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Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text stuff from dot com. Kaiser, Everyone,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to tex Stuff. I am Jonathan Strickland, your

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Speaker 1: beloved host. Today I have a special guest in the studio,

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Speaker 1: a dear friend of mine, someone I have worked with

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Speaker 1: on stage and another podcasts and radio plays, Ariel Kristen caston.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff. Hi everybody, thank you for letting

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Speaker 1: me be on tech Stuff. Jonathan, I'm super excited. I'm

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Speaker 1: very excited to Ariel and I we we've been friends

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Speaker 1: for more than a decade. Now, oh man, make me

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Speaker 1: feel old. Oh well, joined the club. So Ariel, I

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Speaker 1: asked her what she wanted to cover. She told me

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Speaker 1: that we could cover whatever we wanted. So I looked

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Speaker 1: back and there was an email message that was sent

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Speaker 1: in a listener request. Peter sent this in via email,

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Speaker 1: and this is an ancient listener request, folks. So, Peter,

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Speaker 1: I apologize that it took so long for us to

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Speaker 1: get there, but I'm really excited that we get to

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Speaker 1: cover it today. Here's what Peter wrote. He said, I

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Speaker 1: recently bought a book called Data Hiding that is about steganography.

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Speaker 1: I look to see if this is something you have

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Speaker 1: covered but found you had not. I think that this

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Speaker 1: would be an extremely interesting topic. You would be able

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Speaker 1: to cover the ways in which data can be hidden,

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Speaker 1: as well as who uses such techniques like al Qaeda,

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Speaker 1: the n s A, malware, authors, hobbyists, et cetera. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're going to cover steganography, which is not what I

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Speaker 1: originally thought it was. I originally thought it was the

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Speaker 1: study of stegasaurasaurs. Yeah, I thought it was the study

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Speaker 1: of dinosaur calligraphy. So we were both on the wrong track,

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Speaker 1: as it turns out. Uh yeah, So what actually is steganography. Well,

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Speaker 1: steganography is the art of hiding something within something else.

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Speaker 1: It can be simple, like a hidden message in a

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Speaker 1: painting or photograph, or it can be something really complicated,

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Speaker 1: like an electronic file or message hidden in another file

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Speaker 1: or message. Yeah. Yeah, So it's essentially the the art

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Speaker 1: of being able to send a message without people even

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Speaker 1: knowing that you've done so, right, That's that's the goal

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Speaker 1: of steganography. So the parties in steganography there there are,

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Speaker 1: you know, this is how we break it down. You've

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Speaker 1: got the sender, that's the person who's created the message

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Speaker 1: and wants to communicate something you have the receiver, which

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Speaker 1: is the person who the message is intended to go to.

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Speaker 1: You have the carrier message, which is the the the

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Speaker 1: construct that hides the secret message. So this could be

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Speaker 1: whatever like, it could be a painting, the boring note

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Speaker 1: about your cousin's children, or it could be a soccer

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Speaker 1: ball that happens to have a secret asage written on

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Speaker 1: the inside of it. Wilson was a secret it could

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Speaker 1: be that Wilson in Castaway was in fact a stagana Graham,

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Speaker 1: which is the other element. So, by the way, there

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Speaker 1: are a lot of Greek words and Greek names and

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Speaker 1: some Roman names, so Latin as well. That's going to

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Speaker 1: be all of those are gonna be popping up. There

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Speaker 1: also a couple of other names from other cultures. I'm

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Speaker 1: an ignorant American, so my pronunciation is going to be awful,

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Speaker 1: and I can barely grasp the American language, which I've

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Speaker 1: grown up with all my life, so mine will be worse. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So just just letting you guys know that ahead of time.

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Speaker 1: So the staganogram, I'm never going to get that, otherwise

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Speaker 1: known as the secret message. We're just gonna I'm going

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Speaker 1: to call it secretsages from now on and then potentially

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Speaker 1: third parties. So, in other words, people who might come

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Speaker 1: into contact with this message. The goal is to make

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Speaker 1: sure that those third parties are never aware that there

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Speaker 1: is a message there in the first place, and if

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Speaker 1: it's done right, they won't be Yeah. So in other words,

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Speaker 1: you could have a messenger, a go between carry this

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Speaker 1: thing from one person to the other and never know

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Speaker 1: that there was something hidden in there. Although sometimes it's

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Speaker 1: good if they're confident, because you need to get a

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Speaker 1: message to the person who needs to decipher it on

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Speaker 1: how to decipher it right, right. If the person who

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Speaker 1: receives the message isn't aware of the method to find it,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't do them a lot of good. So if

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Speaker 1: if you have been able to collude with your receiver,

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Speaker 1: like if I'm sending a message to Ariel, and Ariel

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Speaker 1: and I have decided ahead of time, Hey, if I

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Speaker 1: ever need to send you a message, this is how

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Speaker 1: I'm going to do it, and this is how you're

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Speaker 1: going to see what the message is, then we're okay.

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Speaker 1: But if if it's a situation where Ariel and I

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Speaker 1: have been separated for a long time and I need

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Speaker 1: to send her a message and I needed to be secret.

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Speaker 1: I've got to figure out a way to give her

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Speaker 1: instructions as to how to retrieve that message. And sometimes

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Speaker 1: that involves, you know, paying somebody, like just tell her

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Speaker 1: to wash the wax off and we'll explain what that

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Speaker 1: means a little bit later. So they're wash the wax off,

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Speaker 1: it's good advice to live by their Yeah, sure, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean just in general. So we've got the elements here.

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Speaker 1: Those are your basic elements to to have. Steganography actually

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Speaker 1: makes sense, and now we need to talk about the

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Speaker 1: difference between that and a related art cryptography, which, yes,

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Speaker 1: cryptography is the art of making and solving codes. Uh,

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Speaker 1: but anybody can see that it's a code. Right, So

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Speaker 1: if I send a coded message to Arial, it may

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Speaker 1: be that any third party can't see what the message is,

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Speaker 1: but they know I'm trying to communicate to her. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because why else would he send me a piece of

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Speaker 1: paper that says music of viage Unless I've just fallen

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Speaker 1: asleep at my keyboard, Then clearly I'm trying to say something,

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Speaker 1: so and then I'm just wasting my time trying to decipherate. Right,

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Speaker 1: So cryptography keys in people that something's going on. It

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Speaker 1: lets people know there's some sort of communication. And uh.

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Speaker 1: You might have a pretty simple type of code, like

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Speaker 1: a simple cipher where you know the old classic, uh,

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Speaker 1: substitution cipher, where you substitute one letter for another, the

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Speaker 1: simplest being let's shift all the letters over by one.

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Speaker 1: So and uh, whenever I write the letter B, I

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Speaker 1: really mean the letter A. Whenever I write the letter C,

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Speaker 1: I really mean the letter B. This is what's called

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Speaker 1: a really bad cipher. It's easy to figure out. I

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Speaker 1: don't know when I try to do the cryptograms in

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Speaker 1: puzzle books, has such a hard time, And it's the

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Speaker 1: same thing. Well, sometimes a substitution cipher can get a

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Speaker 1: little more complicated. So for example, when you substitute one

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Speaker 1: letter for another, then the next time you substitute a letter,

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Speaker 1: you actually shift over again. So in other words, the

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Speaker 1: first time you only shift over one letter, the second

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Speaker 1: time you shift over two letters, the third time you

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Speaker 1: shift over three letters. So if you know the algorithm,

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Speaker 1: if you know the pattern, then when you get the message,

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Speaker 1: you can reverse that and you know to look for it.

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Speaker 1: If you don't know the pattern, then you have to

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Speaker 1: spend more time trying to figure out what the pattern is.

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Speaker 1: And while that still is a fairly simple example, things

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Speaker 1: like the um the Enigma machine in World War Two,

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Speaker 1: which was the Germans way of sending coded messages. They

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Speaker 1: had this machine that had three different the basic one,

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Speaker 1: I had three different dials that they would set, and

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Speaker 1: then I had a typewriter and a bunch of lamps,

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Speaker 1: and when you pressed down a key of a letter,

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Speaker 1: a lamp would light up, indicating a different letter. So

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Speaker 1: let's say I typed the letter E to type in Enigma,

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Speaker 1: but the letter for in lights up. Then it would

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Speaker 1: actually go a certain number of steps, so that the

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Speaker 1: next letter I type would be a totally unpredictable letter.

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Speaker 1: If I didn't have an Enigma machine of my own. Well,

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Speaker 1: that's really good, because if I tried to write a cipher,

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Speaker 1: I would totally lose place of where I was if

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Speaker 1: I was constantly shifting the letter yeah, and my message

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Speaker 1: would be nonsensical, both decrypted and encrypted. Yeah, exactly, that

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Speaker 1: that is. That's the reason why the Germans were using

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Speaker 1: a machine so that way it could be predictable. But

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Speaker 1: only if both parties had the same style of Enigma

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Speaker 1: machine and they both knew what the initial settings were,

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Speaker 1: so part of the communication would include a a key

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Speaker 1: saying this is what you need to set it to.

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Speaker 1: Although technically they were all supposed to have a communication

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Speaker 1: telling them what settings to use each day, and they

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Speaker 1: were never supposed to repeat those settings. Eventually people got

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Speaker 1: lazy and that's how those codes were eventually broken by

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Speaker 1: Alan Turing, which you can see in that film The

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Speaker 1: Imitation Game, The Imitation Game exactly. So steganography obviously is

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Speaker 1: different from cryptography, and that yes, you're still sending secret messages,

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Speaker 1: but the message itself, the existence of the message is secret.

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Speaker 1: Anybody any lay then looking at the message or the

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Speaker 1: photo or the paper won't know it's there, right, so

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Speaker 1: you you can still encrypt it, you can still use cryptography.

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Speaker 1: In fact, using both together makes a lot of sense.

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Speaker 1: But ultimately with steganography, if you've hidden the message well

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Speaker 1: enough and people are not if people don't know to

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Speaker 1: look for it, it's safe to be in plain text

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Speaker 1: to whomever you're sending it to, depending upon what method

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Speaker 1: you use, because there are a lot of different ones,

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Speaker 1: right um um. A great way to further explain it

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Speaker 1: is to go back to the Greek cryptography means secret

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Speaker 1: writing and steganography means covered writing. I pause there because

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Speaker 1: I was really surprised I said it correctly. Well, every

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Speaker 1: time I say it correctly, I will also be surprised.

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Speaker 1: Uh yeah. So that really that gets down to the

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Speaker 1: heart of it, right, and the combination of the two

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Speaker 1: allows you to have more secure communication. Now, there's an

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Speaker 1: art to find being hidden messages that have been concealed

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Speaker 1: in this way. Yes, it is called stag analysis, which

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Speaker 1: I try to look up what the Greek of that meant,

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Speaker 1: and it meant covered, breaking up, loosening of Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: it's it's all very repetitive. It just means you're uncovering

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Speaker 1: the secret message, right. So depending upon the type of

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Speaker 1: uh steganogram that has been sent, you would use a

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Speaker 1: different method to find the meaning. So when we're talking

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Speaker 1: about the modern version of steganography, we're really talking about

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Speaker 1: ones and zeros digital information. So steag analysis is largely

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Speaker 1: concerned with that because that's that's the main way messages

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Speaker 1: are set these days, is through a digital file of

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Speaker 1: some sort that to an outside view looks like a

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Speaker 1: normal file. There's nothing that seems remarkable about it. But

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Speaker 1: if you were to analyze the actual digital information of

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Speaker 1: that file, you would start to see pattern that would

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Speaker 1: indicates something hanky is going. Yes, and insteak analysis, there

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Speaker 1: are two steps to deciphering and the first is detecting

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Speaker 1: it UM, which if if it is like a handwritten

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Speaker 1: message or something like that, and it's very fairly obvious,

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Speaker 1: you can do it without any special software. UM. But

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Speaker 1: where it does happen so so much in the digital age, UM,

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Speaker 1: there are disk analysis programs that will just look at

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Speaker 1: it for you. Yeah, you actually run your suspected uh

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Speaker 1: secret message, So it could be very simple like a

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Speaker 1: lot of and a lot of examples I see are

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Speaker 1: photographs that have been uploaded to public forums and the

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Speaker 1: idea being that well, when it's in the public eye,

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Speaker 1: no one's paying attention to it because it's just something

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Speaker 1: that we see all the time. Like if you were

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Speaker 1: to post a picture to Facebook, Yeah, a lot of

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Speaker 1: a lot of people do. Then because that's so common,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't tend to raise suspicion. So first of all,

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Speaker 1: someone has to know that there's something to look for, right,

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Speaker 1: they have to first be suspicious that there's some form

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Speaker 1: of communication going on. Then they have to start figuring out,

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Speaker 1: all right, how is this communication happening, And then they

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Speaker 1: would have to start targeting the various means of that,

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Speaker 1: and one of those might be photographs, and they'd say,

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Speaker 1: all right, let's take this image that was uploaded to

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Speaker 1: whatever site, and let's run it through one of these

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Speaker 1: disc analysis programs and see if that comes up with

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Speaker 1: anything that perhaps there's some indication that something's out of place,

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Speaker 1: and it might be something that you looking at would

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Speaker 1: notice if you knew what to look for. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: called perceptible noise. So sometimes if audio visual files are

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Speaker 1: slightly off, there might be perceptible noise in there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so that would just be an indicator, right, something saying

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Speaker 1: something's not right now. That can happen naturally, like that

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Speaker 1: can just be a problem with the file and not

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Speaker 1: not be an indication that there's anything super secret going on.

