Re: WE WANT SELF DECRYPTING STENOGRAPHY NOW!

[Sergey Goldgaber <sergey@delbruck.pharm.sunysb.edu>]

On Thu, 24 Feb 1994, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

> 
> Tom Holroyd says:
> > Any software for hiding data in fractals would have the problem that
> > people would eventually learn to recognize the type of fractal.  Thus
> > when the FBI digs through your PC, they'd find the fractals, and recognize
> > them as data carriers. Hiding data in arbitrary .jpg files would solve
> > this problem, but even so, if the FBI knows there is software for
> > hiding data in the low bits of .jpg files, they'd run it on all your
> > pictures as a matter of course.  Naturally you'll have encrypted your
> > file, but you may as well have left it on the disk as is.
> 
> Precisely a point I've been making for some time.

Hide your file in random locations in the image every time.  The image 
will be useless to your opponent, unless the hidden file has a 
standard header.

> 
> We are safest if we quickly deploy so much crypto that grandmothers
> are using it and they EXPECT it everywhere. That way, crypto is not a
> signal that something is unusual. 

That would be nice.  Clipper may be widespread sooner, though.

> Steganography never took off as a
> science largely because it is such a weak form of protection, almost
> inherently. As soon as they SUSPECT steganography you have immediately
> lost any safety you may have had.

Not at all!  Lets say hiding data in multi-megabyte core files becomes 
fasionable.  Your opponent suspects stegonagraphy.  What part of that 
core file are they going to analyze?  Assuming that no standard as to the 
location, size, or header of the file hidden within the core file exists 
your opponent has nothing to go on.  EFFECTIVE STEGONAGRAPHY!

> 
> I'm very much in favor of simply openly using crypto, as often as
> possible and as visibly as possible.
>

It may not be possible for long.

"Clipper is coming!
 The geese are getting fat!
 Please put a penny in they cypherpunks hat!"

:)

> Perry
>