steganography and cryptography

[Mike Johnson <exabyte!smtplink!mikej@uunet.UU.NET>]

Kragen Sittler says:

> . . .
> For a steganographically strong code, the cyphertext must not be recognizable
> to its home program.  This means, among other things, no CRC's, no MD5's, etc,
> intended to assure data integrity.  This means no delimiter-structured files.
> (I think--I'm not absolutely sure on this one.)  Every field in the file must
> be either fixed-length or have a number somewhere in it
> (in a format indistinguishable from the rest of the cyphertext) which tells it
s
> length.  And every field, individually, must not be recognizable as something
> unusual. (For instance, no sending of large prime numbers in the clear, as the
y
> are very unlikely to appear in a random file.)
> 
> The foregoing "field" stuff has to do with things like PGP, which have a
> message cyphertext, encrypted with a session key, and a session key, encrypted
> with a PKC, in the same message. (Possible several cyphertexts of the session
> key.)
> 
> Oh, and it would be nice, though not essential, if a corruption in the file
> made it completely, rather than partially, nonsense when decrypted.  This way
> you can't have a file with no use to the recipient used as evidence against
> them.
> 
> The important qualifications seem to rule out any crypto package in current
> widespread use, don't they?
> . . .

For a steganographically strong code, it is not enough to make it
unrecognizable to its home program.  The ciphertext must look like something
"innocent" to either a human reader or a computer program designed to look
for ciphertext.  For example, the message could be hidden in the least
significant intensity bits of a bitmapped picture that the intended recipient
has an unmodified copy of.

If data that looks like random noise is innocent enough, then it is not hard
to hack PGP or write another encryption program that intentionally lacks any
signature information.  I wrote several programs with this property.  The two
best examples are CRYPTE and CRYPTMPJ, both of which are available on the
Rainbow Missions BBS at 303-938-9654.  This makes them a little harder to use
than PGP and similar programs, because the user has to know in advance when
encryption and decryption are appropriate, and which algorithm to use. 

Allowing a signature in the file format makes it obvious which program was
used to encrypt the data (thus slightly reducing security), but it makes it
easier to use the program.  This increase in ease of use makes it more likely
that it will be used, and that increases security.