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Speaker 1: Or it could be an indication that, in fact, some

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Speaker 1: of the bits in that file have been altered in

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Speaker 1: order to send a secret message. And in in the

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Speaker 1: best case of steganography, you wouldn't have weird noises or

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Speaker 1: distorted pixels for people to see. Yeah, it would just

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Speaker 1: be so subtle that you would never pick up on it.

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Speaker 1: And uh and that's the reason why you need these

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Speaker 1: disc analysis programs, so they can look for things that

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Speaker 1: are below the perceptive level of human beings. Uh. So

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Speaker 1: again we often see the two working together. Makes a

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Speaker 1: lot of sense. So let's talk a little bit about

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Speaker 1: the history of steganography, because there are some gloriously awful

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Speaker 1: and bloody stories. Oh it gave me the heebs just

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Speaker 1: just reading about them. Yeah. So first we got to

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Speaker 1: go to ancient Greece, which makes sense. We're talking, you know,

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Speaker 1: we're using Greek words, so it makes sense that that

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Speaker 1: a lot of the early cases involved Greek stories. And

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Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking a lot about Herodotus time. I

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Speaker 1: can only do it because I listened to the pronunciation

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Speaker 1: and I wrote down a phonetic translation in our notes.

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Speaker 1: That is not a joke. Herodotus was a Greek historian

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Speaker 1: in the fifth century b c. And wrote a lot

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Speaker 1: about Greek history and the history of the surrounding areas

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Speaker 1: of Greece, and in fact, his writings were called the Histories. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and or at least we have to we have to

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Speaker 1: take some of this with a grain of salt, because

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Speaker 1: legend got mixed up with history quite a bit. So.

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Speaker 1: In fact, there are some modern accountings that suggest that

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Speaker 1: some of the familial connections he makes in his stories

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Speaker 1: were not necessarily accurate. So Um one of the big ones,

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Speaker 1: in fact, the first one I have to talk about,

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Speaker 1: is one of those where the story talks about a

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Speaker 1: general named Harpagus who sent a staganagram to Cyrus was

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Speaker 1: a king who was going to become the King of

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Speaker 1: Kings of Persia. So the Prince of Persia, not the

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Speaker 1: Prince of Persian. No, that's a video game, which is fun,

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Speaker 1: but not not something we actually need to reference here. Story. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the story is far bloodier in fact, which is odd

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Speaker 1: to think of, depending on which version of Prince of

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Speaker 1: Persia you played and how badly you played it. But

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Speaker 1: Cyrus was going to be the King of Kings of Persia,

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Speaker 1: so Persia was divided up into several kingdoms, and then

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Speaker 1: you had a sort of an over king who saw

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Speaker 1: over everybody, kind of like King Arthur in in English lore. Um.

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Speaker 1: So cyrus Um was the grandson, according to Herodotus, to

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Speaker 1: another king of kings, Ostiagas, And so Harpagus actually worked

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Speaker 1: for Ostiagas. So Ostiogus is this king of kings, and

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Speaker 1: he has a dream, and in his dream, his daughter

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Speaker 1: give birth to a son, and that son grows up

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Speaker 1: to depose osti Agus. So first he ends up marrying

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Speaker 1: his daughter off to a kind of milk toast kind

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Speaker 1: of guy, someone that he thinks is, oh, well, this

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Speaker 1: guy is harmless, so any child they have is not

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Speaker 1: going to be a threat to me. Uh. And they

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Speaker 1: have a son named Cyrus, according to Herodotus. Again, other

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Speaker 1: modern accounts suggest that Cyrus and Ostiagas were not grandfather

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Speaker 1: and grandson. Yeah, they might have been related, but not

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Speaker 1: like grandfather and grandson, particularly since Cyrus ended up marrying um,

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Speaker 1: a daughter of Herodotus, which would have meant he would

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Speaker 1: have married his own aunt, which was not common in

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Speaker 1: those times. So I mean possible, but not common. So anyway,

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Speaker 1: in the story, Cyrus is the grandson, and Ostiagas decides

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Speaker 1: Harpagus needs to go out and kill Cyrus. Okay. Harpagas, though,

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Speaker 1: does not really relish the thought of spilling royal blood,

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Speaker 1: so he takes Cyrus and he gives Cyrus to a

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Speaker 1: shepherd and says, look after this kid, uh and raise

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Speaker 1: him as your own, and I will report back that

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Speaker 1: Cyrus is dead. Pegus seems like a really decent guy,

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Speaker 1: at least at that point, so he goes back. He

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Speaker 1: reports that Cyrus has died, and Ostiagus says YEA. Ten

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Speaker 1: years later, osti Agus finds out Cyrus is actually alive,

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Speaker 1: so he punishes Harpegus in kind of a Shakespearean awful way,

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Speaker 1: and that in the story, osti Agus gets Harpagus, his son,

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Speaker 1: kills him, chops him up, cooks him, serves them to

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Speaker 1: Harpagas as a banquet. Harpegas and then tells Harpegus, hey,

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Speaker 1: by the way, I hope you like your son, because

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Speaker 1: that's what you're eating. Harpegus supposedly then gathered up the

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Speaker 1: remains and gave his son a burial. He was being

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Speaker 1: obedient to the king outwardly, but inwardly had decided that

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Speaker 1: he had had enough and he wanted revenge, so he

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Speaker 1: wanted to report to Cyrus. He ended up working very

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Speaker 1: hard to get other leaders of Persia to turn against

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Speaker 1: ossi Augus and wait for just the right time to

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Speaker 1: give Cyrus the signal that now is the time to attack.

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Speaker 1: So he needed to send a message to Cyrus saying,

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Speaker 1: we're ready to go when you are. But Asti August

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Speaker 1: had guards all along the way. So how does he

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Speaker 1: send a message. He gets a bunny bunny hair. Actually, no,

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Speaker 1: they're not nearly as cute as bunny rabbits, and this

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Speaker 1: hair was not nearly as cute because it was did. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they they have a guy kill a hair, They cut

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Speaker 1: the hair open, they insert the secret message into the

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Speaker 1: hair's stomach, so the hair back up, and a messenger

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Speaker 1: disguised as a huntsman brings the hair to Cyrus and says,

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Speaker 1: you should cut open this bunny rabbit and get what

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Speaker 1: the delicious things inside are. And so Cyrus cuts open

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Speaker 1: the stitches, gets the message, sees that it's time to attack,

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Speaker 1: and that is how, according to Herodotus, Cyrus goes and

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Speaker 1: joins a revolution and overthrows osta AGAs, and then Cyrus

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Speaker 1: becomes the king. So there's a long way to go

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Speaker 1: for that story, but it's important to know all the

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Speaker 1: elements to explain why Harpagus was trying to send a

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Speaker 1: coded message in the first place, or hidden message. I'm

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Speaker 1: so glad we have better ways to send hidden messages

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Speaker 1: than in the stomachs of rabbits. Now yeah, so, um,

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Speaker 1: here's another one. This is another popular story from Herodotus.

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Speaker 1: This one involves a tyrant named Histius, which sounds like

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Speaker 1: you're strangling a snake. Yeah. Histius who is the ruler

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Speaker 1: of mild Us, and this guy was really useful to

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Speaker 1: the King of Persia. The King of Persia loved Histius

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Speaker 1: and and decided to invite him back to become a

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Speaker 1: royal advisor. Well that sounds pretty good to me. Well,

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Speaker 1: at first, History has thought so too. But then eventually

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Speaker 1: he thought, you know, I want to go back to

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Speaker 1: being a tyrant of Maltest. Tyrant, by the way, does

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Speaker 1: not necessarily mean evil ruler, but it did mean like

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Speaker 1: having total authority over a region. Um, so he said,

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Speaker 1: he thought, I want to go back to doing what

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Speaker 1: I was doing before. But it would be treason for

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Speaker 1: me to deny the king. So how do I get

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Speaker 1: around this? And he comes up with an even more

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Speaker 1: treason this way to get around it. He decides that

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Speaker 1: the best way to get back to doing what he

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Speaker 1: was doing before would be to stage a revolution back home. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and then tell the king, Hey, I need to go

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Speaker 1: back there and squash this revolution before it gets out

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Speaker 1: of hand because telling the king no is so much

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Speaker 1: less worse than lying to the king and tell him.

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Speaker 1: So he decides he needs to send this in instruction

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Speaker 1: to his nephew, who was in charge of mildest Aristagoras.

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Speaker 1: And so how does he send the message. Well, he

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Speaker 1: gets a slave which the Greeks had back then, and tattoos.

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Speaker 1: He shaves the slave's head, tattoos the message on the

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Speaker 1: slave's scalp, then allows the slaves hair to grow back,

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Speaker 1: then sends the slave to Aristagoras with the instruction to

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Speaker 1: tell Aristagoras, Hey, you need to shave me and read

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Speaker 1: my head. So that's exactly what happens. Aristagoras reads the message,

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Speaker 1: starts a revolution against the Persians. Then Histius tells the king, Hey,

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Speaker 1: this is gonna be a problem, so just send me

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Speaker 1: back and I will go and squish this right away,

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Speaker 1: and we'll solve this before it turns into a big problem.

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Speaker 1: And of course they can a loyal advisor. Sure, yeah,

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Speaker 1: So Histius heads on his way back. However, there were

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Speaker 1: some folks who were a little suspicious of Histius and

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Speaker 1: his convenient revolution, and so eventually his tas goes on

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Speaker 1: the run because people are actually after him thinking that

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Speaker 1: you know, he's he's committed treason. Uh, yeah, he has

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Speaker 1: done that thing, and so he ends up getting exiled

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Speaker 1: and eventually uh to an island. He becomes a pirate

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Speaker 1: for a while, and then he's eventually captured by one

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Speaker 1: of the King of Persia's subjects, who knows that if

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Speaker 1: he sends Historius back to the king, the king will

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Speaker 1: pardon him, so he just goes ahead and execute histi

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Speaker 1: is right then and there, since the head of hist

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Speaker 1: Is to the king saying, hey, I caught him. I

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Speaker 1: killed him for you. And the king actually supposedly gave

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Speaker 1: the head of his tis an honorable burial because he

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Speaker 1: never suspected anything was up. He didn't believe his t

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Speaker 1: is could have committed any kind of treason against him. So, uh,

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Speaker 1: dumb or nice? Not a lot of nice stories in

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Speaker 1: ancient Greece. And then you've got another one, another Herodotus,

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Speaker 1: Another Herodotus story. I was about to mention it, and

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Speaker 1: then I realized that I couldn't actually say his name.

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Speaker 1: There was an exiled Greek named named Demeritus, and uh,

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Speaker 1: he needed to warn the King of Sparta, Leonidas that

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Speaker 1: kings are ses. The first was going to attack them,

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Speaker 1: so he took writing tablets, which were wood tablets covered

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Speaker 1: in wax. Yeah, and you would scratch a message into

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Speaker 1: the wax, and instead he took off all the wax

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Speaker 1: and scratched message into the wood and then recovered the

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Speaker 1: tablets and wax so that they looked like they were

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Speaker 1: blanked tablets. And he sent those to the king to

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Speaker 1: warn him. Uh. But proposedly no one knew why they

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Speaker 1: were getting these blank tablets. They didn't necessarily know there

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Speaker 1: was a message. Why are we getting just we got

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Speaker 1: plenty of tablets and no one writes anything of use

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Speaker 1: here in Sparta anyway. Yeah, Supposedly the queen, Queen Gorgo

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Speaker 1: figured out what it was, said, you got you need

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Speaker 1: to take the wax off. I bet there's a message

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Speaker 1: under there, and there were. Um, but it didn't help them,

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Speaker 1: because the Spartans were brutally defeated. Uh. And if this

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Speaker 1: story sounds familiar to you, it's because it is the

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Speaker 1: story three the comic movie. Yeah story, that's essentially that's

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Speaker 1: the tale the three hundred Spartans who who tried to

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Speaker 1: hold a pass and managed to delay xer Ces so

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Speaker 1: that the invasion of Greece ultimately would fail, but the

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Speaker 1: Spartans were completely wiped out, or at least the the

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Speaker 1: three hundred were completely wiped out as a result. Moving

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Speaker 1: forward to Roman times, Tacitus invented a way to use

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Speaker 1: a predecessor of dice to hide messages. So these these

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Speaker 1: dice like things, which I can't remember the name now.

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Speaker 1: It's like an estralla alley or something like that, but

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Speaker 1: I know I've totally mangled that, so I apologize. But

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Speaker 1: they had little holes drilled in them and you could

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Speaker 1: string them together, and in this case Tacitus was using

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Speaker 1: them to string them together in specific orders to relay

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Speaker 1: different types of messages. But if anyone were stopped with them,

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Speaker 1: they just looked like it was a toy. It didn't

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Speaker 1: look like it was anything of significance, although they might

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Speaker 1: play with it and mess up the message. That Yeah,

425
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:16,000
Speaker 1: if you were to break the thread so that they

426
00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:18,280
Speaker 1: were no longer threaded together in the proper way, then

427
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:21,480
Speaker 1: the message would be lost. Uh this, by the way,

428
00:25:21,480 --> 00:25:24,760
Speaker 1: it would end up having a specific name, a semigram,

429
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:29,440
Speaker 1: because it is being used as a non text based message.

