1
00:00:04,400 --> 00:00:07,760
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.

2
00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:15,520
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,

3
00:00:15,560 --> 00:00:18,319
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and

4
00:00:18,400 --> 00:00:22,240
Speaker 1: how Tech Arenia. Well, it is time for a classic

5
00:00:22,280 --> 00:00:25,320
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff. This episode originally published on April

6
00:00:25,360 --> 00:00:30,040
Speaker 1: fift two thousand fifteen. It is titled how Steganography Works

7
00:00:30,520 --> 00:00:32,879
Speaker 1: and it is not a Dinosaur. I can't remember if

8
00:00:32,880 --> 00:00:34,720
Speaker 1: actually made that joke in this episode. I guess we're

9
00:00:34,720 --> 00:00:40,160
Speaker 1: gonna find out. Let's listen. This is an ancient listener request, folks. So, Peter,

10
00:00:40,280 --> 00:00:42,480
Speaker 1: I apologize that took so long for us to get there,

11
00:00:42,520 --> 00:00:44,280
Speaker 1: but I'm really excited that we get to cover it today.

12
00:00:45,000 --> 00:00:48,000
Speaker 1: Here's what Peter wrote. He said, I recently bought a

13
00:00:48,040 --> 00:00:52,479
Speaker 1: book called Data Hiding that is about steganography. I look

14
00:00:52,560 --> 00:00:54,560
Speaker 1: to see if this is something you have covered, but

15
00:00:54,600 --> 00:00:57,200
Speaker 1: found you had not. I think that this would be

16
00:00:57,240 --> 00:01:00,200
Speaker 1: an extremely interesting topic. You would be able to cover

17
00:01:00,240 --> 00:01:02,880
Speaker 1: the ways in which data can be hidden, as well

18
00:01:02,920 --> 00:01:05,920
Speaker 1: as who uses such techniques like al Qaeda, the n

19
00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:10,319
Speaker 1: s A, malware, authors, hobbyists, et cetera. Yeah, we're going

20
00:01:10,360 --> 00:01:14,479
Speaker 1: to cover steganography, which is not what I originally thought

21
00:01:14,520 --> 00:01:17,440
Speaker 1: it was. I originally thought it was the study of

22
00:01:17,440 --> 00:01:21,680
Speaker 1: Stegosauri stegasaurces. Yeah, I thought it was the study of

23
00:01:21,920 --> 00:01:25,640
Speaker 1: dinosaur calligraphy. So we were both on the wrong track,

24
00:01:25,680 --> 00:01:30,800
Speaker 1: as it turns out. Uh yeah, So what actually is steganography. Well,

25
00:01:31,000 --> 00:01:34,080
Speaker 1: steganography is the art of hiding something within something else.

26
00:01:34,400 --> 00:01:36,319
Speaker 1: It can be simple, like a hidden message in a

27
00:01:36,360 --> 00:01:40,160
Speaker 1: painting or photograph, or it can be something really complicated,

28
00:01:40,280 --> 00:01:43,320
Speaker 1: like an electronic file or message hidden in another file

29
00:01:43,440 --> 00:01:48,240
Speaker 1: or message. Yeah. Yeah, So it's essentially the the art

30
00:01:48,360 --> 00:01:51,080
Speaker 1: of being able to send a message without people even

31
00:01:51,160 --> 00:01:54,880
Speaker 1: knowing that you've done so, right, That's that's the goal

32
00:01:55,040 --> 00:02:00,720
Speaker 1: of steganography. So the parties in steganography are there, are

33
00:02:01,040 --> 00:02:02,560
Speaker 1: you know? This is how we break it down. You've

34
00:02:02,560 --> 00:02:05,440
Speaker 1: got the cinder that's the person who's created the message

35
00:02:05,440 --> 00:02:09,040
Speaker 1: and wants to communicate something. You have the receiver, which

36
00:02:09,080 --> 00:02:11,680
Speaker 1: is the person who the message is intended to go to.

37
00:02:12,560 --> 00:02:17,639
Speaker 1: You have the carrier message, which is the the the

38
00:02:17,720 --> 00:02:22,560
Speaker 1: construct that hides the secret message. So this could be whatever, Like,

39
00:02:22,600 --> 00:02:24,919
Speaker 1: it could be a painting, the boring note about your

40
00:02:25,040 --> 00:02:27,920
Speaker 1: cousin's children, or it could be a soccer ball that

41
00:02:27,960 --> 00:02:30,400
Speaker 1: happens to have a secret assage written on the inside

42
00:02:30,400 --> 00:02:35,079
Speaker 1: of it. It could be that Wilson in Castaway was

43
00:02:35,120 --> 00:02:40,960
Speaker 1: in fact Stagana Graham, which is the other element. So,

44
00:02:41,080 --> 00:02:43,520
Speaker 1: by the way, there are a lot of Greek words

45
00:02:43,639 --> 00:02:47,239
Speaker 1: and Greek names and some Roman names, so Latin as well,

46
00:02:47,919 --> 00:02:49,679
Speaker 1: that's going to be all of those are gonna be

47
00:02:49,720 --> 00:02:51,880
Speaker 1: popping up. There also a couple of other names from

48
00:02:51,880 --> 00:02:57,840
Speaker 1: other cultures. I'm an ignorant American, so my pronunciation is

49
00:02:57,880 --> 00:03:00,640
Speaker 1: going to be awful, and I can barely grasp the

50
00:03:00,680 --> 00:03:02,799
Speaker 1: American language, which I've grown up with all my life,

51
00:03:02,800 --> 00:03:05,880
Speaker 1: so mine will be work. Yeah, So just just letting

52
00:03:05,919 --> 00:03:07,720
Speaker 1: you guys know that ahead of time. So the ski

53
00:03:07,919 --> 00:03:12,840
Speaker 1: staganogram say, I'm never going to get that, otherwise known

54
00:03:12,919 --> 00:03:14,639
Speaker 1: as the secret message. We're just gonna I'm going to

55
00:03:14,720 --> 00:03:17,480
Speaker 1: call it secrets just from now on and then potentially

56
00:03:17,600 --> 00:03:20,320
Speaker 1: third parties. So in other words, people who might come

57
00:03:20,360 --> 00:03:23,240
Speaker 1: into contact with this message. The goal is to make

58
00:03:23,240 --> 00:03:25,880
Speaker 1: sure that those third parties are never aware that there

59
00:03:25,919 --> 00:03:27,560
Speaker 1: is a message there in the first place, and if

60
00:03:27,560 --> 00:03:30,480
Speaker 1: it's done right, they won't be Yeah. So in other words,

61
00:03:30,680 --> 00:03:34,520
Speaker 1: you could have a messenger a go between carry this

62
00:03:34,639 --> 00:03:37,000
Speaker 1: thing from one person to the other and never know

63
00:03:37,400 --> 00:03:40,400
Speaker 1: that there was something hidden in there. Although sometimes it's

64
00:03:40,400 --> 00:03:44,000
Speaker 1: good if they're confident, because you need to get a

65
00:03:44,040 --> 00:03:47,040
Speaker 1: message to the person who needs to decipher it on

66
00:03:47,080 --> 00:03:49,520
Speaker 1: how to decipher it right, right. If the person who

67
00:03:49,520 --> 00:03:54,360
Speaker 1: receives the message isn't aware of the method to find it,

68
00:03:54,360 --> 00:03:57,000
Speaker 1: it doesn't do them a lot of good. So if

69
00:03:57,040 --> 00:03:59,920
Speaker 1: if you have been able to collude with your receiver left,

70
00:04:00,080 --> 00:04:02,720
Speaker 1: if I'm sending a message to Ariel, and Ariel and

71
00:04:02,800 --> 00:04:06,080
Speaker 1: I have decided ahead of time, Hey, if I ever

72
00:04:06,200 --> 00:04:08,080
Speaker 1: need to send you a message, this is how I'm

73
00:04:08,080 --> 00:04:09,760
Speaker 1: going to do it, and this is how you're going

74
00:04:09,800 --> 00:04:12,760
Speaker 1: to see what the message is, then we're okay. But

75
00:04:12,960 --> 00:04:15,000
Speaker 1: if if it's a situation where Ariel and I have

76
00:04:15,120 --> 00:04:17,200
Speaker 1: been separated for a long time and I need to

77
00:04:17,200 --> 00:04:19,600
Speaker 1: send her a message and I needed to be secret,

78
00:04:19,880 --> 00:04:21,560
Speaker 1: I've got to figure out a way to give her

79
00:04:21,600 --> 00:04:25,680
Speaker 1: instructions as to how to retrieve that message. And sometimes

80
00:04:25,680 --> 00:04:29,479
Speaker 1: that involves, you know, paying somebody, like just tell her

81
00:04:30,040 --> 00:04:33,200
Speaker 1: to wash the wax off, and we'll explain what that

