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really (?) undetectable crypto
> [email protected] wrote on CP:
>
> Most everybody on the list is familiar with the technique of hiding
> encrypted messages in the LSBs of image files. Personally, I would not
> use such a technique because don't I believe it's really undetectable. I
> assume, without proof, that the LSBs of images files have statistical
> properties that are sufficiently different from encrypted data that a
> clever person could determine whether or not an image file contained an
> imbedded encrypted message.
>
Not to mention 7 out of 8 bits may reveal the image to be a library one
your enemy has access to. The changes will betray the stego.
Your own scanned snapshots may be safer from this point of view.
> Fortunately, there are other steganographic techniques that, I believe,
> are undetectable. The trick is to hide your encrypted bits in other
> encrypted bits.
>
> trick #1) Let's say you want to send a short encrypted message via a
> communications channel that only allows cleartext messages with optional
> MD5 message hashes. You can construct cleartext messages, via
> trial-and-error, such that the first 4 or 8 bits (or more, if you have the
> time) of the MD5 hash match the first 4 or 8 bits of your encrypted
> message.
>
> Since the bits in an MD5 message hash are presumably cryptographically
> random, there should be no way to tell if some of the bits combine to make
> an encrypted message.
What about Walter making insignificant changes to the cleartext and
replacing the hash with the new hash? Because you are using an unkeyed
hash (and not a sig) he can do that and foul up the stegomessage (not
that he'll yet be sure there is one).
> trick #2) Let's say you are allowed to use 40 bit encryption, but nothing
> stronger. As in trick #1, you can pre-compute plaintext messages such
> that the first 4 or 8 of the bits in the output of the government-approved
> 40 bit encrypted data match the first 4 or 8 bits of your hidden encrypted
> message.
>
Walter can still play silly spooks with your stego if he breaks the 40-bit encryption.
The cyphertext/plaintext ratio looks like getting really huge too. Your messages
must all arrive, and retain the right order.
-- Peter Allan [email protected]