430
00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:32,800
Speaker 1: So you don't you don't translate it into texts so

431
00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:35,520
Speaker 1: much as you say, this series of symbols means this

432
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:40,040
Speaker 1: particular thing. Uh. You also have a guy named Johannes

433
00:25:40,480 --> 00:25:44,679
Speaker 1: Trithmius in the Middle Ages, in the sixteenth century actually,

434
00:25:44,840 --> 00:25:50,600
Speaker 1: who wrote a book titled Steganograph Stega nagraphia, yes, which

435
00:25:50,920 --> 00:25:54,960
Speaker 1: was a stagram in and of itself. This I did

436
00:25:54,960 --> 00:25:58,320
Speaker 1: not know, which is pretty cool. Yeah. It outwardly it

437
00:25:58,400 --> 00:26:02,120
Speaker 1: seemed to be a series of writings on magic, but

438
00:26:02,320 --> 00:26:06,200
Speaker 1: in secret it contained a message on the treatise of steganography.

439
00:26:06,720 --> 00:26:09,520
Speaker 1: That's now that's really cool that you're like, Okay, you've

440
00:26:09,520 --> 00:26:11,679
Speaker 1: gotta be smart enough to know that this is a

441
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:15,280
Speaker 1: book about secret messages, because it itself is a secret message.

442
00:26:15,800 --> 00:26:18,560
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, really interesting, And then we can skip ahead.

443
00:26:18,600 --> 00:26:22,760
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously these have been used repeatedly in multiple ways.

444
00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:25,320
Speaker 1: There's another great example that during World War One, the

445
00:26:25,359 --> 00:26:28,359
Speaker 1: German embassy in the United States sent a message to

446
00:26:28,440 --> 00:26:33,200
Speaker 1: Berlin that used what's called a null cipher. Null ciphers

447
00:26:33,280 --> 00:26:36,720
Speaker 1: are not very secure at all because once you know

448
00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:39,360
Speaker 1: that there's a possibility, it's very easy to find them.

449
00:26:39,359 --> 00:26:42,080
Speaker 1: But basically it's when you take the first letter of

450
00:26:42,119 --> 00:26:45,120
Speaker 1: each word in a message, and that spells out a

451
00:26:45,119 --> 00:26:48,879
Speaker 1: new message. So here's an example that's often cited. I

452
00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:52,679
Speaker 1: don't know that this was ever actually sent as a message,

453
00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:55,840
Speaker 1: but it's always used as an example. Here's the the

454
00:26:55,880 --> 00:26:59,200
Speaker 1: full message, which was or the carrier message if you will,

455
00:26:59,240 --> 00:27:04,159
Speaker 1: It was President's embargo ruling should have immediate notice, grave

456
00:27:04,240 --> 00:27:10,119
Speaker 1: situation affecting international law. Statement for shadows ruin of many neutrals,

457
00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:15,000
Speaker 1: yellow journals, unifying national excitement immensely. See, they really had

458
00:27:15,000 --> 00:27:17,960
Speaker 1: me until the yellow journals. Like I was following that message,

459
00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:19,840
Speaker 1: I knew what they were trying to set. Well. They

460
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:22,480
Speaker 1: could have been talking about yellow journalism, but that's a

461
00:27:22,600 --> 00:27:25,240
Speaker 1: different thing. Anyway, you wouldn't know why a German embassy

462
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:27,480
Speaker 1: would write about it. But at any rate, the secret message,

463
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:32,080
Speaker 1: if you take those first letters, says Pershing sales from

464
00:27:32,359 --> 00:27:37,800
Speaker 1: n y New York June first or June I upper

465
00:27:37,840 --> 00:27:40,200
Speaker 1: case I. So Pershing was the U. S. General who

466
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:43,600
Speaker 1: led American the American expeditionary forces in World War One.

467
00:27:43,880 --> 00:27:46,119
Speaker 1: So this would be a message from German, the German

468
00:27:46,160 --> 00:27:50,119
Speaker 1: embassy to Germany saying, hey, this American general is sailing

469
00:27:50,160 --> 00:27:53,040
Speaker 1: out of New York on this date, expect him to

470
00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:56,199
Speaker 1: be in the in the European theater within several weeks,

471
00:27:56,320 --> 00:27:59,160
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Uh. And now we'll talk about

472
00:27:59,240 --> 00:28:02,120
Speaker 1: some of the types of steganography, because there's a whole

473
00:28:02,160 --> 00:28:05,639
Speaker 1: bunch of because really, any way that you can hide

474
00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:09,800
Speaker 1: a message inside something is technically steganography. So these are

475
00:28:09,880 --> 00:28:12,600
Speaker 1: just some examples. Really, it's not an exhaustive list, because

476
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:16,280
Speaker 1: that would be impossible. For instance, Uh, there's the old

477
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:19,560
Speaker 1: Greek ways we talked about um in in history of

478
00:28:19,640 --> 00:28:23,879
Speaker 1: hiding something inside or under something. Great example is in

479
00:28:24,080 --> 00:28:27,520
Speaker 1: the Second World War, the British Secret Service hid escape

480
00:28:27,600 --> 00:28:30,199
Speaker 1: kit pieces in Monopoly games and sent them to the

481
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:34,080
Speaker 1: prisoners of war in Germany along with Red Cross supplies. Yeah,

482
00:28:34,160 --> 00:28:38,000
Speaker 1: so you could you get these deliveries if you're a

483
00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:39,719
Speaker 1: prisoner of war, and you know, the Germans would say,

484
00:28:39,720 --> 00:28:42,680
Speaker 1: all right, well, this is just humanitarian aid or whatever,

485
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:45,320
Speaker 1: and as long as it keeps the prisoners mollified, then

486
00:28:45,320 --> 00:28:48,040
Speaker 1: we'll go ahead and give them to them, not realizing

487
00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:50,600
Speaker 1: that they were supplying the prisoners with the very tools

488
00:28:50,640 --> 00:28:52,840
Speaker 1: the prisoners might be able to use to break free,

489
00:28:53,200 --> 00:28:56,320
Speaker 1: which is pretty interesting. And by when the prisoners break free,

490
00:28:56,560 --> 00:29:01,440
Speaker 1: did they have egg on their face. So the semigrams

491
00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:04,240
Speaker 1: I talked about earlier, the dice that are threadned together,

492
00:29:04,360 --> 00:29:06,760
Speaker 1: that's just one example that could be in lots of

493
00:29:06,800 --> 00:29:11,600
Speaker 1: different versions, like iconography or signs or photographs, or even

494
00:29:11,880 --> 00:29:14,200
Speaker 1: like the placement of items on the desk. So let's

495
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:16,920
Speaker 1: say I've got I could have a webcam set up

496
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:20,760
Speaker 1: on my desk, for example, so that people who log

497
00:29:20,800 --> 00:29:23,800
Speaker 1: into the web could see me, you know, theoretically just

498
00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:26,959
Speaker 1: working at work like that's all I'm doing. But maybe

499
00:29:27,320 --> 00:29:30,560
Speaker 1: depending upon where my coffee cup is, or depending upon

500
00:29:30,560 --> 00:29:33,520
Speaker 1: where a certain stack of papers happened to be, that

501
00:29:33,600 --> 00:29:37,440
Speaker 1: might be an actual message itself. So Ariel looking at

502
00:29:37,480 --> 00:29:41,080
Speaker 1: the webcam might say, oh, well, Jonathan's gonna go to

503
00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 1: Manual's Tavern today because I see where the combination of

504
00:29:45,600 --> 00:29:47,680
Speaker 1: stuff is. I don't know why I would secretly be

505
00:29:47,720 --> 00:29:50,920
Speaker 1: telling you that, because all of your fans trying to

506
00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:53,680
Speaker 1: follow you. Yeah, that's it. I'm I'm surrounded by the

507
00:29:53,680 --> 00:29:56,880
Speaker 1: thronging fans who and Manual's Tavern is such a low

508
00:29:56,880 --> 00:30:00,280
Speaker 1: profile place, right. Uh that's by the way, you're not

509
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:03,240
Speaker 1: from Atlanta or never been here. Manuel taverns a very

510
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:09,440
Speaker 1: popular spot for artists and and playwrights, and political fans

511
00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:14,120
Speaker 1: and sports figures, political figures. Yeah, President Obama came here recently,

512
00:30:14,560 --> 00:30:17,240
Speaker 1: and it's just kind of it's kind of like a

513
00:30:17,560 --> 00:30:20,520
Speaker 1: like I think of it like cheers. Yeah, it's really

514
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:23,280
Speaker 1: like cheers with chickens on the roof. Yeah. Yeah, there

515
00:30:23,280 --> 00:30:25,680
Speaker 1: are chickens on the roof. That that's not it's not

516
00:30:25,720 --> 00:30:29,560
Speaker 1: a joke. Actually, they use their eggs for breakfast. They do.

517
00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:34,400
Speaker 1: Another example would be the car done grill. It sounds

518
00:30:34,400 --> 00:30:36,360
Speaker 1: like a good restaurant. It does, doesn't it. It's a

519
00:30:36,400 --> 00:30:39,520
Speaker 1: classic example. I was first proposed in the fifteenth century.

520
00:30:39,560 --> 00:30:41,920
Speaker 1: So here's how it works. You've probably seen this. So

521
00:30:41,960 --> 00:30:45,120
Speaker 1: you take a sheet of clean paper or in the

522
00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:47,800
Speaker 1: case of the Middle Ages, parchment, and you set that down.

523
00:30:48,120 --> 00:30:50,560
Speaker 1: You take a second sheet and you cut little holes

524
00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:54,160
Speaker 1: in that sheet and strategic places. You lay the second

525
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:56,920
Speaker 1: sheet on top of the first sheet, and then you

526
00:30:56,960 --> 00:30:59,960
Speaker 1: write in your secret message in those holes. Using the

527
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:02,880
Speaker 1: holes is kind of like almost like a stencil, And

528
00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:05,640
Speaker 1: so it's only bits and pieces. Sometimes sometimes it might

529
00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:07,840
Speaker 1: be a word. Sometimes it might just be a single letter.

530
00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:11,760
Speaker 1: But you do that throughout using the holes as your guide.

531
00:31:11,840 --> 00:31:14,880
Speaker 1: To write the secret message. Then you take your stencil

532
00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:18,440
Speaker 1: off and you write in the You fill in the

533
00:31:18,480 --> 00:31:21,040
Speaker 1: rest of the space with a boring message that means

534
00:31:21,640 --> 00:31:23,760
Speaker 1: you know very little in the grand scheme of things.

535
00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:29,560
Speaker 1: So only someone who would have a part a comparable stencil,

536
00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:31,920
Speaker 1: so something that they have a sheet of paper that

537
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:34,440
Speaker 1: has the same general holes cut out of it, they

538
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:37,120
Speaker 1: could lay that on top of the full message and

539
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:40,840
Speaker 1: read the secret message that's underneath. I actually tried to

540
00:31:40,880 --> 00:31:43,920
Speaker 1: make a card and grill a while back back when

541
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:46,120
Speaker 1: I was in school and do a secret message like that.

542
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:48,760
Speaker 1: It is harder than I imagined it would be because

543
00:31:48,840 --> 00:31:51,080
Speaker 1: once you put your secret message in, you then have

544
00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:53,640
Speaker 1: to make sure the rest of your message lines up right.

545
00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:56,240
Speaker 1: You have to make it make enough sense, Like how

546
00:31:56,280 --> 00:31:59,080
Speaker 1: do you plan out the rest of your message so

547
00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 1: that you can do this unless you were to create

548
00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:06,200
Speaker 1: a message from the very beginning, and then you create

549
00:32:06,400 --> 00:32:09,880
Speaker 1: a grill that fits on top of your existing message

550
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:12,560
Speaker 1: that shows what which words are the most important, and

551
00:32:12,560 --> 00:32:14,960
Speaker 1: then you send it. But then you've got to figure out, well,

552
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:16,960
Speaker 1: how do I get how do I get the grill?

553
00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:21,320
Speaker 1: How do I get the the stencil to the person

554
00:32:21,360 --> 00:32:23,040
Speaker 1: I need? To send it to, because if I send both,

555
00:32:23,080 --> 00:32:26,440
Speaker 1: then clearly the jig is up, you know, So it

556
00:32:26,520 --> 00:32:30,080
Speaker 1: is a little tricky. I love this next one you've got. Yeah,

557
00:32:30,080 --> 00:32:33,040
Speaker 1: this next one, I had to double check it because

558
00:32:33,040 --> 00:32:36,080
Speaker 1: I didn't think it was possibly real. But people would

559
00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:39,920
Speaker 1: knit Morrise code into garments and then send those garments

560
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:43,280
Speaker 1: on the couriers for people to decipher. And you think

561
00:32:43,320 --> 00:32:46,000
Speaker 1: it was just like a knit line of Yeah, just

562
00:32:46,040 --> 00:32:49,280
Speaker 1: a pattern, just a pattern, Yeah, clothing. I think that's

563
00:32:49,280 --> 00:32:50,920
Speaker 1: super cool. I want to start doing that when I

564
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:53,360
Speaker 1: have kids, I'm gonna knit Morse code into all their clothes.