82
00:04:33,240 --> 00:04:38,120
Speaker 1: means a little bit later. So there, wash the wax off,

83
00:04:39,279 --> 00:04:42,760
Speaker 1: the Yeah sure, yeah, I mean just in general. So

84
00:04:43,560 --> 00:04:46,080
Speaker 1: we've got the elements here. Those are your basic elements

85
00:04:46,120 --> 00:04:50,760
Speaker 1: to to have Steganography actually makes sense, And now we

86
00:04:50,800 --> 00:04:53,440
Speaker 1: need to talk about the difference between that and a

87
00:04:53,560 --> 00:04:59,800
Speaker 1: related art cryptography, which, yes, cryptography is the art of

88
00:05:00,120 --> 00:05:04,680
Speaker 1: making and solving codes. Uh, but anybody can see that

89
00:05:04,720 --> 00:05:07,480
Speaker 1: it's a code. Right, So if I send a coded

90
00:05:07,520 --> 00:05:10,520
Speaker 1: message to arial, it may be that any third party

91
00:05:10,640 --> 00:05:13,039
Speaker 1: can't see what the message is, but they know I'm

92
00:05:13,080 --> 00:05:15,680
Speaker 1: trying to communicate to her, Yeah, because why else would

93
00:05:15,680 --> 00:05:17,320
Speaker 1: he send me a piece of paper that says music

94
00:05:17,320 --> 00:05:22,839
Speaker 1: of yeh, unless I've just fallen asleep on my keyboard,

95
00:05:23,320 --> 00:05:26,520
Speaker 1: then clearly I'm trying to say something. So and then

96
00:05:26,560 --> 00:05:29,080
Speaker 1: I'm just wasting my time trying to decipher. Right. So,

97
00:05:29,120 --> 00:05:34,120
Speaker 1: cryptography keys in people that something's going on. It lets

98
00:05:34,120 --> 00:05:38,000
Speaker 1: people know there's some sort of communication. And uh. You

99
00:05:38,080 --> 00:05:42,120
Speaker 1: might have a pretty simple type of code, like a

100
00:05:42,160 --> 00:05:46,240
Speaker 1: simple cipher where you know the old classic uh substitution

101
00:05:46,279 --> 00:05:49,440
Speaker 1: cipher where you substitute one letter for another, the simplest

102
00:05:49,480 --> 00:05:52,920
Speaker 1: being let's shift all the letters over by one. So

103
00:05:53,080 --> 00:05:56,720
Speaker 1: and uh, whenever I write the letter B, I really

104
00:05:56,760 --> 00:05:58,960
Speaker 1: mean the letter a. Whenever I write the letter C,

105
00:05:59,160 --> 00:06:01,800
Speaker 1: I really mean the letter be. This is what's called

106
00:06:02,360 --> 00:06:06,560
Speaker 1: a really bad cipher. It's easy to figure out. I

107
00:06:06,560 --> 00:06:08,520
Speaker 1: don't know. When I try to do the cryptograms in

108
00:06:08,560 --> 00:06:11,240
Speaker 1: puzzle books, had such a hard time, And it's the

109
00:06:11,279 --> 00:06:14,599
Speaker 1: same thing. Well, sometimes a substitution cipher can get a

110
00:06:14,600 --> 00:06:17,960
Speaker 1: little more complicated. So for example, when you substitute one

111
00:06:18,040 --> 00:06:21,680
Speaker 1: letter for another, then the next time you substitute a letter,

112
00:06:21,760 --> 00:06:25,039
Speaker 1: you actually shift over again. So in other words, the

113
00:06:25,080 --> 00:06:27,440
Speaker 1: first time you only shift over one letter, the second

114
00:06:27,480 --> 00:06:29,440
Speaker 1: time you shift over two letters, the third time you

115
00:06:29,480 --> 00:06:32,800
Speaker 1: shift over three letters. So if you know the algorithm,

116
00:06:32,920 --> 00:06:35,440
Speaker 1: if you know the pattern, then when you get the message,

117
00:06:35,480 --> 00:06:37,920
Speaker 1: you can reverse that and you know to look for it.

118
00:06:38,200 --> 00:06:40,040
Speaker 1: If you don't know the pattern, then you have to

119
00:06:40,080 --> 00:06:42,200
Speaker 1: spend more time trying to figure out what the pattern is.

120
00:06:42,760 --> 00:06:46,760
Speaker 1: And while that still is a fairly simple example, things

121
00:06:46,800 --> 00:06:51,279
Speaker 1: like the um the Enigma machine in World War Two,

122
00:06:51,279 --> 00:06:54,520
Speaker 1: which was the Germans way of sending coded messages. They

123
00:06:54,520 --> 00:06:58,160
Speaker 1: had this machine that had three different The basic one

124
00:06:58,200 --> 00:07:01,280
Speaker 1: had three different dials that they had set. And then

125
00:07:01,279 --> 00:07:04,080
Speaker 1: I had a typewriter and a bunch of lamps and

126
00:07:04,120 --> 00:07:07,000
Speaker 1: when you pressed down a key of a letter, a

127
00:07:07,080 --> 00:07:11,040
Speaker 1: lamp would light up, indicating a different letter. So let's

128
00:07:11,040 --> 00:07:14,400
Speaker 1: say I typed the letter E to type in Enigma,

129
00:07:15,120 --> 00:07:21,480
Speaker 1: but the letter for in lights up. Then it would

130
00:07:21,520 --> 00:07:25,480
Speaker 1: actually go a certain number of steps, so that the

131
00:07:25,520 --> 00:07:29,520
Speaker 1: next letter I type would be a totally unpredictable letter.

132
00:07:29,640 --> 00:07:33,240
Speaker 1: If I didn't have an Enigma machine of my own. Well,

133
00:07:33,280 --> 00:07:36,400
Speaker 1: that's really good, because if I tried to write a cipher,

134
00:07:36,440 --> 00:07:38,280
Speaker 1: I would totally lose place of where I was if

135
00:07:38,280 --> 00:07:42,040
Speaker 1: I was constantly shifting the letter, and my message would

136
00:07:42,040 --> 00:07:46,680
Speaker 1: be nonsensical, both decrypted and encrypted. Yeah, exactly, that that is.

137
00:07:46,800 --> 00:07:49,280
Speaker 1: That's the reason why the Germans were using a machine

138
00:07:49,480 --> 00:07:52,800
Speaker 1: so that way it could be predictable, but only if

139
00:07:52,880 --> 00:07:56,520
Speaker 1: both parties had the same style of Enigma machine and

140
00:07:56,560 --> 00:08:00,600
Speaker 1: they both knew what the initial settings were, so part

141
00:08:00,600 --> 00:08:05,960
Speaker 1: of the communication would include a a key saying this

142
00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:09,120
Speaker 1: is what you need to set it to. Although technically

143
00:08:09,160 --> 00:08:12,400
Speaker 1: they were all supposed to have a communication telling them

144
00:08:12,400 --> 00:08:14,680
Speaker 1: what settings to use each day, and they were never

145
00:08:14,680 --> 00:08:19,640
Speaker 1: supposed to repeat those settings. Eventually people got lazy, and

146
00:08:19,760 --> 00:08:22,840
Speaker 1: that's how those codes were eventually broken by Alan Turing,

147
00:08:23,520 --> 00:08:26,520
Speaker 1: which you can see in that film, the imitation game,

148
00:08:26,600 --> 00:08:32,360
Speaker 1: the imitation game exactly. So steganography obviously is different from cryptography,

149
00:08:32,400 --> 00:08:34,960
Speaker 1: and that yes, you're still sending secret messages, but the

150
00:08:35,000 --> 00:08:39,000
Speaker 1: message itself, the existence of the message is secret. Anybody,

151
00:08:39,000 --> 00:08:42,160
Speaker 1: any layman looking at the message or the photo or

152
00:08:42,160 --> 00:08:46,000
Speaker 1: the paper won't know it's there, right, So you you

153
00:08:46,040 --> 00:08:49,880
Speaker 1: can still encrypt it. You can still use cryptography. In fact,

154
00:08:50,200 --> 00:08:54,440
Speaker 1: using both together makes a lot of sense. But ultimately

155
00:08:54,480 --> 00:08:57,360
Speaker 1: with steganography, if you've hidden the message well enough and

156
00:08:57,400 --> 00:08:59,880
Speaker 1: people are not if people don't know to look for it,

157
00:09:00,040 --> 00:09:04,240
Speaker 1: it's safe to be in plain text to whomever you're

158
00:09:04,240 --> 00:09:07,600
Speaker 1: sending it to, depending upon what method you use, because

159
00:09:07,600 --> 00:09:10,920
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different ones, right um um.

