, the Free Software Foundation, use the GNU General Public License for most of our software; it applies also to any other work released this way by its authors. You can apply it to your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to prevent others from denying you these rights or asking you to surrender the rights. Therefore, you have certain responsibilities if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it: responsibilities to respect the freedom of others.

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

Developers that use the GNU GPL protect your rights with two steps: (1) assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer you this License giving you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify it.

For the developers' and authors' protection, the GPL clearly explains that there is no warranty for this free software. For both users' and authors' sake, the GPL requires that modified versions be marked as changed, so that their problems will not be attributed erroneously to authors of previous versions.

Some devices are designed to deny users access to install or run modified versions of the software inside them, although the manufacturer can do so. This is fundamentally incompatible with the aim of protecting users' freedom to change the software. The systematic pattern of such abuse occurs in the area of products for individuals to use, which is precisely where it is most unacceptable. Therefore, we have designed this version of the GPL to prohibit the practice for those products. If such problems arise substantially in other domains, we stand ready to extend this provision to those domains in future versions of the GPL, as needed to protect the freedom of users.

Finally, every program is threatened constantly by software patents. States should not allow patents to restrict development and use of software on general-purpose computers, but in those that do, we wish to avoid the special danger that patents applied to a free program could make it effectively proprietary. To prevent this, the GPL assures that patents cannot be used to render the program non-free.

The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
0. Definitions.

"This License" refers to version 3 of the GNU General Public License.

"Copyright" also means copyright-like laws that apply to other kinds of works, such as semiconductor masks.

"The Program" refers to any copyrightable work licensed under this License. Each licensee is ad

Re:Help me! 5 Minutes of Computer time

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you imagine 19 giant black cocks repeatedly ass raping and mouth fucking you?

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!

It should also run as perl...

[whyloginwhysubscribe]

I'd be more impressed if it was also a piece of perl code. It might be slashdotted one minute - then back up the next by the way...

Hey dawg

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard you like pictures, so we put a ASCII image text string in your ASCII image, so you can look at a picture while you look at a picture

lenatorrent-win7.jpg

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone considered encoding torrents as jpg or pngs, that way we could let google cache them? Perhaps we can standardize on using an image of Lena Söderberg

Re:lenatorrent-win7.jpg

[Anonymous Coward]

Google already caches torrent files. Searching by .torrent extension

Extremely simple concept

[Anonymous Coward]

Algorithm 1 is used to transform an input (image) into an output (ascii art).
Algorithm 2 is used to modify the output of the first algorithm according to a pattern. The pattern is the data file encoded.
By seeing how the actual output deviates from the output that would have resulted if only algorithm 1 was used, and knowledge of algorithm 2, the pattern can be deduced.

This is really no different from hiding anything within anything. If you had an algorithm that converted spreadsheets to well-sounding MP3 files that it was possible to hide goat porn in, it would work according to the same principle. Although this is a slick implementation.

Re:Extremely simple concept

[JayJay.br]

Except for the fact that if you are the only one that has the source image (i.e., some picture of yours) or even if you modify any source image (color, contrast, compression, you name it) in a way that is unique to your source image file, there's no easy way to discover the pattern, since you can't see the 'original' (pre-stego) picture.

Pretty much like a symmetrical cryptosystem.

You could call that security by obscurity, but even so it is a nice obscurity :).

What.

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people read the title off the RSS feed and thought it said ASCII Art Stenography?

Waddabout camel code?

[Skiron]

Camel Code

Sorted words

[cornicefire]