565
00:32:53,400 --> 00:32:56,720
Speaker 1: They'll be fantastic things like things like do your chores

566
00:32:57,600 --> 00:33:02,880
Speaker 1: if this child is found you, Well, that's a I

567
00:33:02,960 --> 00:33:06,080
Speaker 1: like that you expect spies to come across your children

568
00:33:06,120 --> 00:33:08,360
Speaker 1: because I can't think of anyone else who typically uses

569
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:11,920
Speaker 1: Morse code on a frequent basis. Uh. I like the

570
00:33:11,960 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 1: next one too, which is also pretty cool, the idea

571
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:17,800
Speaker 1: that just through through formatting a document, you can create

572
00:33:17,840 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 1: a secret message. Yeah, you can add an extra space,

573
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:24,320
Speaker 1: which most people don't notice. I do a lot of

574
00:33:24,400 --> 00:33:27,520
Speaker 1: editing at my job, and so I often see extra

575
00:33:27,560 --> 00:33:30,960
Speaker 1: spaces at before after a period or before a certain word,

576
00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:33,680
Speaker 1: like before a hyphen or after a hyphen. But you

577
00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:37,000
Speaker 1: can add those extra spaces before the important words in

578
00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:39,080
Speaker 1: any word that you find that has an extra space before,

579
00:33:39,360 --> 00:33:42,400
Speaker 1: that's part of your cipher. Nice. I've also seen where

580
00:33:42,440 --> 00:33:46,080
Speaker 1: you could do things like subtly change the font, yes,

581
00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:49,080
Speaker 1: like really subtle, like courier to Courier new, which is

582
00:33:49,880 --> 00:33:52,760
Speaker 1: at a casual glance, it looks the same, but if

583
00:33:52,760 --> 00:33:56,280
Speaker 1: you're paying attention, you can tell the difference, and thus

584
00:33:56,400 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 1: you put the important words in the different font. And

585
00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:02,280
Speaker 1: as long this messages, like as long as your carrier

586
00:34:02,320 --> 00:34:05,800
Speaker 1: message is long enough and your secret message is short enough,

587
00:34:06,160 --> 00:34:08,360
Speaker 1: people are probably not going to pick up on it.

588
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:11,560
Speaker 1: You can also vaguely change the skew as well. That

589
00:34:11,640 --> 00:34:14,319
Speaker 1: that one's a little bit more noticeable, right, right, So

590
00:34:14,480 --> 00:34:17,040
Speaker 1: it's you know, some of these again can get pretty

591
00:34:17,120 --> 00:34:19,680
Speaker 1: risky if your secret message is pretty long. This is

592
00:34:20,040 --> 00:34:23,880
Speaker 1: true in general, right, The longer your carrier message, the

593
00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 1: more secure the secret is going to be, assuming that

594
00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:29,520
Speaker 1: the secret is not itself very long. If I have,

595
00:34:30,239 --> 00:34:31,960
Speaker 1: like if I'm trying to hide a secret message in

596
00:34:32,000 --> 00:34:34,360
Speaker 1: a tweet, that's gonna be hard because they only have

597
00:34:34,400 --> 00:34:37,239
Speaker 1: a hundred forty characters to start with, and then if

598
00:34:37,239 --> 00:34:40,000
Speaker 1: I'm trying to hide a message in that, then it

599
00:34:40,040 --> 00:34:42,480
Speaker 1: has to be a pretty small message. Otherwise it's just

600
00:34:42,520 --> 00:34:45,120
Speaker 1: gonna look like a tweet. It would probably have to

601
00:34:45,160 --> 00:34:50,279
Speaker 1: be a cryptogram yeah, where individual letters mean full things

602
00:34:50,360 --> 00:34:55,520
Speaker 1: or right, or or like just a regular code where

603
00:34:55,560 --> 00:34:58,080
Speaker 1: someone has a codebook and they know that when I

604
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:02,759
Speaker 1: use this word that means something else. Yeah. In that case,

605
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:04,680
Speaker 1: that would that would be more of a code than ah,

606
00:35:06,480 --> 00:35:09,000
Speaker 1: than than a secret message in this sense, But there

607
00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:11,680
Speaker 1: are other ones too. There's also an invisible ink, which

608
00:35:11,960 --> 00:35:14,160
Speaker 1: is a thing ie. People have actually used it for

609
00:35:14,239 --> 00:35:18,680
Speaker 1: reals and also it's usually called sympathetic ink in the biz.

610
00:35:18,719 --> 00:35:21,560
Speaker 1: Because you would have a regular message written out in

611
00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:24,719
Speaker 1: normal inc that would have, you know, very boring, you know,

612
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:27,680
Speaker 1: no reason to raise suspicion. You would write the actual

613
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:30,320
Speaker 1: secret message and invisible ink kind of between the lines,

614
00:35:30,920 --> 00:35:32,680
Speaker 1: and then the person who receives it would have to

615
00:35:32,680 --> 00:35:34,960
Speaker 1: treat it. However they need to treat it, usually like

616
00:35:35,120 --> 00:35:37,800
Speaker 1: adding a little heat or maybe adding a certain chemical

617
00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:40,560
Speaker 1: to bring out the invisible ink so that you can

618
00:35:40,760 --> 00:35:43,400
Speaker 1: make it legible, and then you would be able to

619
00:35:43,440 --> 00:35:47,239
Speaker 1: read the secret stuff. And another way to hide messages

620
00:35:47,360 --> 00:35:51,759
Speaker 1: would be through photography. Yeah, like the Pueblo incident, which

621
00:35:51,800 --> 00:35:53,840
Speaker 1: as far as taganography goes, is kind of like a

622
00:35:53,880 --> 00:35:58,920
Speaker 1: semigram where uh crew of the USS Pueblo was captured

623
00:35:58,920 --> 00:36:02,480
Speaker 1: by North Korea right before the Vietnam War. They were

624
00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:06,160
Speaker 1: an electronic intelligence ship and they were forced to take

625
00:36:06,239 --> 00:36:09,400
Speaker 1: propaganda photos, and in those propaganda photos they all rested

626
00:36:09,400 --> 00:36:11,120
Speaker 1: with their hands on their faces or their shoulders in

627
00:36:11,120 --> 00:36:13,960
Speaker 1: a very nonchalant way, and it was actually a code

628
00:36:14,200 --> 00:36:18,280
Speaker 1: for the US to decipher. That's pretty incredible. It really

629
00:36:18,360 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 1: is so similar to what I was describing with the webcam,

630
00:36:21,600 --> 00:36:26,480
Speaker 1: the idea of just having this this foresight that you

631
00:36:26,520 --> 00:36:29,960
Speaker 1: know clearly you thought ahead, so that the person who

632
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:33,040
Speaker 1: sees it knows what the meaning is behind whatever you're

633
00:36:33,440 --> 00:36:35,960
Speaker 1: whatever the images. Yes, and there there there are more

634
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:39,680
Speaker 1: complicated versions of that. For instance, there you can systematically

635
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:44,160
Speaker 1: change pixel colors to correspond with letters in the alphabet

636
00:36:44,320 --> 00:36:47,880
Speaker 1: and then only change like the first pixel every square

637
00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:51,640
Speaker 1: centimeter or millimeter in photo or every so many lines,

638
00:36:52,200 --> 00:36:54,720
Speaker 1: and people can get the message that way. That. Yeah,

639
00:36:54,760 --> 00:36:58,319
Speaker 1: that's definitely really very subtle, especially you know if you're

640
00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:00,799
Speaker 1: using things like black and white photo is where you

641
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:03,440
Speaker 1: can you can change those things and they're not called

642
00:37:03,440 --> 00:37:07,279
Speaker 1: out as much because you could make it like a

643
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:09,600
Speaker 1: square that was going to be very dark a much

644
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:11,960
Speaker 1: lighter gray, and if you know what to look for,

645
00:37:12,400 --> 00:37:14,920
Speaker 1: then you could see the pattern. But otherwise you might

646
00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:18,080
Speaker 1: just think, oh, this is just poor developing or whatever

647
00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:21,800
Speaker 1: it's it's the it's a graininess of the photo. UM.

648
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:24,799
Speaker 1: You could use an existing piece of text, like a newspaper.

649
00:37:24,920 --> 00:37:26,839
Speaker 1: This was used during the Cold War all the time,

650
00:37:26,880 --> 00:37:30,879
Speaker 1: where uh you would use like a pen to put

651
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:35,160
Speaker 1: tiny holes above important letters, and then so you would

652
00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:37,040
Speaker 1: grab the newspaper hold it up so you can see

653
00:37:37,040 --> 00:37:39,400
Speaker 1: where the holes were, and that would give you the

654
00:37:39,480 --> 00:37:42,000
Speaker 1: letters to spell out or sometimes a full word to

655
00:37:42,040 --> 00:37:45,880
Speaker 1: spell out whatever the secret message was. UM. Or you

656
00:37:45,960 --> 00:37:48,160
Speaker 1: might use a dot with invisible ink if you wanted

657
00:37:48,200 --> 00:37:50,560
Speaker 1: to make sure people like could pick up the newspaper

658
00:37:50,600 --> 00:37:53,080
Speaker 1: and hold it up and not see light coming through

659
00:37:53,160 --> 00:37:56,400
Speaker 1: at strategic locations. But then of course you would have

660
00:37:56,440 --> 00:37:59,600
Speaker 1: to treat the newspaper to whatever it was that you know,

661
00:37:59,640 --> 00:38:02,200
Speaker 1: would ing the invisible inc ount dots are really important

662
00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:06,080
Speaker 1: and steagatography like they're used in many different ways. Yeah, yeah,

663
00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:09,320
Speaker 1: there's I actually got to see examples of this because

664
00:38:09,320 --> 00:38:12,240
Speaker 1: I went to the Spy Museum, which is in Washington,

665
00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:16,600
Speaker 1: d C. And they had examples of micro dots. And

666
00:38:16,680 --> 00:38:20,080
Speaker 1: micro dots are kind of think of it like micro film.

667
00:38:20,120 --> 00:38:23,960
Speaker 1: It's tiny little bits of film that look like a

668
00:38:24,080 --> 00:38:27,080
Speaker 1: period that's how small they are. And unless you were

669
00:38:27,120 --> 00:38:29,279
Speaker 1: to hold it up and see that it was in

670
00:38:29,320 --> 00:38:33,200
Speaker 1: fact film and not just a solid blob of ink,

671
00:38:33,760 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 1: you would never suspected of being anything other than a

672
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:40,440
Speaker 1: punctuation mark. And it can hold an incredible amount of

673
00:38:40,480 --> 00:38:43,920
Speaker 1: information because you know they're There are ways to enlarge photos.

674
00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:47,200
Speaker 1: We're talking about the old film style, right. This doesn't

675
00:38:47,880 --> 00:38:49,840
Speaker 1: mean you can do it digitally too, but we're talking

676
00:38:50,320 --> 00:38:53,680
Speaker 1: old school. So there are ways where you could take

677
00:38:53,680 --> 00:38:55,360
Speaker 1: a photo and then blow it up and blow it

678
00:38:55,440 --> 00:38:57,120
Speaker 1: up and blow it up so that you get like

679
00:38:57,200 --> 00:39:00,160
Speaker 1: a poster size or larger. Well, they're also ways where

680
00:39:00,160 --> 00:39:01,719
Speaker 1: you could shrink it down and shrink it down and

681
00:39:01,719 --> 00:39:05,080
Speaker 1: shrink it down. And uh, I was reading one way

682
00:39:05,120 --> 00:39:07,320
Speaker 1: that cuts so technical that I gave up on the

683
00:39:07,400 --> 00:39:10,839
Speaker 1: chance of trying to even describe it. But ultimately they

684
00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:17,000
Speaker 1: said it was two hundred and ten times smaller than

685
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:20,320
Speaker 1: the original photograph. And so you could take a picture

686
00:39:20,320 --> 00:39:23,239
Speaker 1: of say a document, top secret document, and then you

687
00:39:23,239 --> 00:39:25,200
Speaker 1: shrink it down to this side so it looks like

688
00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:27,680
Speaker 1: it's a you know, a period. You just cut out

689
00:39:27,719 --> 00:39:29,719
Speaker 1: a little piece of the paper, you insert this in,

690
00:39:30,600 --> 00:39:33,239
Speaker 1: and to casual glance, it seems like it's just a

691
00:39:33,320 --> 00:39:38,080
Speaker 1: regular sheet of paper with punctuation. But when you are

692
00:39:38,120 --> 00:39:40,359
Speaker 1: in the right hands, which might be the wrong hands

693
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:43,920
Speaker 1: depending on what side you're on, then you can find out, um,

694
00:39:44,040 --> 00:39:46,360
Speaker 1: what is actually there. This was a process that was

695
00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:50,560
Speaker 1: created by a man named Emmanuel goldberg Um and used

696
00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:55,000
Speaker 1: it for spying, and very popular, particularly amongst Soviet Union

697
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:58,160
Speaker 1: spies at the time. I would imagine nowadays if you

698
00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:00,879
Speaker 1: used micro dots in a digit will format, it would

699
00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:03,239
Speaker 1: be a lot harder to detect, because you couldn't hold

700
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:06,760
Speaker 1: up the paper and see that something was amiss. Yeah, yeah,

701
00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:12,799
Speaker 1: it was. It's the game has changed significantly, and by

702
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:15,160
Speaker 1: this time, obviously we're talking about something a lot more

703
00:40:15,200 --> 00:40:21,759
Speaker 1: subtle than a dead rabbit. Yeh. But but sometimes we

704
00:40:21,800 --> 00:40:24,080
Speaker 1: can have things that are just as irritating as maybe

705
00:40:24,120 --> 00:40:27,279
Speaker 1: a dead rabbit would be, such as spam the mickry, Uh,

706
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:31,400
Speaker 1: disguising messages that you want to send as spam emails

707
00:40:31,600 --> 00:40:35,400
Speaker 1: or nonsensical musings or what not. You do this by

708
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:38,200
Speaker 1: messing up the placement of the punctuation or the type

709
00:40:38,239 --> 00:40:40,719
Speaker 1: of the fonts, or the grammar of the message as

710
00:40:40,719 --> 00:40:43,319
Speaker 1: it means to communicating the secret. Yeah, I love this.