160
00:09:11,120 --> 00:09:13,560
Speaker 1: A great way to further explain it is to go

161
00:09:13,600 --> 00:09:17,560
Speaker 1: back to the Greek. Cryptography means secret writing and stag

162
00:09:17,600 --> 00:09:21,880
Speaker 1: atography means covered writing. I pause there because I was

163
00:09:21,960 --> 00:09:25,480
Speaker 1: really surprised I said it correctly. Well, every time I

164
00:09:25,520 --> 00:09:28,679
Speaker 1: say it correctly, I will also be surprised. Uh yeah,

165
00:09:28,840 --> 00:09:31,800
Speaker 1: So that really that gets down to the heart of it, right,

166
00:09:32,160 --> 00:09:34,480
Speaker 1: And the combination of the two allows you to have

167
00:09:34,559 --> 00:09:40,640
Speaker 1: more secure communication. Now, there's an art to finding hidden

168
00:09:40,760 --> 00:09:44,320
Speaker 1: messages that have been concealed in this way. Yes, it

169
00:09:44,440 --> 00:09:47,880
Speaker 1: is called stag analysis, which I tried to look up

170
00:09:47,920 --> 00:09:50,520
Speaker 1: what the Greek of that meant, and it meant covered

171
00:09:51,000 --> 00:09:55,840
Speaker 1: breaking up, loosening of Yeah, so it's it's all very repetitive.

172
00:09:55,880 --> 00:09:58,959
Speaker 1: It just means you're uncovering the secret message, right. So

173
00:09:59,559 --> 00:10:04,320
Speaker 1: depending upon the type of uh steganogram that has been sent,

174
00:10:05,880 --> 00:10:09,000
Speaker 1: you would use a different method to find the meaning.

175
00:10:09,200 --> 00:10:13,439
Speaker 1: So when we're talking about the modern version of steganography,

176
00:10:13,520 --> 00:10:17,760
Speaker 1: we're really talking about ones and zeros digital information. So

177
00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:21,400
Speaker 1: stag analysis is largely concerned with that because that's that's

178
00:10:21,440 --> 00:10:24,680
Speaker 1: the main way messages are sent these days, is through

179
00:10:24,760 --> 00:10:29,040
Speaker 1: a digital file of some sort that to an outside

180
00:10:29,080 --> 00:10:32,640
Speaker 1: view looks like a normal file. There's nothing that seems

181
00:10:32,640 --> 00:10:35,079
Speaker 1: remarkable about it. But if you were to analyze the

182
00:10:35,120 --> 00:10:38,600
Speaker 1: actual digital information of that file, you would start to

183
00:10:38,640 --> 00:10:42,839
Speaker 1: see patterns that would indicate something hanky is going. Yes,

184
00:10:43,080 --> 00:10:46,840
Speaker 1: and in steak analysis, there are two steps to deciphering

185
00:10:46,880 --> 00:10:49,760
Speaker 1: and the first is detecting it um, which if if

186
00:10:49,800 --> 00:10:51,559
Speaker 1: it is like a handwritten message or something like that,

187
00:10:51,640 --> 00:10:55,960
Speaker 1: and it's very fairly obvious, you can do it without

188
00:10:56,040 --> 00:10:59,920
Speaker 1: any special software. UM. But where it does happen so

189
00:11:00,800 --> 00:11:03,520
Speaker 1: much in the digital age. Um their disk analysis programs

190
00:11:03,520 --> 00:11:05,320
Speaker 1: that will just look at it for you. Yeah, you

191
00:11:05,360 --> 00:11:11,320
Speaker 1: actually run your suspected uh secret message. So it could

192
00:11:11,360 --> 00:11:13,839
Speaker 1: be very simple like a lot of and a lot

193
00:11:13,840 --> 00:11:16,559
Speaker 1: of examples I see are photographs that have been uploaded

194
00:11:16,559 --> 00:11:19,760
Speaker 1: to public forums and the idea being that well, when

195
00:11:19,760 --> 00:11:22,720
Speaker 1: it's in the public eye, no one's paying attention to

196
00:11:22,760 --> 00:11:25,120
Speaker 1: it because it's just something that we see all the time.

197
00:11:25,160 --> 00:11:29,000
Speaker 1: Like if you were to post a picture to Facebook, yeah,

198
00:11:29,040 --> 00:11:31,920
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of people do. Then because

199
00:11:31,920 --> 00:11:36,480
Speaker 1: that's so common, it doesn't tend to raise suspicion. So

200
00:11:37,040 --> 00:11:39,480
Speaker 1: first of all, someone has to know that there's something

201
00:11:39,520 --> 00:11:42,760
Speaker 1: to look for, right, they have to first be suspicious

202
00:11:42,840 --> 00:11:45,839
Speaker 1: that there's some form of communication going on. Then they

203
00:11:45,840 --> 00:11:47,560
Speaker 1: have to start figuring out, all right, how is this

204
00:11:47,600 --> 00:11:50,680
Speaker 1: communication happening, And then they would have to start targeting

205
00:11:50,679 --> 00:11:53,319
Speaker 1: the various means of that, and one of those might

206
00:11:53,320 --> 00:11:55,760
Speaker 1: be photographs, and they'd say, all right, let's take this

207
00:11:55,840 --> 00:12:00,560
Speaker 1: image that was uploaded to whatever site, and let's run

208
00:12:00,559 --> 00:12:03,360
Speaker 1: it through one of these disk analysis programs and see

209
00:12:03,440 --> 00:12:06,719
Speaker 1: if that comes up with anything that perhaps there's some

210
00:12:06,800 --> 00:12:10,960
Speaker 1: indication that something's out of place, and it might be

211
00:12:11,080 --> 00:12:15,880
Speaker 1: something that you looking at would notice if you knew

212
00:12:15,880 --> 00:12:19,199
Speaker 1: what to look for. Yeah, that's called perceptible noise. So

213
00:12:19,360 --> 00:12:24,640
Speaker 1: sometimes if audio visual files are slightly off, there might

214
00:12:24,679 --> 00:12:27,600
Speaker 1: be perceptible noise in there. So that would just be

215
00:12:27,640 --> 00:12:31,440
Speaker 1: an indicator, right, something saying something's not right now. That

216
00:12:31,520 --> 00:12:35,160
Speaker 1: can happen naturally, like that could just be a problem

217
00:12:35,240 --> 00:12:38,720
Speaker 1: with the file and not not be an indication that

218
00:12:38,760 --> 00:12:42,760
Speaker 1: there's anything super secret going on, or it could be

219
00:12:42,800 --> 00:12:45,679
Speaker 1: an indication that, in fact, some of the bits in

220
00:12:45,760 --> 00:12:48,800
Speaker 1: that file have been altered in order to send a

221
00:12:48,840 --> 00:12:52,200
Speaker 1: secret message. And in in the best case of stegnography,

222
00:12:52,720 --> 00:12:57,400
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have weird noises or distorted pixels for people

223
00:12:57,440 --> 00:13:00,120
Speaker 1: to see. Yeah, it would just be so subtle that

224
00:13:00,160 --> 00:13:02,640
Speaker 1: you would never pick up on it. And uh and

225
00:13:02,679 --> 00:13:05,920
Speaker 1: that's the reason why you need these disc analysis programs,

226
00:13:06,240 --> 00:13:09,520
Speaker 1: so they can look for things that are below the

227
00:13:09,640 --> 00:13:14,920
Speaker 1: perceptive level of human beings. Uh. So again we often

228
00:13:14,960 --> 00:13:17,480
Speaker 1: see the two working together makes a lot of sense.

229
00:13:17,520 --> 00:13:21,679
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about the history of steganography,

230
00:13:21,760 --> 00:13:28,120
Speaker 1: because there are some gloriously awful and bloody stories just

231
00:13:28,480 --> 00:13:31,040
Speaker 1: just reading about them. Yeah, So first, we gotta go

232
00:13:31,080 --> 00:13:33,320
Speaker 1: to ancient Greece, which makes sense. We're talking, you know,

233
00:13:33,360 --> 00:13:35,880
Speaker 1: we're using Greek words, so it makes sense that that

234
00:13:36,000 --> 00:13:39,560
Speaker 1: a lot of the early cases involved Greek stories, and

235
00:13:39,559 --> 00:13:45,280
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking a lot about Herodotus. I can

236
00:13:45,320 --> 00:13:47,640
Speaker 1: only do it because I listened to the pronunciation and

237
00:13:47,679 --> 00:13:51,200
Speaker 1: I wrote down a phonetic translation in our notes. That

238
00:13:51,320 --> 00:13:55,640
Speaker 1: is not a joke. Herodotus was a Greek historian in

239
00:13:55,640 --> 00:13:59,840
Speaker 1: the fifth century b c. And wrote a lot about

240
00:14:00,480 --> 00:14:03,840
Speaker 1: Greek history and the history of the surrounding areas of Greece,

241
00:14:04,559 --> 00:14:07,840
Speaker 1: And in fact, his writings were called the Histories. Yeah,

242
00:14:08,160 --> 00:14:11,640
Speaker 1: and or at least we have to we have to

243
00:14:11,640 --> 00:14:13,480
Speaker 1: take some of this with a grain of salt, because

244
00:14:13,559 --> 00:14:15,760
Speaker 1: legend got mixed up with history quite a bit. So

245
00:14:16,720 --> 00:14:19,960
Speaker 1: in fact, there are some modern accountings that suggest that

246
00:14:20,640 --> 00:14:25,080
Speaker 1: some of the familial connections he makes in his stories

247
00:14:25,200 --> 00:14:29,760
Speaker 1: were not necessarily accurate. So um one of the big ones,

248
00:14:29,800 --> 00:14:31,480
Speaker 1: in fact, the first one I have to talk about,

249
00:14:32,000 --> 00:14:35,120
Speaker 1: is one of those where the story talks about a

250
00:14:35,160 --> 00:14:41,760
Speaker 1: general named Harpagus who sent a staganagram to Cyrus, was

251
00:14:41,800 --> 00:14:44,640
Speaker 1: a king who was going to become the king of

252
00:14:44,800 --> 00:14:49,120
Speaker 1: kings of Persia, Son of Persia, not the Prince of Persia.

