Are you hiding secret messages in LOLCAT photos?

[tannybogus]

Earlier this year, someone at the United States Department of Justice smuggled sensitive financial data out of the agency by embedding the data in several image files. Defeating this exfiltration method, called steganography, has proved particularly tricky, but one engineering student has come up with a way to make espionage work against itself.


Keith Bertolino, founder of digital forensics start-up E.R. Forensics, based in West Nyack, N.Y., developed a new way of disrupting steganography last year while finishing his electrical engineering degree at Northeastern University, in Boston.


Steganography uses innocuous documents, usually an image file, as carriers for secret messages. Unlike encryption, steganography encodes the message while at the same time concealing the fact that a message is being sent at all. The Greek-derived name means “covered writing.” The earliest steganographers were said to be Greek generals who tattooed sensitive information onto the shaved heads of messengers. Once the hair grew back, the messenger could travel without suspicion to the intended recipient, who “decrypted” the secret message by shaving the messenger’s head again. In its current incarnation, steganography often makes use of e-mail, an ideal carrier for any corporate spy, disgruntled employee, or terrorist. 



DO YOU WANNA KNOW A SECRET?
: Altered with the proper steganography algorithm, this innocuous picture of a cat could be a carrier for corporate espionage.


http://spectrum.ieee.org/print/6593

Smile! Say 'secrets.':eyes:

[YOY]

1. I can haz spy sikrits plz?

n/t

[Lucinda]

2. LOL

[NightWatcher]

3. a nickname I heard was "spy porn". if you get caught smuggling files out

it at first appears to be only porn, and most security people let it go at that.

[romulusnr]

4. Obligatory

(no, i didn't put steg in it)

((or did i???))

(((no rly i didn't)))