711
00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:47,120
Speaker 1: I actually saw an example of this where uh, someone

712
00:40:47,360 --> 00:40:51,600
Speaker 1: used grammar as the key indicator, and so you would

713
00:40:51,600 --> 00:40:54,720
Speaker 1: read the message and whenever you found a grammatical error,

714
00:40:54,800 --> 00:40:57,120
Speaker 1: that was actually an indicator that this is where you

715
00:40:57,160 --> 00:41:00,839
Speaker 1: need to pay attention. Uh. That was of interesting. Well,

716
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:03,640
Speaker 1: you would think it would be easy to decipher, but

717
00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:07,160
Speaker 1: with as much spam email as everybody gets nowadays, you

718
00:41:07,200 --> 00:41:09,400
Speaker 1: don't even think to look, well, right, yeah, you just

719
00:41:09,880 --> 00:41:12,640
Speaker 1: especially if you were to broadcast this, so that it's

720
00:41:12,680 --> 00:41:16,000
Speaker 1: not something that just one person gets, because again we're

721
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:18,920
Speaker 1: all used to getting that spam. Most of us would

722
00:41:18,960 --> 00:41:21,239
Speaker 1: never even look twice at it. We would just see, oh,

723
00:41:21,440 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 1: spam message deleted. So you could actually have security by

724
00:41:25,520 --> 00:41:28,640
Speaker 1: sending it to lots of people, because then it looks

725
00:41:28,640 --> 00:41:31,759
Speaker 1: like it's quote unquote legitimate spam. That seems like a

726
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:34,080
Speaker 1: weird thing to say, but that's that's where it is.

727
00:41:34,440 --> 00:41:39,000
Speaker 1: Now we're getting into the more modern versions where this

728
00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:41,920
Speaker 1: is where we need things like a disk analysis software

729
00:41:41,920 --> 00:41:46,200
Speaker 1: in order to discover it. So digital files, let's talk

730
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:49,200
Speaker 1: about these in general, and this can refer to pretty

731
00:41:49,280 --> 00:41:53,279
Speaker 1: much any kind of digital file like audio, video, images,

732
00:41:53,760 --> 00:41:57,000
Speaker 1: any of that sort of stuff. So we all know

733
00:41:57,160 --> 00:42:00,319
Speaker 1: digital files are made up ultimately of strings of ones

734
00:42:00,360 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 1: and zeros. Yeah, so here's the thing. Some of those

735
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:07,080
Speaker 1: bits are more important than others. Not all bits are equal,

736
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:11,080
Speaker 1: some of those bits are not so important. So if

737
00:42:11,120 --> 00:42:14,800
Speaker 1: you were to pick the least significant bits or l

738
00:42:14,960 --> 00:42:17,319
Speaker 1: s B s, you can do something called the least

739
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:21,799
Speaker 1: significant bit insertion, which is where you alter a bit,

740
00:42:22,640 --> 00:42:26,600
Speaker 1: and by altering a series of bits, you can create

741
00:42:26,680 --> 00:42:31,359
Speaker 1: a message. Now, it takes several bits to make just

742
00:42:31,600 --> 00:42:34,799
Speaker 1: one character in the alphabet, so you have to be

743
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:37,919
Speaker 1: very succinct with your messages because the more of these

744
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:40,919
Speaker 1: you mess up, the more likely that will it will

745
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:46,240
Speaker 1: be detectable by somebody who's paying really close attention, either

746
00:42:46,880 --> 00:42:50,400
Speaker 1: close attention to your activities or close attention to the file.

747
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:53,680
Speaker 1: So if you do it well, and you and you're

748
00:42:53,840 --> 00:42:57,360
Speaker 1: very careful with it, most people are never going to notice.

749
00:42:57,360 --> 00:42:59,560
Speaker 1: And this is what we talk about when someone posts

750
00:42:59,640 --> 00:43:03,240
Speaker 1: anage to a public forum and there's a hidden message

751
00:43:03,320 --> 00:43:09,040
Speaker 1: in those bits. Uh yeah, And generally speaking, you want

752
00:43:09,040 --> 00:43:11,200
Speaker 1: to go if you're making one of these, you want

753
00:43:11,200 --> 00:43:14,360
Speaker 1: to go with a lossless format as opposed to lossy

754
00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:18,680
Speaker 1: compressed versions, because technically you would normally create this this

755
00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:22,600
Speaker 1: message in the lossless fine style and put it in

756
00:43:22,640 --> 00:43:25,399
Speaker 1: there and then allow it to be compressed. So if

757
00:43:25,440 --> 00:43:28,200
Speaker 1: it's a lossless format that then is compressed, you don't

758
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:32,399
Speaker 1: lose any information that way. Uh. These compression algorithms are

759
00:43:32,520 --> 00:43:35,120
Speaker 1: very good at keeping the original information in tact, so

760
00:43:35,160 --> 00:43:36,719
Speaker 1: that way you know your message is not going to

761
00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:41,040
Speaker 1: get altered lossy formats. The way lossy formats work is

762
00:43:41,200 --> 00:43:44,120
Speaker 1: they look for information that doesn't seem important and then

763
00:43:44,120 --> 00:43:46,239
Speaker 1: they drop it, and that's one of the ways they

764
00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:49,440
Speaker 1: compressed the file size. So if you put a secret

765
00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:52,120
Speaker 1: message in a file, that's then going to be compressed

766
00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:54,680
Speaker 1: in this way, your secret message could be part of

767
00:43:54,719 --> 00:43:57,400
Speaker 1: the stuff that gets dropped or altered and then you

768
00:43:57,440 --> 00:43:59,880
Speaker 1: can't communicate. So if you do want to post a

769
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:02,040
Speaker 1: picture with a secret message on Facebook, you should use

770
00:44:02,040 --> 00:44:05,400
Speaker 1: a gift instead of j pick right, unless you insist

771
00:44:05,560 --> 00:44:07,759
Speaker 1: on pronouncing it jeff, in which case I don't even

772
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:10,080
Speaker 1: want to talk to you. Did I say you said gifts?

773
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:12,880
Speaker 1: Thank goodness. See that's the way I pronounce it too.

774
00:44:12,960 --> 00:44:15,279
Speaker 1: I don't because it if you put a T at

775
00:44:15,280 --> 00:44:18,160
Speaker 1: the end of that, it's a gift and G stands

776
00:44:18,200 --> 00:44:21,600
Speaker 1: for graphic. That's a good sound, not a h. Don't

777
00:44:21,640 --> 00:44:24,560
Speaker 1: get me. But that's again not the only type of

778
00:44:24,600 --> 00:44:27,319
Speaker 1: digital information that could be altered, right, Yeah, I mean

779
00:44:27,320 --> 00:44:29,680
Speaker 1: you can also alter the audio files. I think we

780
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:34,240
Speaker 1: talked about this already by not just not just digital audio,

781
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:38,280
Speaker 1: like not just MP three, but even void calls voice

782
00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:42,000
Speaker 1: over Internet protocol calls. Yeah, you could. And there's also

783
00:44:42,560 --> 00:44:45,640
Speaker 1: water market. Yes, there is digital water marking, which is

784
00:44:45,719 --> 00:44:50,200
Speaker 1: used to protect intellectual property and by embedding information like

785
00:44:50,239 --> 00:44:54,360
Speaker 1: the creator and the copyright and et cetera into the file. Um.

786
00:44:54,400 --> 00:44:56,520
Speaker 1: And that way, if people try to claim it as

787
00:44:56,520 --> 00:44:58,959
Speaker 1: their own, they could say, nope, here's my water mark.

788
00:44:59,120 --> 00:45:01,920
Speaker 1: See it's got all my little information in there. Sure. Um.

789
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:05,040
Speaker 1: They also use digital water water marking in a method

790
00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:09,560
Speaker 1: called fingerprinting, where they put a different, unique water mark

791
00:45:09,640 --> 00:45:12,759
Speaker 1: on each copy of the document or information they send out,

792
00:45:13,400 --> 00:45:15,600
Speaker 1: and that way, if someone tries to copy it or

793
00:45:15,640 --> 00:45:18,200
Speaker 1: send it out themselves to people who shouldn't get it,

794
00:45:18,239 --> 00:45:20,800
Speaker 1: they can say, oh, all of these have that unique

795
00:45:20,800 --> 00:45:23,799
Speaker 1: water mark, so we know who sent it. Bobby's in

796
00:45:23,880 --> 00:45:27,160
Speaker 1: trouble because this is the version that we sent to Bobby,

797
00:45:27,239 --> 00:45:30,719
Speaker 1: and everyone else got a different uh digital watermarks, so

798
00:45:30,760 --> 00:45:33,320
Speaker 1: we narrowed it down. We know who is at fault,

799
00:45:33,600 --> 00:45:36,640
Speaker 1: or we know who was compromised. Their security might have

800
00:45:36,640 --> 00:45:40,520
Speaker 1: been compromised. That's really cool. Uh yeah, then we've got

801
00:45:40,640 --> 00:45:44,920
Speaker 1: subliminal channels, which is not probably what you think it is.

802
00:45:44,480 --> 00:45:48,799
Speaker 1: It isn't like messages secretly in movies or playing my

803
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:51,120
Speaker 1: music back where there's nothing like that. No, it's not

804
00:45:51,160 --> 00:45:54,480
Speaker 1: like John is dead missing missing, It's none of that. Uh. Now,

805
00:45:54,520 --> 00:45:58,960
Speaker 1: this is something that was proposed in by a mathematician

806
00:45:58,960 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 1: and cryptographer Nay gust of Us J. Simmons Uh and

807
00:46:03,880 --> 00:46:09,279
Speaker 1: Simmons poet proposed something called the prisoners problem, and it's

808
00:46:09,280 --> 00:46:11,600
Speaker 1: a thought experiment. This is the way the thought experiment works.

809
00:46:12,200 --> 00:46:16,600
Speaker 1: You've got two accomplices who are captured during the while

810
00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:20,440
Speaker 1: they're trying to commit a crime. Bob Okay Bob and Jennercott.

811
00:46:21,040 --> 00:46:23,239
Speaker 1: Usually it's Bob and Alice actually, so we got half

812
00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:26,000
Speaker 1: of them already, but Bob and Jenner Cott, uh and

813
00:46:26,120 --> 00:46:29,480
Speaker 1: there put into the same jail. But Bob is put

814
00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:31,759
Speaker 1: in one cell. Jen is put on a cell on

815
00:46:31,840 --> 00:46:33,799
Speaker 1: the opposite end of the jail, so there's no way

816
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:38,839
Speaker 1: for them to communicate directly. The warden is told, hey,

817
00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:41,239
Speaker 1: these two want to be able to talk. What how

818
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:43,319
Speaker 1: do we do that? And the warden says, all right,

819
00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:46,680
Speaker 1: here's the deal. You will be allowed to communicate to

820
00:46:46,680 --> 00:46:49,680
Speaker 1: each other, but I get to see everything you send

821
00:46:49,719 --> 00:46:53,280
Speaker 1: to one another. So that way, if there's any messages

822
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:55,319
Speaker 1: about trying to break out of jail, I'm gonna get

823
00:46:55,320 --> 00:46:57,920
Speaker 1: it immediately and you're gonna be stopped. That's a nice warden,

824
00:46:57,960 --> 00:46:59,440
Speaker 1: because I'd just be like, you guys can't talk to

825
00:46:59,440 --> 00:47:03,480
Speaker 1: each other. It gets nicer actually because Bob and jen say,

826
00:47:03,520 --> 00:47:06,479
Speaker 1: all right, but we want to make sure that our

827
00:47:06,480 --> 00:47:11,520
Speaker 1: messages are genuinely coming from the other person. And we

828
00:47:11,680 --> 00:47:13,879
Speaker 1: want in other words, we want to make sure that you,

829
00:47:14,200 --> 00:47:17,360
Speaker 1: Mr Warden, aren't going in and messing up our messages.

830
00:47:17,800 --> 00:47:21,080
Speaker 1: So we want to be able to authenticate that our

831
00:47:21,080 --> 00:47:23,759
Speaker 1: messages come from each other, so we have to we

832
00:47:23,800 --> 00:47:25,279
Speaker 1: want to be able to come up with a way

833
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:29,160
Speaker 1: to say it's essentially a signature to say, yes, this

834
00:47:29,360 --> 00:47:32,120
Speaker 1: actually came from Bob, or yes this actually came from Jen.

835
00:47:32,680 --> 00:47:36,040
Speaker 1: And the warden says, well, all right, if you if

836
00:47:36,080 --> 00:47:38,359
Speaker 1: you agree to my terms, I agree to your terms.

837
00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:42,040
Speaker 1: We can all do this. What Simmons said was, if

838
00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:45,520
Speaker 1: you're willing to give up a little of that authentication security,

839
00:47:46,160 --> 00:47:50,359
Speaker 1: you could take some of the authentication message. Let's say

840
00:47:50,400 --> 00:47:54,640
Speaker 1: that it's one fifth as long as your actual message.