253
00:14:49,160 --> 00:14:53,239
Speaker 1: Now that's a video game, which is fun, but not

254
00:14:53,240 --> 00:14:57,200
Speaker 1: not something we actually need to reference here. The story, Yeah,

255
00:14:57,200 --> 00:14:59,640
Speaker 1: the story is far bloodier in fact, which is odd

256
00:14:59,680 --> 00:15:01,400
Speaker 1: to think of, depending on which version of Prince of

257
00:15:01,400 --> 00:15:04,200
Speaker 1: Persia you played and how badly you played it. But

258
00:15:04,800 --> 00:15:07,440
Speaker 1: Cyrus was going to be the king of kings of Persia.

259
00:15:07,560 --> 00:15:10,920
Speaker 1: So Persia was divided up into several kingdoms, and then

260
00:15:10,960 --> 00:15:13,560
Speaker 1: you had a sort of an over king who saw

261
00:15:13,760 --> 00:15:17,000
Speaker 1: over everybody, kind of like King Arthur in in English

262
00:15:17,160 --> 00:15:24,520
Speaker 1: lore Um. So cyrus Um was the grandson, according to Herodotus,

263
00:15:25,520 --> 00:15:31,680
Speaker 1: to another king of kings, Ostiagas, and so Harpagus actually

264
00:15:31,760 --> 00:15:35,040
Speaker 1: worked for Ostiagas. So Ostiogus is this king of kings,

265
00:15:35,200 --> 00:15:38,480
Speaker 1: and he has a dream, and in his dream, his

266
00:15:38,640 --> 00:15:42,560
Speaker 1: daughter gives birth to a son, and that son grows

267
00:15:42,680 --> 00:15:47,120
Speaker 1: up to depose osti Agus. So first he ends up

268
00:15:47,120 --> 00:15:50,320
Speaker 1: marrying his daughter off to a kind of milk toast

269
00:15:50,440 --> 00:15:52,480
Speaker 1: kind of guy, someone that he thinks is, oh well,

270
00:15:52,480 --> 00:15:55,400
Speaker 1: this guy is harmless, so any child they have is

271
00:15:55,400 --> 00:15:58,200
Speaker 1: not going to be a threat to me Um. And

272
00:15:58,400 --> 00:16:01,680
Speaker 1: they have a son named IRUs. According to Herodotus. Again.

273
00:16:01,720 --> 00:16:05,480
Speaker 1: Other modern accounts suggests that Cyrus and Ostiagas were not

274
00:16:06,240 --> 00:16:08,800
Speaker 1: grandfather and grandson. Yeah, they might have been related, but

275
00:16:08,840 --> 00:16:12,480
Speaker 1: not like grandfather and grandson, particularly since Cyrus ended up

276
00:16:12,600 --> 00:16:17,120
Speaker 1: marrying um a daughter a Herodotus, which would have made

277
00:16:17,240 --> 00:16:19,760
Speaker 1: he would have married his own aunt, which was not

278
00:16:20,040 --> 00:16:24,400
Speaker 1: common in those times. So I mean possible, but not common.

279
00:16:24,800 --> 00:16:28,840
Speaker 1: So anyway, in the story, Cyrus is the grandson, and

280
00:16:29,120 --> 00:16:36,360
Speaker 1: Ostiagas decides Harpagus needs to go out and kill Cyrus. Okay. Harpagas, though,

281
00:16:36,520 --> 00:16:39,760
Speaker 1: does not really relish the thought of spilling royal blood.

282
00:16:39,880 --> 00:16:42,560
Speaker 1: So he takes Cyrus and he gives Cyrus to a

283
00:16:42,640 --> 00:16:46,560
Speaker 1: shepherd and says, look after this kid, uh and raise

284
00:16:46,640 --> 00:16:49,000
Speaker 1: him as your own, and I will report back that

285
00:16:49,160 --> 00:16:52,480
Speaker 1: Cyrus is dead. Seems like a really decent guy, at

286
00:16:52,560 --> 00:16:56,160
Speaker 1: least at that point, so he goes back. He reports

287
00:16:56,200 --> 00:17:00,560
Speaker 1: that Cyrus has died, and Ostiagus says YEA. Ten years later,

288
00:17:00,840 --> 00:17:05,320
Speaker 1: Ostiagus finds out Cyrus is actually alive, so he punishes

289
00:17:05,320 --> 00:17:09,440
Speaker 1: Harpagus in kind of a Shakespearean awful way, and that

290
00:17:09,520 --> 00:17:14,680
Speaker 1: in the story osti Agus gets Harpagus, his son kills

291
00:17:14,720 --> 00:17:19,480
Speaker 1: him chops him up, cooks him, serves them to Harpagas

292
00:17:19,640 --> 00:17:23,439
Speaker 1: as a banquet Harpegas and then tells Harpegus, hey, by

293
00:17:23,480 --> 00:17:25,600
Speaker 1: the way, I hope you like your son, because that's

294
00:17:25,640 --> 00:17:30,760
Speaker 1: what you're eating. Harpegus supposedly then gathered up the remains

295
00:17:30,840 --> 00:17:34,800
Speaker 1: and gave his son a burial. He was being obedient

296
00:17:34,840 --> 00:17:38,639
Speaker 1: to the king outwardly, but inwardly had decided that he

297
00:17:38,680 --> 00:17:41,600
Speaker 1: had had enough and he wanted revenge, so he wanted

298
00:17:41,600 --> 00:17:45,000
Speaker 1: to report to Cyrus. He He ended up working very

299
00:17:45,080 --> 00:17:48,879
Speaker 1: hard to get other leaders of Persia to turn against

300
00:17:48,920 --> 00:17:51,840
Speaker 1: Ostiagus and wait for just the right time to give

301
00:17:51,920 --> 00:17:54,440
Speaker 1: Cyrus the signal that now is the time to attack.

302
00:17:54,880 --> 00:17:57,119
Speaker 1: So he needed to send a message to Cyrus saying

303
00:17:57,600 --> 00:18:02,080
Speaker 1: we're ready to go when you are. But asti August

304
00:18:02,160 --> 00:18:04,800
Speaker 1: had guards all along the way. So how does he

305
00:18:04,840 --> 00:18:12,679
Speaker 1: send a message. He gets a bunny bunny hair. Actually, no,

306
00:18:12,760 --> 00:18:15,040
Speaker 1: they're not nearly as cute as bunny rabbits, and this

307
00:18:15,119 --> 00:18:18,760
Speaker 1: hair was not nearly as cute because it was did Yeah,

308
00:18:18,800 --> 00:18:23,640
Speaker 1: they they have a guy kill a hair. They cut

309
00:18:23,720 --> 00:18:27,639
Speaker 1: the hair open, they insert the secret message into the

310
00:18:27,720 --> 00:18:32,000
Speaker 1: hair's stomach, so the hair back up and a messenger

311
00:18:32,080 --> 00:18:36,040
Speaker 1: disguised as a huntsman brings the hair to Cyrus and says,

312
00:18:36,920 --> 00:18:40,280
Speaker 1: you should cut open this bunny rabbit and get what

313
00:18:40,359 --> 00:18:44,080
Speaker 1: the delicious things inside are. And so Cyrus cuts open

314
00:18:44,119 --> 00:18:47,680
Speaker 1: the stitches, gets the message, sees that it's time to attack,

315
00:18:48,160 --> 00:18:52,679
Speaker 1: and that is how, according to Herodotus, Cyrus goes and

316
00:18:52,760 --> 00:18:56,680
Speaker 1: joins a revolution and overthrows Ostia Augus and then Cyrus

317
00:18:56,720 --> 00:19:00,359
Speaker 1: becomes the king. So there's a long way to go

