RE: Stego-Rants ?

[Bolivar Shagnasty <tj@compassnet.com>]

Peter Trei wrote:

>> Which of the following is the cleartext?
>> 1. Bit and byte dropout can significantly impede communication.
>> 2. Flower and shrub planting can greatly enhance landscaping.
>> 3. Word and phrase substitution can hopelessly disguise meaning.
>> 4. UFO and space-alien belief can seriously damage credibility.
>> (deletia)
>> Bolivar
>
>This class of code is fairly old. 

Thank you.  I would never have suspected.  I grew up in Heinlein's barrel, 
fed through a hole in the side, until I was 18.

>(deletia>
>The suspected spy immediatly sent back 'Is father dead or deceased?', 
>and was arrested. 
>
>The book contains many fascinating stories of stego and attempted 
>stego, including mailed knitting patterns, crossword puzzles, 
>drawings, sports statistics, etc.
>(deletia)

(shrug).  The point is not whether people have used this before, or how cute 
the anecdotes of wartime failures or detections.  The point is that everyone 
uses language in innumerable explainable contexts, and that we have computers 
with which to effortlessly transform text into other text.  There is no need 
to knit, or invent crossword matrices, concoct drawings, or fabricate 
verifiable sports statistics.  With word substitution, anything can mean 
anything.  I never suggested it take the place of encryption, or that I 
thought it a new form of stego.  

The implications may be new in the context of ubiquitous high-speed computers 
and electronic communication, in that the evidentiary value of written 
language can be shown to be so malleable as to be useless.  For example, how 
would you like to have to ascribe particular meaning to the accumulated notes 
and files of someone who collects "exxon" wordlists?  Virtually anything you 
process against any of the wordlists will change into something equally as 
interesting (or uninteresting) as the original.  The presence in a system of 
wordlists tends to reduce the content of natural language files in that 
system to examples of sentence structure.  As an example of just how 
malleable sentence structure templates can be, the defense in such a case 
might convert the prosecution's charging document into a glowing commendation 
of the defendant, suitably introduced through an expert witness.

Bolivar
(who hopes to retire when he finishes school)