841
00:47:54,920 --> 00:47:57,439
Speaker 1: Still would be really long for authentication, but let's say

842
00:47:57,480 --> 00:48:00,880
Speaker 1: so let's say that then you change change some of

843
00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:03,840
Speaker 1: that authentication which normally would look like it's random, like

844
00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:07,440
Speaker 1: it's supposed to look random, so that way, uh, you know,

845
00:48:07,640 --> 00:48:10,560
Speaker 1: it's it's not if it's predetermined in a way that

846
00:48:10,719 --> 00:48:13,279
Speaker 1: everyone knows about, like if everyone knows the key and

847
00:48:13,320 --> 00:48:18,400
Speaker 1: the algorithm, then there's no authentication there. Uh. But instead

848
00:48:18,400 --> 00:48:20,759
Speaker 1: of it actually being random, it just looks random, and

849
00:48:20,760 --> 00:48:24,600
Speaker 1: you've actually changed some of the authentication message so that

850
00:48:24,600 --> 00:48:27,320
Speaker 1: that's where the secret messages. It's not within the body

851
00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:31,160
Speaker 1: of the actual message, it's in the authentication. Uh. Now

852
00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:33,839
Speaker 1: that was just a thought experiment, but turned out that

853
00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:37,200
Speaker 1: that's actually the way a lot of this is a

854
00:48:37,239 --> 00:48:40,840
Speaker 1: lot of uh steganography happens today too, is that it

855
00:48:40,960 --> 00:48:43,279
Speaker 1: ends up being in the authentication kind of like the

856
00:48:43,320 --> 00:48:46,719
Speaker 1: digital water mark, rather than in the message itself. And

857
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:49,799
Speaker 1: that is an example another example of how steganography and

858
00:48:49,880 --> 00:48:54,600
Speaker 1: cryptography work together. Yeah, because authentication is all about cryptography,

859
00:48:54,640 --> 00:48:58,239
Speaker 1: so it's it's manipulating the two. So let's talk about

860
00:48:58,280 --> 00:49:03,760
Speaker 1: people who actually use this stuff. Not a big surprise. Yeah,

861
00:49:03,960 --> 00:49:06,200
Speaker 1: that's a that's a big one. In fact, again, at

862
00:49:06,200 --> 00:49:09,520
Speaker 1: the Spy Museum, I saw example after example of this

863
00:49:09,600 --> 00:49:11,720
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. If you've never been to the Spy Museum,

864
00:49:11,719 --> 00:49:13,360
Speaker 1: by the way, if you ever go to Washington, d C.

865
00:49:14,160 --> 00:49:19,000
Speaker 1: I recommend it. Um. I recommend going early because it's

866
00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:21,600
Speaker 1: a very it's it's a museum that fills up with kids,

867
00:49:22,360 --> 00:49:26,640
Speaker 1: and kids are great, despite what I say about them,

868
00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:30,680
Speaker 1: but they do make it difficult to maneuver through the

869
00:49:30,840 --> 00:49:33,440
Speaker 1: museum and see everything. It sounds like a lot of

870
00:49:33,440 --> 00:49:37,040
Speaker 1: the stuff in the Spy Museum might be pretty technical

871
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:39,160
Speaker 1: for a kid. Yeah, it can definitely go over a

872
00:49:39,200 --> 00:49:41,200
Speaker 1: kid's head. There's a lot of reading because there are

873
00:49:41,239 --> 00:49:45,720
Speaker 1: a lot of descriptions that explain what the various devices

874
00:49:45,760 --> 00:49:48,000
Speaker 1: and pictures and everything what they mean, and there's some

875
00:49:48,160 --> 00:49:51,680
Speaker 1: very interesting videos, but for kids they'd be really boring.

876
00:49:52,320 --> 00:49:54,640
Speaker 1: So it's one of those things where like the idea

877
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:58,759
Speaker 1: of spies is really super sexy and exciting and oh,

878
00:49:59,000 --> 00:50:02,759
Speaker 1: James bond Is are gonna have fun. But ultimately I

879
00:50:02,800 --> 00:50:05,880
Speaker 1: think you need to be like a teenager or older.

880
00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:09,319
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe not necessarily a teenager, but like eleven or

881
00:50:09,320 --> 00:50:11,640
Speaker 1: twelve to really kind of start thinking, oh, this is

882
00:50:11,680 --> 00:50:14,200
Speaker 1: kind of cool. Younger, I think it gets lost on you,

883
00:50:14,239 --> 00:50:16,520
Speaker 1: although they have some cool interactive stuff too, but you

884
00:50:16,560 --> 00:50:19,120
Speaker 1: don't get to play with like shoeguns or anything. Now

885
00:50:19,200 --> 00:50:21,239
Speaker 1: that you don't get to play with shoeguns, but you

886
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:24,239
Speaker 1: do get to assume a secret identity. They give you

887
00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:26,720
Speaker 1: a secret identity and you have to remember certain facts

888
00:50:26,800 --> 00:50:29,560
Speaker 1: about yourself so that if you're ever stopped and questioned,

889
00:50:30,160 --> 00:50:33,080
Speaker 1: you can answer with your cover. So if you forget

890
00:50:33,080 --> 00:50:40,560
Speaker 1: your cover, you're caught that So so here's an example

891
00:50:40,680 --> 00:50:43,960
Speaker 1: of spies who use steganography. In two thousand nine and

892
00:50:43,960 --> 00:50:48,280
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, the FBI arrested ten covert Russian sleeper

893
00:50:48,360 --> 00:50:53,600
Speaker 1: agents who had been communicating in multiple ways, including steganography. Uh,

894
00:50:53,600 --> 00:50:56,120
Speaker 1: they'd be posting those photos that I was talking about,

895
00:50:56,080 --> 00:50:57,640
Speaker 1: the same sort of thing. They would post photos to

896
00:50:57,719 --> 00:51:01,600
Speaker 1: public forums, which in fact include the secret messages that

897
00:51:01,680 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 1: could be picked up if you ran them through analysis.

898
00:51:05,120 --> 00:51:07,000
Speaker 1: But you know, if you use that software, you can

899
00:51:07,040 --> 00:51:09,000
Speaker 1: pick them up, but otherwise you probably wouldn't notice. They

900
00:51:09,000 --> 00:51:12,080
Speaker 1: also used other things like in this blink and they

901
00:51:12,080 --> 00:51:16,520
Speaker 1: would do secret bag swaps, like classic spy stuff like

902
00:51:16,920 --> 00:51:19,720
Speaker 1: we'll be to the trade station, I will give you bag,

903
00:51:19,920 --> 00:51:23,040
Speaker 1: you would walk away. They got discovered because of the

904
00:51:23,040 --> 00:51:26,200
Speaker 1: photos they were posting, right, Well, they that and the

905
00:51:26,239 --> 00:51:29,040
Speaker 1: fact that all right, so the photos you had to

906
00:51:29,120 --> 00:51:32,920
Speaker 1: run them through a particular piece of software to decode

907
00:51:32,960 --> 00:51:36,160
Speaker 1: what the message was, to pull out the letters that

908
00:51:36,200 --> 00:51:38,719
Speaker 1: were hidden inside these photos, right Because one of the

909
00:51:38,719 --> 00:51:42,600
Speaker 1: problems with with binary code is we humans, we don't

910
00:51:42,640 --> 00:51:45,640
Speaker 1: read it so well. So that's why we need software

911
00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:47,879
Speaker 1: to be able to pull that stuff and say, all right,

912
00:51:48,080 --> 00:51:50,800
Speaker 1: here are the bits that are important. Here's what translates into.

913
00:51:51,600 --> 00:51:54,560
Speaker 1: So one of the things they needed was security to

914
00:51:54,640 --> 00:52:00,120
Speaker 1: make sure people couldn't access the software that would decode everything.

915
00:52:00,719 --> 00:52:03,759
Speaker 1: So they had a password that all of them had

916
00:52:03,800 --> 00:52:06,200
Speaker 1: to share. It was the same password they would type

917
00:52:06,239 --> 00:52:10,120
Speaker 1: in to the software to allow them to decrypt something.

918
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:13,400
Speaker 1: And it was a twenty seven character long password. So

919
00:52:13,440 --> 00:52:18,480
Speaker 1: that's pretty secure, except someone wrote it down, so the

920
00:52:18,520 --> 00:52:21,680
Speaker 1: FBI gets hold of the written password. By the way, folks,

921
00:52:21,719 --> 00:52:23,839
Speaker 1: if you write your password down and someone finds it,

922
00:52:24,040 --> 00:52:26,640
Speaker 1: guess what, You're not being secure. I don't care how

923
00:52:26,680 --> 00:52:29,360
Speaker 1: long your password is or how many upper and lower

924
00:52:29,400 --> 00:52:32,280
Speaker 1: case letters you throw in there. Uh. So the FBI

925
00:52:32,360 --> 00:52:35,799
Speaker 1: found the password, they were able to intercept messages, they

926
00:52:35,840 --> 00:52:38,440
Speaker 1: were able to round up these ten sleeper agents, and

927
00:52:38,600 --> 00:52:43,799
Speaker 1: ultimately they were exchanged in a prisoner swap with Russia. UH.

928
00:52:44,040 --> 00:52:47,840
Speaker 1: Russia had four prisoners, three of whom had been accused

929
00:52:47,880 --> 00:52:51,680
Speaker 1: of high treason, all of whom were Russian citizens, but

930
00:52:51,800 --> 00:52:54,280
Speaker 1: they had all been colluding in some way or another

931
00:52:54,400 --> 00:52:56,960
Speaker 1: or been accused of colluding with the United States or

932
00:52:56,960 --> 00:52:59,880
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom. So these four were swapped out for

933
00:52:59,920 --> 00:53:01,880
Speaker 1: the ten that were found in America. And it was

934
00:53:01,920 --> 00:53:07,279
Speaker 1: all done kind of quietly because there were still, I

935
00:53:07,320 --> 00:53:10,959
Speaker 1: mean there still are today UH tensions between the United

936
00:53:11,000 --> 00:53:15,920
Speaker 1: States and Russia, and no one wanted to make that worse. Yeah, man,

937
00:53:16,080 --> 00:53:19,520
Speaker 1: could you imagine being one of the ten agents and

938
00:53:19,600 --> 00:53:22,600
Speaker 1: you're worth not even being half a person. Well, and

939
00:53:23,160 --> 00:53:25,080
Speaker 1: not only that, but those ten people who went back

940
00:53:25,080 --> 00:53:28,600
Speaker 1: to Russia, they were not technically put in prison, but

941
00:53:28,640 --> 00:53:32,480
Speaker 1: they were detained for weeks for debrifing. So things did

942
00:53:32,480 --> 00:53:36,520
Speaker 1: not go well for them, not for all of them anywhere, now,

943
00:53:36,600 --> 00:53:39,040
Speaker 1: especially probably not for the one who wrote down the

944
00:53:39,040 --> 00:53:43,520
Speaker 1: past words. So then we have examples in military and government. Now,

945
00:53:43,560 --> 00:53:48,040
Speaker 1: governments traditionally aren't crazy about steganography software getting out into

946
00:53:48,040 --> 00:53:50,279
Speaker 1: the wild because they don't want people to be able

947
00:53:50,360 --> 00:53:55,520
Speaker 1: to use it. Yeah, especially foreign countries. They're actually have

948
00:53:55,600 --> 00:53:58,000
Speaker 1: been laws put in place to keep us from sending

949
00:53:58,480 --> 00:54:02,000
Speaker 1: strong encryption software. Yeah. There there's been a lot of

950
00:54:02,040 --> 00:54:04,719
Speaker 1: debate in government about whether or not it should be

951
00:54:04,800 --> 00:54:09,440
Speaker 1: legal to export uh encryption software. And there's been a

952
00:54:09,480 --> 00:54:12,640
Speaker 1: lot of argument on either case, and only that the

953
00:54:12,719 --> 00:54:17,799
Speaker 1: government wasn't crazy about having public arguments about this, or

954
00:54:17,800 --> 00:54:21,080
Speaker 1: having arguments on the public record, because that would mean

955
00:54:21,120 --> 00:54:23,840
Speaker 1: people would find out that such a thing even existed,

956
00:54:24,520 --> 00:54:27,080
Speaker 1: and they were worried that even people finding out that

957
00:54:27,200 --> 00:54:32,080
Speaker 1: such software was possible would create more incidents of people

958
00:54:32,200 --> 00:54:36,520
Speaker 1: using it. So there was a pro probably yeah, but

959
00:54:36,520 --> 00:54:37,960
Speaker 1: but it was it was a sort of a catch

960
00:54:38,000 --> 00:54:39,799
Speaker 1: twenty two. You know. They were like, well, we need

961
00:54:39,840 --> 00:54:41,640
Speaker 1: to talk about this, but we can't talk about it

962
00:54:41,680 --> 00:54:43,600
Speaker 1: because if people know we talked about it, they'll know

963
00:54:43,640 --> 00:54:47,160
Speaker 1: that it exists. Um. I have a quote from a

964
00:54:48,200 --> 00:54:51,959
Speaker 1: meeting about how to handle this that said, a substantial

965
00:54:52,000 --> 00:54:55,200
Speaker 1: amount of material is not appropriate for a public meeting.