318
00:19:00,480 --> 00:19:02,520
Speaker 1: for that story, but it's important to know all the

319
00:19:02,600 --> 00:19:06,359
Speaker 1: elements to explain why Harpagus was trying to send a

320
00:19:06,359 --> 00:19:08,840
Speaker 1: coded message in the first place, or hidden message. I'm

321
00:19:08,920 --> 00:19:11,160
Speaker 1: so glad we have better ways to send hidden messages

322
00:19:11,200 --> 00:19:14,720
Speaker 1: than in the stomachs of rabbits. Now, okay, this is

323
00:19:14,800 --> 00:19:17,159
Speaker 1: Jonathan from the future. I've got a hidden message in

324
00:19:17,240 --> 00:19:20,119
Speaker 1: this image file that says we need to take a

325
00:19:20,200 --> 00:19:30,960
Speaker 1: quick break, but we'll be right back. So um, here's

326
00:19:31,160 --> 00:19:35,720
Speaker 1: another one. This is another popular story from Herodotus. This

327
00:19:35,760 --> 00:19:42,080
Speaker 1: one involves a tyrant named Histius, which sounds like you're

328
00:19:42,080 --> 00:19:46,679
Speaker 1: strangling a snake. Yeah. Histius who was the ruler of

329
00:19:47,359 --> 00:19:51,760
Speaker 1: mild Us, and this guy was really useful to the

330
00:19:51,840 --> 00:19:55,760
Speaker 1: king of Persia. The King of Persia loved Histius and

331
00:19:56,000 --> 00:19:59,640
Speaker 1: decided to invite him back to become a royal advisor. Well,

332
00:19:59,640 --> 00:20:01,760
Speaker 1: that sounds it is pretty good to me. Well at first,

333
00:20:01,800 --> 00:20:04,919
Speaker 1: Histories thoughts so too. But then eventually he thought, you know,

334
00:20:04,960 --> 00:20:08,000
Speaker 1: I want to go back to being a tyrant of Maltest. Tyrant,

335
00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:11,080
Speaker 1: by the way, does not necessarily mean evil ruler, but

336
00:20:11,119 --> 00:20:16,800
Speaker 1: it did mean like having total authority over a region. Um,

337
00:20:16,920 --> 00:20:18,760
Speaker 1: so he said, he thought, I want to go back

338
00:20:18,760 --> 00:20:20,880
Speaker 1: to doing what I was doing before. But it would

339
00:20:20,880 --> 00:20:24,720
Speaker 1: be treason for me to deny the king? So how

340
00:20:24,720 --> 00:20:27,560
Speaker 1: do I get around this? And he comes up with

341
00:20:27,600 --> 00:20:29,679
Speaker 1: an even more treason this way to get around it.

342
00:20:30,400 --> 00:20:33,359
Speaker 1: He decides that the best way to get back to

343
00:20:33,480 --> 00:20:36,879
Speaker 1: doing what he was doing before would be to stage

344
00:20:36,920 --> 00:20:42,040
Speaker 1: a revolution back home. Uh, and then tell the king, Hey,

345
00:20:42,160 --> 00:20:45,000
Speaker 1: I need to go back there and squash this revolution

346
00:20:45,119 --> 00:20:47,360
Speaker 1: before it gets out of hand, because telling the king

347
00:20:47,400 --> 00:20:51,639
Speaker 1: no is so much less worse than lying to the

348
00:20:51,760 --> 00:20:54,960
Speaker 1: king and tell him. So, he decides he needs to

349
00:20:55,000 --> 00:20:58,680
Speaker 1: send this instruction to his nephew, who was in charge

350
00:20:58,680 --> 00:21:03,040
Speaker 1: of maldis Agris. And so how does he send the message, Well,

351
00:21:03,040 --> 00:21:06,240
Speaker 1: he gets a slave which the Greeks had back then,

352
00:21:06,800 --> 00:21:10,960
Speaker 1: and tattoos. He shaves the slave's head, tattoos the message

353
00:21:11,080 --> 00:21:14,359
Speaker 1: on the slave's scalp, then allows the slaves hair to

354
00:21:14,440 --> 00:21:18,440
Speaker 1: grow back, then sends the slave to Aristagoras with the

355
00:21:18,480 --> 00:21:20,840
Speaker 1: instruction to tell Aristagoras, Hey, you need to shave me

356
00:21:20,880 --> 00:21:24,760
Speaker 1: and read my head. So that's exactly what happens. Aristagoras

357
00:21:24,800 --> 00:21:29,520
Speaker 1: reads the message, starts a revolution against the Persians. Then

358
00:21:30,080 --> 00:21:34,119
Speaker 1: Histius tells the king, Hey, this is gonna be a problem,

359
00:21:34,160 --> 00:21:36,359
Speaker 1: so just send me back and I will go and

360
00:21:36,440 --> 00:21:40,000
Speaker 1: squish this right away, and we'll solve this before it

361
00:21:40,040 --> 00:21:41,960
Speaker 1: turns into a big problem. And of course they can

362
00:21:42,040 --> 00:21:46,520
Speaker 1: go a loyal advisor. Sure. Yeah, So Histius heads on

363
00:21:46,560 --> 00:21:50,200
Speaker 1: his way back. However, there were some folks who were

364
00:21:50,240 --> 00:21:56,199
Speaker 1: a little suspicious of Histius and his convenient revolution, and

365
00:21:56,280 --> 00:21:59,399
Speaker 1: so eventually Histaius goes on the run because people are

366
00:21:59,400 --> 00:22:01,520
Speaker 1: actually after or him thinking that you know, he's he's

367
00:22:01,560 --> 00:22:07,560
Speaker 1: committed treason. Yeah, he has done that thing, and so

368
00:22:08,040 --> 00:22:11,800
Speaker 1: he ends up getting exiled and eventually to an island.

369
00:22:11,920 --> 00:22:15,240
Speaker 1: He becomes a pirate for a while, and then he's

370
00:22:15,280 --> 00:22:18,840
Speaker 1: eventually captured by one of the king of Persia's subjects.

371
00:22:18,960 --> 00:22:21,399
Speaker 1: Who knows that if he sends his tis back to

372
00:22:21,440 --> 00:22:23,840
Speaker 1: the king, the king will pardon him, So he just

373
00:22:23,880 --> 00:22:26,240
Speaker 1: goes ahead and execute his t is right then and there,

374
00:22:26,320 --> 00:22:30,200
Speaker 1: since the head of his is to the king saying, hey,

375
00:22:30,240 --> 00:22:32,600
Speaker 1: I caught him and killed him for you. And the

376
00:22:32,680 --> 00:22:36,800
Speaker 1: king actually supposedly gave the head of his tis an

377
00:22:36,800 --> 00:22:40,199
Speaker 1: honorable burial because he never suspected anything was up. He

378
00:22:40,240 --> 00:22:44,280
Speaker 1: didn't believe his is could have committed any kind of

379
00:22:44,320 --> 00:22:52,959
Speaker 1: treason against him. So uh, dumb or nice? Not a

380
00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:56,119
Speaker 1: lot of nice stories in ancient Greece. Uh, And then

381
00:22:56,160 --> 00:22:59,560
Speaker 1: you've got another one, another herodotist story, another herodotus story.

382
00:22:59,600 --> 00:23:01,280
Speaker 1: I was out to mention it, and then I realized

383
00:23:01,280 --> 00:23:03,760
Speaker 1: that I couldn't actually say his name. There was an

384
00:23:03,760 --> 00:23:09,240
Speaker 1: exiled Greek named named Demeritus, and uh. He needed to

385
00:23:09,240 --> 00:23:12,879
Speaker 1: warn the king of Sparta, Leonidas that kings er Ses

386
00:23:12,880 --> 00:23:15,480
Speaker 1: the first was going to attack them. So he took

387
00:23:16,320 --> 00:23:19,760
Speaker 1: writing tablets, which were wood tablets covered in wax and

388
00:23:19,760 --> 00:23:22,600
Speaker 1: you would scratch a message into the wax, and instead

389
00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:25,400
Speaker 1: he took off all the wax and scratched message into

390
00:23:25,400 --> 00:23:28,479
Speaker 1: the wood, and then recovered the tablets and wax so

391
00:23:28,520 --> 00:23:30,320
Speaker 1: that they looked like they were blanked tablets, and he

392
00:23:30,359 --> 00:23:33,639
Speaker 1: sent those to the king to warn him. Uh. But

393
00:23:35,080 --> 00:23:38,760
Speaker 1: proposedly no one knew why they were getting these blank tablets.

