Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren bogobaum here. Stagonography is the art or
Speaker 1: science of not only creating a secret message, but also
Speaker 1: hiding the message itself. The word stagonography, which is based
Speaker 1: on Greek and earlier roots for concealed and writing, was
Speaker 1: itself hidden in a way for about a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty years. The word went into disuse in the early
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds in favor of the word cryptography, and it
Speaker 1: only came back in the nineteen eighties as a way
Speaker 1: of distinguishing new digital types of cryptography. For the article,
Speaker 1: this episode is based on How Stuff Work. Spoke by
Speaker 1: email with Jessica Friederick, a system scientist at Binghamton University
Speaker 1: in New York and an expert on stagonography's place in
Speaker 1: digital media. She said, the power of technography is that
Speaker 1: the very act of secret communication is not apparent. Cryptography
Speaker 1: involves taking a piece of information and then trying to
Speaker 1: render it unintelligible to anyone beside the intended recipients, which
Speaker 1: is all well and good. Digital signatures rely on cryptography,
Speaker 1: as do mobile phones and automatic teller machines. That's a
Speaker 1: t N s Yet, as computer scientist Simon R. Wiseman
Speaker 1: noted in a paper, this sort of communication quote can
Speaker 1: be seen and it is obvious that some message is
Speaker 1: being passed, even though the message cannot be read. With stagonography, though,
Speaker 1: it's a whole new ball game, and it can work
Speaker 1: in a bunch of different ways. But one is called
Speaker 1: cover modification, in which Friderick explained quote an existing image
Speaker 1: is modified to convey a desired message. For example, with
Speaker 1: the right now, how you could embed Shakespeare quotes inside
Speaker 1: an ordinary looking digital photo of a cat. One method
Speaker 1: of doing so would involve modifying some of the pixels
Speaker 1: in a way that's far too subtle for the naked
Speaker 1: eye to detect. A Google Chrome browser extension, unveiled in
Speaker 1: called Secret Book, capitalized on this concept. It allowed Facebook
Speaker 1: users to make incredibly slight alterations to JPEG images hosted
Speaker 1: on the social media platform. Through that process, participants could
Speaker 1: hide messages of a hundred and forty characters are fewer
Speaker 1: right inside the pictures, unbeknownst to just about anyone who
Speaker 1: didn't have the password needed to reveal them. You might
Speaker 1: also conceal messages in digital audio files. People who use
Speaker 1: audio stagonography have many tricks at their disposal, from hiding
Speaker 1: echoes to making use of sound frequencies that lie above
Speaker 1: the normal human range of hearing. In the wrong hands,
Speaker 1: stagonography can be a destructive tool. Cyber attackers have been
Speaker 1: known to spread harmful malware by using steganographic techniques. I
Speaker 1: think digital trojan horses. Government agencies and private companies also
Speaker 1: need to be on guard against hackers who infiltrate their
Speaker 1: websites and then leave dangerous data behind inside steganographic files.
Speaker 1: A stegan analysis is the practice of trying to detect
Speaker 1: and expose stagonography. Sometimes suspicious looking files are inspected by
Speaker 1: algorithms designed especially for this purpose. Frederick said, modern stagonography
Speaker 1: uses powerful source coding to minimize the impact of the
Speaker 1: embedding changes. Modern stag analysis is usually based on machine learning.
Speaker 1: For those keeping score at home, machine learning is what
Speaker 1: happens when computers and algorithms are given huge sets of
Speaker 1: data to learn from and then make predictions accordingly. It's
Speaker 1: an exciting field in the world of artificial intelligence, and
Speaker 1: stegnography has trickled into our popular culture. In The Pew
Speaker 1: Research Center reported that quote fifty percent of American teen
Speaker 1: social media users say they share inside jokes or cloak
Speaker 1: their messages in some way as a way of creating
Speaker 1: a different sort of privacy. Many teen social media users
Speaker 1: will obscure some of their updates and posts, sharing coded
Speaker 1: messages that only certain friends will understand. Scholars have called
Speaker 1: this social steganography. Today's episode is based on the article
Speaker 1: Steganography the Art of Hiding Messages in plain sight on
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, written by Mark Vancini. Brain
Speaker 1: Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com, and it is produced by Tyler.
Speaker 1: Playing or more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the
Speaker 1: I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.