966
00:54:55,280 --> 00:54:57,919
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I'm talking about, Like, we we can't

967
00:54:57,960 --> 00:55:00,480
Speaker 1: debate this because if it's on the public record, it

968
00:55:00,520 --> 00:55:06,879
Speaker 1: will cause problems. Um. Now, despite that, there ultimately there

969
00:55:06,920 --> 00:55:12,320
Speaker 1: would be UH allowances for exporting this encryption software because

970
00:55:12,440 --> 00:55:15,279
Speaker 1: businesses have to do business, um, and we want our

971
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:19,360
Speaker 1: businesses to be secure. Yeah. So then we have terrorists

972
00:55:19,360 --> 00:55:22,600
Speaker 1: who also have used steganography. The there was there were

973
00:55:22,640 --> 00:55:26,759
Speaker 1: reports after the nine eleven attacks that Al Qaeda had

974
00:55:26,760 --> 00:55:30,320
Speaker 1: been using steganography techniques to communicate. They were actually supposedly

975
00:55:30,400 --> 00:55:34,000
Speaker 1: using pornography. They were hiding their messages there because who

976
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:38,239
Speaker 1: would think to look for secret messages in that very

977
00:55:38,400 --> 00:55:41,160
Speaker 1: very much so, and also they were thought to be

978
00:55:41,239 --> 00:55:44,080
Speaker 1: less likely to have used them because it goes against

979
00:55:44,080 --> 00:55:48,400
Speaker 1: their very world view. But that's what made it a

980
00:55:48,440 --> 00:55:50,720
Speaker 1: perfect place to hide a message. And people were worried

981
00:55:50,760 --> 00:55:55,279
Speaker 1: that maybe they got the tools from us, right yeah,

982
00:55:55,360 --> 00:55:58,600
Speaker 1: they were worried that they got the encryption tools from

983
00:55:58,600 --> 00:56:01,560
Speaker 1: those same companies that had argued that they should be

984
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:05,360
Speaker 1: allowed to export their products, and in fact, it created

985
00:56:05,400 --> 00:56:09,440
Speaker 1: a lot of soul searching on the parts of those people.

986
00:56:09,560 --> 00:56:12,759
Speaker 1: They said, well, are we responsible, And ultimately they came

987
00:56:12,840 --> 00:56:16,359
Speaker 1: up with the conclusion that even if a ban had

988
00:56:16,400 --> 00:56:18,400
Speaker 1: been put in place, even if they had never been

989
00:56:18,440 --> 00:56:21,200
Speaker 1: allowed to sell their products, someone else would have come

990
00:56:21,239 --> 00:56:23,760
Speaker 1: up with the same thing, because there was a need.

991
00:56:24,120 --> 00:56:26,800
Speaker 1: And so once you identify a need, someone's going to

992
00:56:26,840 --> 00:56:29,640
Speaker 1: come up with a solution. And there are people who

993
00:56:29,680 --> 00:56:32,080
Speaker 1: send stuff they shouldn't send all the time, just just

994
00:56:32,160 --> 00:56:35,960
Speaker 1: the challenging authority aspect of it. They're like, oh, we

995
00:56:35,960 --> 00:56:37,919
Speaker 1: shouldn't be using this or giving it to other people,

996
00:56:38,040 --> 00:56:41,319
Speaker 1: so we're going to write right yeah, there's the whole

997
00:56:41,400 --> 00:56:44,600
Speaker 1: argument of information wants to be free. And with that

998
00:56:44,680 --> 00:56:46,839
Speaker 1: you would say like, well, if you're the harder you

999
00:56:46,920 --> 00:56:49,680
Speaker 1: try to keep information away from people, the harder people

1000
00:56:49,680 --> 00:56:52,000
Speaker 1: will try to make sure they get that information. But

1001
00:56:52,800 --> 00:56:57,399
Speaker 1: having encryption software go out to foreign places and being

1002
00:56:57,440 --> 00:57:00,799
Speaker 1: developed in other places than the US means that we

1003
00:57:01,000 --> 00:57:06,279
Speaker 1: have drive to create better encryption, right and decryption and decryption. Yeah,

1004
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:10,680
Speaker 1: so it actually it pushes it pushes the art forward.

1005
00:57:11,160 --> 00:57:13,799
Speaker 1: And this is something we also see an artificial intelligence,

1006
00:57:13,840 --> 00:57:17,520
Speaker 1: where we see, as one part of security gets better,

1007
00:57:18,240 --> 00:57:22,600
Speaker 1: uh than people find new ways to make that security vulnerable,

1008
00:57:22,680 --> 00:57:28,400
Speaker 1: and then the security gets better. And while individual attacks

1009
00:57:28,680 --> 00:57:33,280
Speaker 1: are terrible or individual like vulnerabilities are terrible, the overall

1010
00:57:33,320 --> 00:57:37,680
Speaker 1: story is that stuff gets better over time. But that's

1011
00:57:37,880 --> 00:57:40,200
Speaker 1: you know, that's a hard view to take, depending upon

1012
00:57:40,280 --> 00:57:44,600
Speaker 1: the particulars in this case, a very hard one to take. Also,

1013
00:57:44,960 --> 00:57:48,640
Speaker 1: writers and journalists have used teganography sometimes just to entertain,

1014
00:57:48,840 --> 00:57:55,800
Speaker 1: Like there's this guy, uh Brown Dan, Yeah, he wrote,

1015
00:57:55,840 --> 00:57:58,400
Speaker 1: he wrote a couple of books like Angels and Demons

1016
00:57:58,440 --> 00:58:02,160
Speaker 1: and Da Vinci. Ow it's almost said Da Vinci's Notebook.

1017
00:58:02,200 --> 00:58:07,120
Speaker 1: That's totally different but really good. Yeah. Some we're familiar

1018
00:58:07,160 --> 00:58:09,440
Speaker 1: with their work there, but it's not the same. It's

1019
00:58:09,480 --> 00:58:12,320
Speaker 1: not the same. They might have messages in their music, well,

1020
00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:14,880
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are. There are some probably some very

1021
00:58:14,920 --> 00:58:18,680
Speaker 1: important messages and things like the Magic Castle in the Sky,

1022
00:58:18,720 --> 00:58:22,680
Speaker 1: so entitle of the song. But um, yes, so. Dan

1023
00:58:22,720 --> 00:58:25,320
Speaker 1: Brown of course very famous for writing these books, and

1024
00:58:25,320 --> 00:58:29,520
Speaker 1: there were lots of examples of steganography, in fact, key

1025
00:58:29,600 --> 00:58:34,000
Speaker 1: plot points revolving around uh, steganography, and various kinds of

1026
00:58:34,320 --> 00:58:37,880
Speaker 1: religious iconography and other elements too. I remember in Angels

1027
00:58:37,880 --> 00:58:40,160
Speaker 1: and Demons. I think it was Angels and Demons where

1028
00:58:40,560 --> 00:58:43,360
Speaker 1: I got irritated by one of them because it was

1029
00:58:43,440 --> 00:58:46,680
Speaker 1: a brand like a as in something you would brand

1030
00:58:46,720 --> 00:58:52,320
Speaker 1: an animal with heat up and right, uh, and if

1031
00:58:52,360 --> 00:58:56,520
Speaker 1: it's spelled out Illuminati. And then you discovered that if

1032
00:58:56,560 --> 00:58:59,160
Speaker 1: you turned it degrees so, in other words, if you

1033
00:58:59,160 --> 00:59:02,280
Speaker 1: turned it upside down, it's still spelled Illuminati. And then

1034
00:59:02,280 --> 00:59:04,640
Speaker 1: the suggestion was because it was because the way the

1035
00:59:05,080 --> 00:59:08,800
Speaker 1: font was designed and the way the way it was

1036
00:59:08,800 --> 00:59:12,320
Speaker 1: was that only someone with the secret Illuminati knowledge could

1037
00:59:12,320 --> 00:59:16,280
Speaker 1: ever make this thing. And I thought, that's obviously crap,

1038
00:59:16,320 --> 00:59:19,280
Speaker 1: because you made it, Dan Brown, in order for this

1039
00:59:19,320 --> 00:59:23,080
Speaker 1: to happen. So I don't know how you could suggest

1040
00:59:23,120 --> 00:59:25,680
Speaker 1: that only one human being would or only one group

1041
00:59:25,720 --> 00:59:27,680
Speaker 1: of human beings would be clever enough to do this.

1042
00:59:28,440 --> 00:59:32,240
Speaker 1: That's demonstrably false. But anyway, it was meant for. Yeah,

1043
00:59:32,240 --> 00:59:36,080
Speaker 1: it's meant to be a good story. Also, artists obviously

1044
00:59:36,280 --> 00:59:39,880
Speaker 1: very important in stagonography, particularly in the old ways, where

1045
00:59:39,880 --> 00:59:42,680
Speaker 1: you had to hide a message within something, you know,

1046
00:59:43,000 --> 00:59:45,120
Speaker 1: and sometimes it was just done for entertainment. Sometimes it

1047
00:59:45,160 --> 00:59:48,800
Speaker 1: was done for specific purposes to hide things. Um. I

1048
00:59:48,840 --> 00:59:51,320
Speaker 1: had heard that da Vinci had a lot of secret

1049
00:59:51,320 --> 00:59:53,880
Speaker 1: messages in his artwork. Yeah, we we hear that from

1050
00:59:53,960 --> 00:59:57,720
Speaker 1: da Vinci himself sometimes. Ariel and I have both worked

1051
00:59:57,760 --> 01:00:00,320
Speaker 1: for the Georgia Renaissance Festival, and another a mutual friend

1052
01:00:00,320 --> 01:00:04,040
Speaker 1: of ours, plays a young da Vinci very well. Yeah,

1053
01:00:04,320 --> 01:00:06,360
Speaker 1: so if you ask him about his secret messages, he

1054
01:00:06,400 --> 01:00:10,400
Speaker 1: has hilarious responses for that. But the the what you're

1055
01:00:10,400 --> 01:00:12,440
Speaker 1: alluding to, of course, I mean, there are a lot

1056
01:00:12,480 --> 01:00:17,000
Speaker 1: of theories I shouldn't say, hypotheses about secret messages hidden

1057
01:00:17,000 --> 01:00:19,440
Speaker 1: in things like The Last Supper, which is one of

1058
01:00:19,440 --> 01:00:22,840
Speaker 1: the most famous paintings Da Vinci ever produced. UM, And

1059
01:00:22,840 --> 01:00:26,040
Speaker 1: of course, uh, the Da Vinci Code ended up talking

1060
01:00:26,080 --> 01:00:30,440
Speaker 1: a lot about that, obviously. Uh. One of the hypotheses

1061
01:00:30,480 --> 01:00:33,280
Speaker 1: I saw which was interesting, I was put forward by

1062
01:00:33,320 --> 01:00:38,040
Speaker 1: an uh I T guy in information uh information technology

1063
01:00:38,200 --> 01:00:45,080
Speaker 1: professional who had created a mirror image of the Last supper,

1064
01:00:45,160 --> 01:00:48,360
Speaker 1: so essentially took like imagine you have photoshop and you

1065
01:00:48,480 --> 01:00:51,200
Speaker 1: copy the image, but then you flip it so now

1066
01:00:51,280 --> 01:00:54,080
Speaker 1: it's it's inverted the other way, and then you make

1067
01:00:54,120 --> 01:00:56,920
Speaker 1: it translucent, and then you lay it back down on

1068
01:00:56,960 --> 01:00:59,360
Speaker 1: top of the original image. So now you've got this

1069
01:00:59,520 --> 01:01:02,120
Speaker 1: doubled image on top of one another. And then said,

1070
01:01:02,280 --> 01:01:04,520
Speaker 1: look at all the interesting things that pop up when

1071
01:01:04,520 --> 01:01:07,840
Speaker 1: you do this. There were figures on either side that

1072
01:01:07,920 --> 01:01:11,920
Speaker 1: were said to look like Night's templar. There was in

1073
01:01:12,000 --> 01:01:14,640
Speaker 1: the center in front of Jesus there appeared to be

1074
01:01:14,680 --> 01:01:19,440
Speaker 1: a chalice like perhaps it's the Holy Grail and this

1075
01:01:19,560 --> 01:01:21,160
Speaker 1: kind of thing, and that there appeared to be a

1076
01:01:21,160 --> 01:01:24,760
Speaker 1: figure standing behind Jesus holding a baby. Uh. A lot

1077
01:01:24,760 --> 01:01:27,920
Speaker 1: of other elements that were supposedly brought to light. But

1078
01:01:28,200 --> 01:01:31,400
Speaker 1: that raises the question one, how could da Vinci have

1079
01:01:31,440 --> 01:01:35,280
Speaker 1: done this himself? Now, he was known for mirror writing,

1080
01:01:35,520 --> 01:01:37,280
Speaker 1: where he could write with both hands, and he could

1081
01:01:37,320 --> 01:01:39,840
Speaker 1: right right to left and left to right simultaneas. He

1082
01:01:39,840 --> 01:01:42,000
Speaker 1: would have had to have painted two pictures left to

1083
01:01:42,080 --> 01:01:43,640
Speaker 1: right and right to left at the same time and

1084
01:01:43,720 --> 01:01:45,960
Speaker 1: laid them over each other. He would have to paint

1085
01:01:46,000 --> 01:01:50,400
Speaker 1: two identical cultures. Yeah, and and who would ever find

1086
01:01:50,440 --> 01:01:53,560
Speaker 1: out about this? I mean, there's no way to to

1087
01:01:53,840 --> 01:01:56,800
Speaker 1: see the message. The whole point of steganography is to

1088
01:01:56,880 --> 01:02:00,480
Speaker 1: communicate to someone. If no one knows that there's a

1089
01:02:00,520 --> 01:02:03,480
Speaker 1: message there and no one knows how to get that message,

1090
01:02:03,480 --> 01:02:07,560
Speaker 1: you're not communicating, you're just shouting, you are I mean

1091
01:02:08,280 --> 01:02:10,720
Speaker 1: he could have put that message in there just too

1092
01:02:11,360 --> 01:02:12,919
Speaker 1: or not put a message in there, but put something

1093
01:02:12,920 --> 01:02:15,120
Speaker 1: in there to seem like a message, just to mess

1094
01:02:15,160 --> 01:02:18,600
Speaker 1: with people. That's possible. But yeah, most art historians kind

1095
01:02:18,600 --> 01:02:22,520
Speaker 1: of dismissed these various hypotheses. Doesn't mean that they're all false.