394
00:23:38,800 --> 00:23:42,240
Speaker 1: They didn't necessarily know there was a message. Why are

395
00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:45,639
Speaker 1: we getting just we got plenty of tablets and no

396
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:48,840
Speaker 1: one writes anything of use here in Sparta anyway. Yeah,

397
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:52,480
Speaker 1: supposedly the queen, Queen Gorgo figured out what it was, said,

398
00:23:52,520 --> 00:23:53,720
Speaker 1: you got you need to take the wax off. I

399
00:23:53,760 --> 00:23:56,280
Speaker 1: but there's a message under there and there were um

400
00:23:56,320 --> 00:23:59,600
Speaker 1: but it didn't help them because the Spartans were brutally

401
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:02,880
Speaker 1: defeat it. Uh. And if the story sounds familiar to you,

402
00:24:03,040 --> 00:24:06,879
Speaker 1: it's because it is the story three the comic movie.

403
00:24:07,160 --> 00:24:11,159
Speaker 1: Yeah story, that's essentially that's the tale the three hundred

404
00:24:11,200 --> 00:24:14,639
Speaker 1: Spartans who who tried to hold a pass and managed

405
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:19,439
Speaker 1: to delay xer c S so that the invasion of

406
00:24:19,480 --> 00:24:24,440
Speaker 1: Greece ultimately would fail. But the Spartans were completely wiped out,

407
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:27,120
Speaker 1: or at least the the three hundred were completely wiped

408
00:24:27,119 --> 00:24:31,440
Speaker 1: out as a result. Moving forward to Roman times, Tacitus

409
00:24:31,800 --> 00:24:35,480
Speaker 1: invented a way to use a predecessor of dice to

410
00:24:35,600 --> 00:24:41,080
Speaker 1: hide messages. So these these dice like things which I

411
00:24:41,119 --> 00:24:43,520
Speaker 1: can't remember the name now. It's like an estralla alley

412
00:24:43,640 --> 00:24:45,919
Speaker 1: or something like that. But I know I've totally mangled that,

413
00:24:46,000 --> 00:24:50,159
Speaker 1: so I apologize. But they had little holes drilled in them,

414
00:24:50,240 --> 00:24:54,760
Speaker 1: and you could string them together, and in this case, uh,

415
00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:57,879
Speaker 1: Tacitus was using them to string them together in specific

416
00:24:58,080 --> 00:25:01,960
Speaker 1: orders to relay different type some messages. But if anyone

417
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:03,600
Speaker 1: were stopped with them, they just looked like it was

418
00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:06,560
Speaker 1: a toy. It didn't look like it was anything of significance,

419
00:25:06,800 --> 00:25:09,040
Speaker 1: although they might play with it and mess up the message.

420
00:25:09,160 --> 00:25:11,320
Speaker 1: That Yeah, if you were to break the thread so

421
00:25:11,359 --> 00:25:13,680
Speaker 1: that they were no longer threaded together in the proper way,

422
00:25:13,720 --> 00:25:17,080
Speaker 1: then the message would be lost. Uh. This, by the way,

423
00:25:17,080 --> 00:25:20,360
Speaker 1: it would end up having a specific name a semigram,

424
00:25:20,400 --> 00:25:25,080
Speaker 1: because it is being used as a non text based message.

425
00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:28,399
Speaker 1: So you don't you don't translate it into texts so

426
00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:31,119
Speaker 1: much as you say, this series of symbols means this

427
00:25:31,240 --> 00:25:35,640
Speaker 1: particular thing. Uh. You also have a guy named Johannes

428
00:25:36,080 --> 00:25:40,320
Speaker 1: Trithmius in the Middle Ages, in the sixteenth century actually,

429
00:25:40,480 --> 00:25:46,200
Speaker 1: who wrote a book titled Steganograph Stega Nagraphia yes, which

430
00:25:46,520 --> 00:25:50,560
Speaker 1: was a stagram in and of itself, this I did

431
00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:53,960
Speaker 1: not know, which is pretty cool. Yeah. It outwardly it

432
00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:57,600
Speaker 1: seemed to be a series of writings on magic, but

433
00:25:57,960 --> 00:26:01,800
Speaker 1: in secret it contained a message on the treatise of Steganography.

434
00:26:02,359 --> 00:26:05,120
Speaker 1: That's now that's really cool that you're like, Okay, you've

435
00:26:05,119 --> 00:26:07,320
Speaker 1: gotta be smart enough to know that this is a

436
00:26:07,359 --> 00:26:10,919
Speaker 1: book about secret messages, because it itself is a secret message.

437
00:26:11,400 --> 00:26:14,160
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, really interesting, and then we can skip ahead.

438
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:18,359
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously these have been used repeatedly in multiple ways.

439
00:26:18,600 --> 00:26:20,919
Speaker 1: There's another great example that during World War One, the

440
00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:23,960
Speaker 1: German embassy in the United States sent a message to

441
00:26:24,040 --> 00:26:28,840
Speaker 1: Berlin that used what's called a null cipher. Null ciphers

442
00:26:28,880 --> 00:26:32,320
Speaker 1: are not very secure at all because once you know

443
00:26:32,480 --> 00:26:34,960
Speaker 1: that there's a possibility, it's very easy to find them.

444
00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:37,719
Speaker 1: But basically it's when you take the first letter of

445
00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:40,719
Speaker 1: each word in a message and that spells out a

446
00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:44,480
Speaker 1: new message. So here's an example that's often cited. I

447
00:26:44,520 --> 00:26:48,280
Speaker 1: don't know that this was ever actually sent as a message,

448
00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:51,440
Speaker 1: but it's always used as an example. Here's the the

449
00:26:51,520 --> 00:26:54,800
Speaker 1: full message, which was or the carrier message, if you will.

450
00:26:54,840 --> 00:26:59,800
Speaker 1: It was President's embargo ruling should have immediate notice. Graves

451
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:05,760
Speaker 1: situation affecting international law, statement for shadows ruin of many neutrals,

452
00:27:06,160 --> 00:27:10,600
Speaker 1: yellow journals, unifying national excitement immensely. See, they really had

453
00:27:10,640 --> 00:27:13,560
Speaker 1: me until the yellow journals. Like I was following that message,

454
00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:15,439
Speaker 1: I knew what they were trying to send. Well, they

455
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:18,119
Speaker 1: could have been talking about yellow journalism, but that's a

456
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:20,440
Speaker 1: different thing anyway, and you wouldn't know why a German

457
00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:22,320
Speaker 1: embassy would write about it. But at any rate, the

458
00:27:22,359 --> 00:27:26,280
Speaker 1: secret message, if you take those first letters, says Pershing

459
00:27:26,640 --> 00:27:32,520
Speaker 1: sales from n y New York, June first or June I,

460
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:35,639
Speaker 1: upper case I. So Pershing was the U. S General

461
00:27:35,640 --> 00:27:39,200
Speaker 1: who led American the American expeditionary forces in World War One.

462
00:27:39,480 --> 00:27:41,720
Speaker 1: So this would be a message from German, the German

463
00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:45,760
Speaker 1: embassy to Germany saying, Hey, this American general is sailing

464
00:27:45,760 --> 00:27:48,639
Speaker 1: out of New York on this date. Expect him to

465
00:27:48,680 --> 00:27:51,800
Speaker 1: be in the in the European theater within several weeks.

466
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:54,800
Speaker 1: That kind of thing. Uh. And now we'll talk about

467
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:57,760
Speaker 1: some of the types of steganography, because there's a whole

468
00:27:57,760 --> 00:28:01,200
Speaker 1: bunch of because really, any way that you can hide

469
00:28:01,240 --> 00:28:05,400
Speaker 1: a message inside something is technically steganography. So these are

470
00:28:05,480 --> 00:28:08,200
Speaker 1: just some examples. Really, it's not an exhaustive list because

471
00:28:08,359 --> 00:28:11,920
Speaker 1: that would be impossible. For instance, uh, there's the old

472
00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:15,159
Speaker 1: Greek ways we talked about um in in history of

473
00:28:15,240 --> 00:28:19,479
Speaker 1: hiding something inside or under something. Great example is in

474
00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:23,119
Speaker 1: the Second World War, the British Secret Service hid escape

475
00:28:23,200 --> 00:28:25,800
Speaker 1: kit pieces in monopoly games and sent them to the

476
00:28:25,840 --> 00:28:29,720
Speaker 1: prisoners of war in Germany along with Red Cross supplies. Yeah,

477
00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:33,560
Speaker 1: so you could you get these deliveries if you're a

478
00:28:33,600 --> 00:28:35,360
Speaker 1: prisoner of war, and you know, the Germans would say,

479
00:28:35,359 --> 00:28:38,280
Speaker 1: all right, well this is just humanitarian aid or whatever,

480
00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:40,920
Speaker 1: and as long as it keeps the prisoners mollified, then

481
00:28:40,960 --> 00:28:43,680
Speaker 1: we'll go ahead and give them to them, not realizing

482
00:28:43,680 --> 00:28:46,200
Speaker 1: that they were supplying the prisoners with the very tools

483
00:28:46,240 --> 00:28:48,440
Speaker 1: the prisoners might be able to use to break free,