I've always liked the way to hide information in a list of things. Peter Wayner wrote a Java thingee that starts with a list of top disco songs. Talk about ambiguous. Any order would make sense. But you can use any list. Here's my favorites: Barry White: Barry White's Greatest Hits (20th Century, 1975) KC & The Sunshine Band: KC & The Sunshine Band (TK, 1975) Gregg Diamond Bionic Boogie: Hot Butterfly (Polydor, 1978) The Jimmy Castor Bunch: Butt Of Course (Atlantic, 1974) Silver Convention: Save Me (Midland International, 1975) Voyage: Voyage; Fly Away (Marlin, 1978) First Choice: Delusions (Gold Mind, 1977) Beautiful Bend: Beautiful Bend (Marlin, 1978) Candi Staton: Young Hearts Run Free (Warner Bros., 1976) Loleatta Holloway: Loleatta (Gold Mind/Salsoul, 1976) Trammps: The Trammps (Golden Fleece/CBS, 1975) Giorgio Moroder: From Here to Eternity (Casablanca, 1985) Cerrone: Love In C Minor (Cotillion, 1977) Santa Esmeralda: Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (Casablanca, 1977) Chic: Chic (Atlantic, 1977) Taana Gardner: Taana Gardner (West End, 1979) LaBelle: Nightbirds (Epic, 1974) B.T. Express: Do It ('Til You're Satisfied) (Roadshow, 1974) Salsoul Orchestra: The Salsoul Orchestra (Salsoul, 1975) Michael Zager Band: Let's All Chant (Private Stock, 1977) Donna Summer: The Donna Summer Anthology (Casablanca/Chronicles, 1993) Linda Clifford: If My Friends Could See Me Now (Curtom, 1978) Direct Current: Direct Current (TEC Records, 1979) Cloud One: Atmosphere Strutt (P&P, 1976) Gloria Gaynor: Never Can Say Goodbye (MGM, 1975) Kano: Kano (Emergency, 1980) France Joli: France Joli (Prelude, 1979) Village People: Village People (Casablanca, 1977) Diana Ross: The Boss (Motown, 1979) Tantra: The Double Album (Importe/12, 1980) Cerrone: Cerrone 3 - Supernature (Cotillion, 1978) Hamilton Bohannon: Summertime Groove (Mercury, 1978) Love And Kisses: Love And Kisses (Casablanca, 1977) Ashford & Simpson: So So Satisfied; Send It (Warner Bros., 1977) Isaac Hayes: Chocolate Chip (HBS, 1975) Love Unlimited: Under The Influence Of . . . (20th Century, 1973) Disco-Tex & The Sex-O-Lettes: Disco Tex & His Sex-O-Lettes (Chelsea, 1975) Kool & The Gang: Wild And Peaceful (De-Lite, 1973) Sister Sledge: We Are Family (Cotillion, 1979) Sylvester: Step II (Fantasy, 1978) Change: The Glow Of Love (Warner Bros./RFC, 1980) Sister Sledge: Circle Of Love (Cotillion, 1975) Grace Jones: Portfolio (Island, 1977)

Re:Sorted words

[peterwayner]

For more information, you can find the Table of Contents, FAQ and a few other case studies at my site.

The Third edition of the book just came out. I think Amazon just got their copies from the printer.

 

ascii on *nix

[Anonymous Coward]

how do I ascii on *nix with alt+numpad?

OOOOLLLLLDDD

[drmitch]

There have been console programs for *nix that do this for YEARS!

Re:Excellent! ...Not really embedded GOASTE - yuk!

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes you wonder... jeez I've said enough already..... I'd rather not give the trolls any more ideas....

Excellent.

[mujadaddy]

Mod parent insightful

The end of artisanally hand-steganographified art!

[fugue]

What? Where's the art in that? I love the handcoded steganographic puzzles like this (or, really, any of the puzzles in the MIT Mystery Hunt). There is real artistry in designing a unique code and--although it's not exactly standard cryptographic practice--building in enough clues that an outsider can, potentially, with enough caffeine, break it.

Recursive ASCII steganography?

[grimJester]

First to make an ASCII image of Xzibit that includes itself wins the Internet!

Re:Recursive ASCII steganography?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yo dawg. I herd u liek Xzibit, so I put an Xzibit in ur Xzibit so you can lol, while you lol.

Re:Recursive ASCII steganography?

[Anonymous Coward]

Xzibit

Do I win?

ANCII art

[Anonymous Coward]

ANCII?

Hanging ASCII art on the wall?

[dangitman]

That's not suspicious at all. It's completely normal.

ASCII Art Tattoo for geeky nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

This is especially interesting in combination with:
http://www.tattooblog.org/entry/ascii-art-tattoo-for-geeky-nerds/