1096
01:02:22,560 --> 01:02:24,520
Speaker 1: It may mean there may have been things that da

1097
01:02:24,560 --> 01:02:28,440
Speaker 1: Vinci threw into some uh either is sketches or his

1098
01:02:28,520 --> 01:02:32,640
Speaker 1: paintings or whatever that we're either just amusements or you know,

1099
01:02:32,680 --> 01:02:35,560
Speaker 1: they weren't intended to be anything secret. It was just

1100
01:02:35,600 --> 01:02:39,680
Speaker 1: something that he incorporated into the design. It's possible, and

1101
01:02:39,720 --> 01:02:44,320
Speaker 1: then you know, depending upon the guy, probable da Vinci

1102
01:02:44,480 --> 01:02:47,080
Speaker 1: was it was a bit of an eccentric isn't there

1103
01:02:47,120 --> 01:02:52,760
Speaker 1: an article about this? On The article is is how

1104
01:02:53,120 --> 01:02:56,360
Speaker 1: the da Vinci code doesn't work? So if you want

1105
01:02:56,400 --> 01:02:58,920
Speaker 1: to know more about that, Yeah, there's also an article

1106
01:02:59,000 --> 01:03:01,880
Speaker 1: about are there hidden messages in the Last Supper? We

1107
01:03:01,920 --> 01:03:03,680
Speaker 1: have articles on both of those things, so you should

1108
01:03:03,680 --> 01:03:06,640
Speaker 1: definitely check those out at how stuff works dot com. Uh.

1109
01:03:06,720 --> 01:03:09,160
Speaker 1: Then there are other examples, like one of my favorites

1110
01:03:09,240 --> 01:03:12,920
Speaker 1: is Mad magazines fold in, which was created by the

1111
01:03:12,960 --> 01:03:19,920
Speaker 1: writer and artist Al Jaffe, who created originally in nine four.

1112
01:03:20,720 --> 01:03:24,680
Speaker 1: It's been in practically every Mad magazine since then. And

1113
01:03:24,840 --> 01:03:27,320
Speaker 1: if you've never seen a fold in on Mad Magazine,

1114
01:03:27,400 --> 01:03:29,760
Speaker 1: then and I'm talking about the actual magazine, not the

1115
01:03:30,120 --> 01:03:34,320
Speaker 1: television series, not Mad TV, and not a digital copy

1116
01:03:34,320 --> 01:03:35,880
Speaker 1: of the night No, No, you need the you need

1117
01:03:35,920 --> 01:03:39,240
Speaker 1: the physical one. It is the the inside back cover

1118
01:03:39,400 --> 01:03:41,440
Speaker 1: is the fold in, and it has two points, and

1119
01:03:41,440 --> 01:03:45,000
Speaker 1: you're supposed to fold one point over to the second point,

1120
01:03:45,520 --> 01:03:48,080
Speaker 1: and it creates a new image. So when you look

1121
01:03:48,120 --> 01:03:51,080
Speaker 1: at it, normally it's one image, and it's the setup

1122
01:03:51,080 --> 01:03:53,760
Speaker 1: for a joke, and when you do the fold then

1123
01:03:53,800 --> 01:03:56,960
Speaker 1: it's the punchline to that joke. And usually it's it's

1124
01:03:57,000 --> 01:03:59,959
Speaker 1: a twist on whatever the big picture is. And actually, Jeff,

1125
01:04:00,040 --> 01:04:01,960
Speaker 1: he said, if I didn't have to worry about the

1126
01:04:01,960 --> 01:04:04,240
Speaker 1: big picture as opposed to a little picture, I could

1127
01:04:04,240 --> 01:04:06,640
Speaker 1: turn out like twelve of these a day, but getting

1128
01:04:06,680 --> 01:04:09,200
Speaker 1: them to work together takes a lot more planning. And

1129
01:04:09,560 --> 01:04:12,400
Speaker 1: the way he did it, he drew them all by

1130
01:04:12,480 --> 01:04:16,280
Speaker 1: hand on a surface that did not fold, so it

1131
01:04:16,320 --> 01:04:19,960
Speaker 1: had to look right when it was folded, but he

1132
01:04:20,160 --> 01:04:23,040
Speaker 1: while he was drawing it, I couldn't fold it to

1133
01:04:23,040 --> 01:04:25,920
Speaker 1: make sure it was working. After after I encountered my

1134
01:04:26,000 --> 01:04:29,440
Speaker 1: first folding in a Mad magazine, I actually went into

1135
01:04:29,480 --> 01:04:31,840
Speaker 1: a Were's Waldo book and tried to do it in

1136
01:04:31,920 --> 01:04:35,400
Speaker 1: there and didn't work. No. No, I didn't find Waldo

1137
01:04:35,440 --> 01:04:40,000
Speaker 1: any faster. No, I didn't find any secret punchline. That's

1138
01:04:40,000 --> 01:04:42,720
Speaker 1: a little disappointed. He did, however, ruin the Wear's Waldo books,

1139
01:04:42,720 --> 01:04:48,160
Speaker 1: so there's that. Uh. Another Man magazine contributor, Sergio Araganez,

1140
01:04:48,440 --> 01:04:51,840
Speaker 1: he used to draw a comic book called Grew the Wanderer,

1141
01:04:52,400 --> 01:04:54,840
Speaker 1: which was about it's very cartoony. If you've ever seen

1142
01:04:54,880 --> 01:04:57,880
Speaker 1: Sergio Raganez his art style, you know it's cartoony. And

1143
01:04:57,880 --> 01:05:02,240
Speaker 1: it was about a buffoonish barbarian character, very dim witted

1144
01:05:02,320 --> 01:05:07,040
Speaker 1: character named Grew g r o O and very silly.

1145
01:05:07,080 --> 01:05:11,280
Speaker 1: But he would hide a message in every comic book. Uh.

1146
01:05:11,640 --> 01:05:15,080
Speaker 1: Usually said this is the secret message or something like

1147
01:05:15,200 --> 01:05:17,800
Speaker 1: good job, you found the secret message, but it would

1148
01:05:17,800 --> 01:05:20,760
Speaker 1: always be incorporated into the artwork in some way, like

1149
01:05:20,800 --> 01:05:22,920
Speaker 1: in some cases it would be written into the scroll

1150
01:05:23,000 --> 01:05:27,080
Speaker 1: work on a really elaborate uh fretboard for a loot

1151
01:05:27,680 --> 01:05:29,959
Speaker 1: something like that, so you would have to really look

1152
01:05:30,000 --> 01:05:32,520
Speaker 1: for it. And again, if you didn't know there was

1153
01:05:32,560 --> 01:05:36,000
Speaker 1: a message there, you probably never would have seen it. Yeah,

1154
01:05:36,040 --> 01:05:37,800
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of comics have done that

1155
01:05:37,880 --> 01:05:39,720
Speaker 1: here and there. If you look really closely, you can

1156
01:05:39,760 --> 01:05:41,720
Speaker 1: find I know there are some comics who hide their

1157
01:05:41,800 --> 01:05:45,800
Speaker 1: name in pictures and the artwork as well, but there

1158
01:05:45,840 --> 01:05:49,240
Speaker 1: are other people who use them too, like system administrators

1159
01:05:49,560 --> 01:05:52,680
Speaker 1: UM just to make encryption extra secure, like we've talked

1160
01:05:52,680 --> 01:05:57,080
Speaker 1: about before with authentication codes UM, and then like people

1161
01:05:57,160 --> 01:06:00,240
Speaker 1: who just want to protect their intellectual property. You can

1162
01:06:00,320 --> 01:06:02,360
Speaker 1: even do it for your own personal journal. If if

1163
01:06:02,360 --> 01:06:04,280
Speaker 1: you write in a diary and you don't want anybody

1164
01:06:04,280 --> 01:06:07,040
Speaker 1: to read it, you can read what you really want

1165
01:06:07,040 --> 01:06:09,160
Speaker 1: to say. You can hide it in there, right, So

1166
01:06:09,240 --> 01:06:11,640
Speaker 1: the stuff that you write could be, you know, whatever,

1167
01:06:11,840 --> 01:06:14,959
Speaker 1: but the actual meaning, the things that you truly want

1168
01:06:15,000 --> 01:06:19,080
Speaker 1: to preserve for yourself, you could hide away from from

1169
01:06:19,120 --> 01:06:22,400
Speaker 1: people prying eyes. So if you you know, if you

1170
01:06:22,560 --> 01:06:25,480
Speaker 1: if you're tired of losing that little key to your

1171
01:06:25,560 --> 01:06:28,520
Speaker 1: lockable journal. I know I gave up years ago. I

1172
01:06:28,520 --> 01:06:31,640
Speaker 1: have no idea what's in that book anymore? Um, probably

1173
01:06:31,760 --> 01:06:34,920
Speaker 1: best left unknown. Probably, you know, my past is a

1174
01:06:34,920 --> 01:06:37,800
Speaker 1: shady one at best. So that kind of wraps up

1175
01:06:37,800 --> 01:06:41,080
Speaker 1: this discussion about steganography. What it is, who uses it,

1176
01:06:41,440 --> 01:06:44,600
Speaker 1: you know, what goes into it. It is a fascinating field.

1177
01:06:44,680 --> 01:06:47,320
Speaker 1: I mean again, the idea of creating a way to

1178
01:06:47,360 --> 01:06:51,760
Speaker 1: communicate without anyone ever being aware that it was an

1179
01:06:51,920 --> 01:06:56,920
Speaker 1: intentional communication is I mean, it's kind of kind of awesome,

1180
01:06:57,000 --> 01:06:59,320
Speaker 1: it really is. And the numerous ways that people have

1181
01:06:59,400 --> 01:07:02,880
Speaker 1: come up with to do steganography is it's just mind blowing.

1182
01:07:02,920 --> 01:07:06,280
Speaker 1: I'm not nearly that creative, no, I well, mostly I

1183
01:07:06,320 --> 01:07:08,600
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of secret messages to send to people,

1184
01:07:08,640 --> 01:07:10,280
Speaker 1: so I don't have a whole lot of occasion to

1185
01:07:10,320 --> 01:07:13,640
Speaker 1: think on it. But yeah, it really does show people's

1186
01:07:13,760 --> 01:07:17,480
Speaker 1: ingenuity to come up with new ways to hide things. Well, Ariel,

1187
01:07:17,720 --> 01:07:21,240
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me on this episode.

1188
01:07:21,240 --> 01:07:23,240
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for letting me join you. Jonathan.

1189
01:07:23,240 --> 01:07:25,480
Speaker 1: It's been a lot of fun. Yeah, and guys, if

1190
01:07:25,480 --> 01:07:27,920
Speaker 1: you want to hear more of arial stuff, we actually

1191
01:07:27,960 --> 01:07:32,360
Speaker 1: do a podcast together, the Large nerd Drawn Collider Podcast. Yes,

1192
01:07:32,440 --> 01:07:35,720
Speaker 1: it's all about geeky things. Yeah, it's geek culture. It's

1193
01:07:35,960 --> 01:07:39,800
Speaker 1: a lot of movies, comic books, television shows, geek news.

1194
01:07:40,440 --> 01:07:43,200
Speaker 1: Also we do we do a video series as well.

1195
01:07:43,240 --> 01:07:45,920
Speaker 1: That's it's also called The Large Nerddron Collider. It's a

1196
01:07:45,920 --> 01:07:49,360
Speaker 1: little different. Yeah, it's it's taking two geeky topics that

1197
01:07:49,400 --> 01:07:52,320
Speaker 1: we love and mashing them together into this new, wonderful,

1198
01:07:52,360 --> 01:07:56,240
Speaker 1: horrible creation. Yeah. I think my favorite I write a

1199
01:07:56,320 --> 01:07:58,120
Speaker 1: lot of the scripts, and I think my favorite that

1200
01:07:58,160 --> 01:08:00,040
Speaker 1: I ever wrote, which is I know it's going and

1201
01:08:00,160 --> 01:08:02,120
Speaker 1: jerk thing to say, but I think my favorite one

1202
01:08:02,120 --> 01:08:05,120
Speaker 1: I ever wrote was one about Game of Brones and

1203
01:08:05,160 --> 01:08:07,760
Speaker 1: Firefly what would happen if you combined the two? And

1204
01:08:07,920 --> 01:08:10,360
Speaker 1: its answer is just a lot of death. Yeah. Yeah,

1205
01:08:10,520 --> 01:08:14,360
Speaker 1: so spoiler alert, don't get attached anybody. Uh Yeah. So

1206
01:08:14,400 --> 01:08:16,280
Speaker 1: that video series is on YouTube. You can check that

1207
01:08:16,320 --> 01:08:17,840
Speaker 1: out as well. And of course, if you want to

1208
01:08:17,880 --> 01:08:21,400
Speaker 1: suggest a topic, perhaps it's one that I can address

1209
01:08:21,680 --> 01:08:24,840
Speaker 1: in years to come. Sorry, Peter, that took so long

1210
01:08:24,880 --> 01:08:27,280
Speaker 1: for me to respond to your email. Uh. You can

1211
01:08:27,280 --> 01:08:30,200
Speaker 1: send me a message that email addresses tech stuff at

1212
01:08:30,240 --> 01:08:32,880
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line

1213
01:08:32,920 --> 01:08:35,760
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumbler. To handle at all three

1214
01:08:35,760 --> 01:08:39,280
Speaker 1: of those is text stuff H s W and I'll

1215
01:08:39,280 --> 01:08:45,920
Speaker 1: talk to you again, really so. For more on this

1216
01:08:46,120 --> 01:08:58,440
Speaker 1: and bathans of other topics, stuff works dot com