484
00:28:48,840 --> 00:28:51,920
Speaker 1: which is pretty interesting. And by when the prisoners break free,

485
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:57,040
Speaker 1: did they have egg on their face? So the semigrams

486
00:28:57,040 --> 00:28:59,840
Speaker 1: I talked about earlier, the dice that are threatened together,

487
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:02,400
Speaker 1: that's just one example that could be in lots of

488
00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:07,120
Speaker 1: different versions, like iconography or signs or photographs, or even

489
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:09,800
Speaker 1: like the placement of items on a desk. So let's

490
00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:12,520
Speaker 1: say I've got I could have a webcam set up

491
00:29:12,800 --> 00:29:16,360
Speaker 1: on my desk, for example, so that people who log

492
00:29:16,440 --> 00:29:19,400
Speaker 1: into the web could see me, you know, theoretically just

493
00:29:19,560 --> 00:29:22,600
Speaker 1: working at work like that's all I'm doing. But maybe

494
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:26,160
Speaker 1: depending upon where my coffee cup is, or depending upon

495
00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:29,120
Speaker 1: where a certain stack of papers happened to be, that

496
00:29:29,240 --> 00:29:33,040
Speaker 1: might be an actual message itself. So Ariel looking at

497
00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:36,720
Speaker 1: the webcam might say, oh, well, Jonathan's gonna go to

498
00:29:37,360 --> 00:29:41,200
Speaker 1: Manual's Tavern today because I see where the combination of

499
00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:43,280
Speaker 1: stuff is. I don't know why I would secretly be

500
00:29:43,360 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: telling you that, because all of your fans trying to

501
00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:50,240
Speaker 1: follow you. Yeah, that's it. I'm surrounded by the thronging fans.

502
00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:53,680
Speaker 1: Who And Manual's Tavern is such a low profile place, right.

503
00:29:54,320 --> 00:29:56,600
Speaker 1: Uh that's by the way, if you're not from Atlanta

504
00:29:56,880 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: or never been here, Manual's Tavern is a very popular

505
00:29:59,600 --> 00:30:05,239
Speaker 1: spot for artists and and playwrights and political fans and

506
00:30:05,560 --> 00:30:09,720
Speaker 1: sports figures. Political figures. Yeah, President Obama came here recently,

507
00:30:10,160 --> 00:30:12,840
Speaker 1: and it's just kind of it's kind of like a

508
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:16,160
Speaker 1: like I think of it like cheers. Yeah, it's really

509
00:30:16,160 --> 00:30:18,920
Speaker 1: like cheers with chickens. On the roof. Yeah, yeah, there

510
00:30:18,920 --> 00:30:21,280
Speaker 1: are chickens on the roof. That that's not it's not

511
00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:25,160
Speaker 1: a joke. They use their eggs for breakfast, they do.

512
00:30:26,080 --> 00:30:30,000
Speaker 1: Another example would be the car done grill. It sounds

513
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:31,959
Speaker 1: like a good restaurant. It does, doesn't it. It's a

514
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:35,120
Speaker 1: classic example. I was first proposed in the fifteenth century.

515
00:30:35,160 --> 00:30:37,520
Speaker 1: So here's how it works. You've probably seen this. So

516
00:30:37,600 --> 00:30:40,720
Speaker 1: you take a sheet of clean paper or in the

517
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:43,440
Speaker 1: case of the Middle Ages, parchment, and you set that down.

518
00:30:43,720 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 1: You take a second sheet and you cut little holes

519
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:49,720
Speaker 1: in that sheet and strategic places. You lay the second

520
00:30:49,800 --> 00:30:52,520
Speaker 1: sheet on top of the first sheet, and then you

521
00:30:52,600 --> 00:30:55,560
Speaker 1: write in your secret message in those holes, using the

522
00:30:55,600 --> 00:30:58,480
Speaker 1: holes as kind of like almost like a stencil. And

523
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:01,280
Speaker 1: so it's only bits and pieces. Sometimes sometimes it might

524
00:31:01,280 --> 00:31:03,440
Speaker 1: be a word. Sometimes it might just be a single letter.

525
00:31:03,800 --> 00:31:06,959
Speaker 1: But you do that throughout, using the holes as your

526
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:09,880
Speaker 1: guide to write the secret message. Then you take your

527
00:31:09,960 --> 00:31:13,960
Speaker 1: stencil off and you write in the You fill in

528
00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:16,080
Speaker 1: the rest of the space with a boring message. That

529
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:19,880
Speaker 1: means you know very little in the grand scheme of things.

530
00:31:19,920 --> 00:31:25,160
Speaker 1: So only someone who would have a part a comparable stencil,

531
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:27,520
Speaker 1: so something that they have a sheet of paper that

532
00:31:27,560 --> 00:31:30,040
Speaker 1: has the same general holes cut out of it. They

533
00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:32,719
Speaker 1: could lay that on top of the full message and

534
00:31:32,760 --> 00:31:36,440
Speaker 1: read the secret message that's underneath. I actually tried to

535
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:39,560
Speaker 1: make a card and grill a while back back when

536
00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:41,720
Speaker 1: I was in school and do a secret message like that.

537
00:31:41,800 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 1: It is harder than I imagined it would be because

538
00:31:44,440 --> 00:31:46,720
Speaker 1: once you put your secret message in, you then have

539
00:31:46,760 --> 00:31:49,240
Speaker 1: to make sure the rest of your message lines up right.

540
00:31:49,520 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: You have to make it make enough sense, like how

541
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:54,680
Speaker 1: do you plan out the rest of your message so

542
00:31:54,760 --> 00:31:57,880
Speaker 1: that you can do this unless you are to create

543
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:01,840
Speaker 1: a message from the very beginning, and then you create

544
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:05,480
Speaker 1: a grill that fits on top of your existing message

545
00:32:05,520 --> 00:32:08,160
Speaker 1: that shows what which words are the most important, and

546
00:32:08,200 --> 00:32:10,560
Speaker 1: then you send it. But then you've got to figure out, well,

547
00:32:10,600 --> 00:32:12,600
Speaker 1: how do I get how do I get the grill?

548
00:32:13,360 --> 00:32:16,920
Speaker 1: How do I get the the stencil to the person

549
00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:18,680
Speaker 1: I need to send it to? Because if I send both,

550
00:32:18,720 --> 00:32:22,080
Speaker 1: then clearly the jig is up, you know, So it

551
00:32:22,160 --> 00:32:25,680
Speaker 1: is a little tricky. I love this next one You've got. Yeah,

552
00:32:25,720 --> 00:32:28,640
Speaker 1: this next one. I had to double check it because

553
00:32:28,680 --> 00:32:31,760
Speaker 1: I didn't think it was possibly real. But people would

554
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:35,520
Speaker 1: knit Morris code into garments and then send those garments

555
00:32:35,520 --> 00:32:38,920
Speaker 1: on the couriers for people to decipher. And you think

556
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:41,640
Speaker 1: it was just like a knit line of Yeah, just

557
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:44,760
Speaker 1: a pattern, just a pattern, yea on clothing. I think

558
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:46,400
Speaker 1: that's super cool. I want to start doing that when

559
00:32:46,440 --> 00:32:48,400
Speaker 1: I have kids, I'm gonna knit Morse code into all

560
00:32:48,400 --> 00:32:50,800
Speaker 1: their clothes. They'll be fantastic things like things like do

561
00:32:50,880 --> 00:32:57,120
Speaker 1: your chores if this child is found. Well, that's a

562
00:32:58,400 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 1: I like that you expect eyes to come across your

563
00:33:01,360 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: children because I can't think of anyone else who typically

564
00:33:03,720 --> 00:33:07,360
Speaker 1: uses Morse code on a frequent basis. Uh. I like

565
00:33:07,440 --> 00:33:09,640
Speaker 1: the next one too, which is also pretty cool, the

566
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:13,000
Speaker 1: idea that just through through formatting a document, you can

567
00:33:13,040 --> 00:33:16,719
Speaker 1: create a secret message. Yeah, you can add an extra space,

568
00:33:16,840 --> 00:33:19,920
Speaker 1: which most people don't notice. I do a lot of

569
00:33:20,040 --> 00:33:23,120
Speaker 1: editing at my job, and so I often see extra

570
00:33:23,160 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 1: spaces at before after a period, or before a certain word,

571
00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:29,320
Speaker 1: like before a hyphen or after a hyphen. But you

572
00:33:29,320 --> 00:33:32,600
Speaker 1: can add those extra spaces before the important words in

573
00:33:32,680 --> 00:33:34,680
Speaker 1: any word that you find that has an extra space before.

