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 February 9, 2001 | ||||
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Hidden writing is a sensation
What you see is not
always what you get. There might be much more to that image on the
computer screen. But you can't even begin to understand the deeper text
unless of course you are aware it is there. And most people are blissfully
ignorant.
Wanda
Sloan The headlines are sensational. Claims that
Muslim extremists are exchanging terrorist orders and attacks via messages
hidden in pornographic pictures on the Internet are certainly
titillating. They mask the more serious fact that technology is being applied to a
millennia-old art of secret writing. It is far from a new technique.
Hiding messages in another text or picture is so old it has a name given
by the ancient Greeks-steganography, or, literally, "hidden writing". While judges and lawyers opened the case against four men accused in
the murderous bombings of two US embassies in Africa, security experts
were briefing reporters in Washington about the supposedly new form of
communications used by the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation of Osama bin
Laden. The director of the US CIA, George Tenet, described Mr bin Laden as the
most dangerous threat to Americans-partly because of his use of
technology. The Saudi business rogue and his gang use the Internet to
acquire knowledge, sources and recruits, and for communications. It is
easy and effective, said Mr Tenet yesterday. The Net is as positive for Mr
bin Laden as for law-abiding citizens. The bin Laden gang has long used encryption and the Internet for
communications, along with other technology. The disclosure that the
Afghanistan-based gang was using steganography was nothing new. Last October, for example, British security guru Stephen Whitelaw
warned about the sudden revival in hiding messages. "Steganography is
considered the third biggest threat to US security after biological and
chemical attack," he claimed. That might annoy the nuclear terrorists, but
it shows how seriously the security people take it. Steganography was apparently invented by the warriors of ancient
Athens. It aims at hiding a secret message in the open. Instead of
scrambling it as cryptographers do, the steganographer conceals the
message so that no one knows it is there. The Greek historian Herodotus described how a soldier hid a message,
scrawled on wood, under a wax-topped tablet which appeared blank. Secret
text evident alone, lies tightly hidden inside such papers and
pictures-exclusively readable to those able to decode the message, such as
the rather obvious one hidden in this paragraph. If you didn't know there was a secret message in the paragraph above,
you probably wouldn't see one. Once you know it is there, and have the key
to make it obvious, you can quickly extract the message and act upon
it. Technology and the Internet have played a role in reviving the art of
steganography. Computers make it easier for ordinary people to hide secret
messages in text and pictures. The Internet makes it a cinch to send the
messages around. The commercial world has begun to embrace steganography. Software
packages with names like Invisible Secrets and Data Stash are widely
available. They are extremely simple to use. Like many Internet products, they come from the big and small
companies. Singapore student Lim Chooi Guan will sell you a basic steganography
program for $40 (1,700 baht). He invented, and wrote, Data Stash in
his spare time from studies at Singapore Polytechnic. A free
program from England called Camoulflage has become widely available
in recent weeks. A web site called Spammimic.com will hide your message-no kidding about
this-in what looks to most people like a horrible piece of spam e-mail.
Who would ever read such a message-except the person waiting to receive
the secret message to "attack at dawn", say?Steganography has one major
advantage over encryption. An encrypted message can be quickly spotted,
because it is obviously written in code. A steganographic message,
however, is just another document, text file, picture-or newspaper
paragraph. Ben Venzke, an expert in Virginia, said more businesses-and criminals
and terrorists-appreciate steganography. "Even the message itself gets
lost in all the traffic of the Internet," he said. Thousands of people might download the picture of the "bombshell
blonde", as the Washington briefers said. They can see it, save it, edit
it-but they will never see the secret message hidden among the bits and
bytes unless they know where to look. Naturally, security agents are fighting steganography and the criminals
and other dangerous people who use it. Their art is called steganalysis,
which means discovering covert messages and rendering them useless. The steganographer has few tools to fight good steganalysis. The main
tactic is to both encrypt messages and insert them in masking text or
pictures. Unbreakable encryption is also simple and cheap-free-on the
Internet, if you know what to look for and study how to use it. Technology continues to evolve, and various violent people and groups
have embraced it as tightly as the rest of us. For the criminals, each
counter-attack by authorities is met by an attempt to invent or re-design
technology. On occasion, authorities appear to be totally frustrated. Unable to
encrypt some coded messages, some countries have banned encryption-meaning
only outlaws have such secrecy. When Mr bin Laden learned, or realised,
his mobile phone calls were being monitored he turned to other forms of
communication. That included steganography. But it is clear that Mr bin Laden and his
ilk are not responsible for the old art of steganography, or for its
re-emerging popularity-any more than the vicious terrorist is responsible
for the popularity of cellphones. The bin Laden gang are merely riding the
same innovation train as all of us.
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The Post Publishing Public Co., Ltd. 2001
Last Modified: Fri, Feb
9, 2001
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