574
00:33:34,960 --> 00:33:38,000
Speaker 1: That's part of your cipher. Nice. I've also seen where

575
00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:41,680
Speaker 1: you could do things like subtly change the font, yes,

576
00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:44,720
Speaker 1: like really subtle, like courier to courier new which is

577
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:48,400
Speaker 1: and a casual glance it looks the same, but if

578
00:33:48,400 --> 00:33:51,880
Speaker 1: you're paying attention, you can tell the difference, and thus

579
00:33:52,000 --> 00:33:55,240
Speaker 1: you put the important words in the different font. And

580
00:33:55,280 --> 00:33:57,560
Speaker 1: as long as the messages, like as long as your

581
00:33:57,600 --> 00:34:00,680
Speaker 1: carrier message is long enough and your secret message is

582
00:34:00,760 --> 00:34:03,760
Speaker 1: short enough, people are probably not going to pick up

583
00:34:03,760 --> 00:34:07,000
Speaker 1: on it. You can also vaguely change the skew as well.

584
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:09,399
Speaker 1: That that one's a little bit more noticeable, right, right,

585
00:34:09,719 --> 00:34:12,239
Speaker 1: So it's you know, some of these again can get

586
00:34:12,400 --> 00:34:15,080
Speaker 1: pretty risky if your secret message is pretty long. This

587
00:34:15,160 --> 00:34:19,160
Speaker 1: is true in general, right, The longer your carrier message,

588
00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:22,600
Speaker 1: the more secure the secret is going to be, assuming

589
00:34:22,600 --> 00:34:25,920
Speaker 1: that the secret is not itself very long. If I have, like,

590
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:28,399
Speaker 1: if I'm trying to hide a secret message in a tweet,

591
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:30,359
Speaker 1: that's gonna be hard because they only have a hundred

592
00:34:30,440 --> 00:34:33,040
Speaker 1: forty characters to start with. Yeah, and then if I'm

593
00:34:33,040 --> 00:34:35,839
Speaker 1: trying to hide a message in that, then it has

594
00:34:35,880 --> 00:34:38,440
Speaker 1: to be a pretty small message. Otherwise it's just gonna

595
00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:41,000
Speaker 1: look like a tweet. It would probably have to be

596
00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:48,200
Speaker 1: a cryptogram, yeah, where individual letters mean full things. Or right,

597
00:34:48,360 --> 00:34:51,600
Speaker 1: or or like just a regular code where someone has

598
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:54,680
Speaker 1: a codebook and they know that when I use this

599
00:34:54,760 --> 00:34:58,400
Speaker 1: word that that means something else. Yeah, in that case,

600
00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:00,040
Speaker 1: that would that would be more of a code and

601
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:04,120
Speaker 1: ah than than a secret message in this sense. But

602
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:06,719
Speaker 1: there are the ones too. There's also an invisible ink,

603
00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:09,799
Speaker 1: which is a thing. People have actually used it for

604
00:35:09,880 --> 00:35:14,320
Speaker 1: reals and also it's usually called sympathetic inc in the biz.

605
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 1: Because you would have a regular message written out in

606
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:20,319
Speaker 1: normal inc that would have, you know, very boring, you know,

607
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:23,280
Speaker 1: no reason to raise suspicion. You would write the actual

608
00:35:23,360 --> 00:35:25,920
Speaker 1: secret message and invisible ink kind of between the lines,

609
00:35:26,520 --> 00:35:28,279
Speaker 1: and then the person who receives it would have to

610
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:30,560
Speaker 1: treat it. However they need to treat it, usually like

611
00:35:30,719 --> 00:35:33,400
Speaker 1: adding a little heat or maybe adding a certain chemical

612
00:35:33,760 --> 00:35:36,200
Speaker 1: to bring out the invisible ink so that you can

613
00:35:36,400 --> 00:35:39,040
Speaker 1: make it legible, and then you would be able to

614
00:35:39,040 --> 00:35:42,839
Speaker 1: read the secret stuff. And another way to hide messages

615
00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:47,359
Speaker 1: would be through photography. Yeah, like the Pueblo incident, which

616
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:49,440
Speaker 1: as far as stagonography goes, is kind of like a

617
00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:54,520
Speaker 1: semigram where uh crew of the USS Pueblo was captured

618
00:35:54,560 --> 00:35:58,080
Speaker 1: by North Korea right before the Vietnam War. They were

619
00:35:58,600 --> 00:36:01,759
Speaker 1: an electronic intelligent ship and they were forced to take

620
00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:05,000
Speaker 1: propaganda photos, and in those propaganda photos, they all rested

621
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:06,719
Speaker 1: with their hands on their faces or their shoulders in

622
00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:09,560
Speaker 1: a very nonchalant way, and it was actually a code

623
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:13,880
Speaker 1: for the US to decipher. That's pretty incredible. It really

624
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:17,120
Speaker 1: is so similar to what I was describing with the webcam,

625
00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:22,120
Speaker 1: the idea of just having this this foresight that you

626
00:36:22,120 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 1: know clearly you thought ahead, so that the person who

627
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:28,640
Speaker 1: sees it knows what the meaning is behind whatever you're

628
00:36:29,040 --> 00:36:31,560
Speaker 1: whatever the images. Yes, and there there there are more

629
00:36:31,600 --> 00:36:35,280
Speaker 1: complicated versions of that. For instance, there you can systematically

630
00:36:35,440 --> 00:36:39,759
Speaker 1: change pixel colors to correspond with letters in the alphabet

631
00:36:39,960 --> 00:36:43,480
Speaker 1: and then only change like the first pixel every square

632
00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:47,280
Speaker 1: centimeter or millimeter in photo or every so many lines,

633
00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:50,319
Speaker 1: and people can get the message that way. That. Yeah,

634
00:36:50,360 --> 00:36:53,960
Speaker 1: that's definitely really very subtle, especially you know if you're

635
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:56,720
Speaker 1: using things like black and white photos, where you can

636
00:36:56,840 --> 00:36:59,279
Speaker 1: you can change those things and they're not called out

637
00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:03,360
Speaker 1: as much, because you could make it like a square

638
00:37:03,400 --> 00:37:06,319
Speaker 1: that was going to be very dark a much lighter gray,

639
00:37:06,360 --> 00:37:08,600
Speaker 1: and if you know what to look for, then you

640
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:11,200
Speaker 1: could see the pattern but otherwise you might just think, oh,

641
00:37:11,400 --> 00:37:14,279
Speaker 1: this is just poor developing or whatever. It's it's the

642
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 1: it's a graininess of the photo. Um. You could use

643
00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:20,799
Speaker 1: an existing piece of text, like a newspaper. This was

644
00:37:20,920 --> 00:37:23,399
Speaker 1: used during the Cold War all the time, where uh

645
00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:27,759
Speaker 1: you would use like a pen to put tiny holes

646
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:31,120
Speaker 1: above important letters, and then so you would grab the

647
00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:32,920
Speaker 1: newspaper hold it up so you can see where the

648
00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:35,600
Speaker 1: holes were, and that would give you the letters to

649
00:37:35,680 --> 00:37:38,120
Speaker 1: spell out or sometimes a full word to spell out

650
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:41,960
Speaker 1: whatever the secret message was. UM. Or you might use

651
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:44,040
Speaker 1: a dot with invisible ink if you wanted to make

652
00:37:44,040 --> 00:37:46,520
Speaker 1: sure people like could pick up the newspaper and hold

653
00:37:46,600 --> 00:37:50,239
Speaker 1: it up and not see light coming through at strategic locations.

654
00:37:51,080 --> 00:37:52,640
Speaker 1: But then of course you would have to treat the

655
00:37:53,200 --> 00:37:55,719
Speaker 1: newspaper to whatever it was that you know, would bring

656
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:58,880
Speaker 1: the invisible inc ounts are really important and steagatography like

657
00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:03,240
Speaker 1: they're used in many way. Yeah, yeah, there's I actually

658
00:38:03,280 --> 00:38:05,640
Speaker 1: got to see examples of this because I went to

659
00:38:05,719 --> 00:38:09,440
Speaker 1: the Spy Museum which is in Washington, d C. And

660
00:38:09,480 --> 00:38:13,520
Speaker 1: they had examples of micro dots. And micro dots are

661
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:16,480
Speaker 1: kind of think of it like micro film. It's tiny

662
00:38:16,600 --> 00:38:20,279
Speaker 1: little bits of film that look like a period. That's

663
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:23,120
Speaker 1: how small they are. And unless you were to hold

664
00:38:23,160 --> 00:38:25,600
Speaker 1: it up and see that it was in fact film

665
00:38:25,760 --> 00:38:29,680
Speaker 1: and not just a solid blob of ink, you would

666
00:38:29,680 --> 00:38:32,759
Speaker 1: never have suspected of being anything other than a punctuation mark.

667
00:38:33,480 --> 00:38:37,040
Speaker 1: And it can hold an incredible amount of information because

668
00:38:37,440 --> 00:38:39,680
Speaker 1: you know they're There are ways to enlarge photos. We're

669
00:38:39,680 --> 00:38:43,640
Speaker 1: talking about the old film style, right. This doesn't mean

670
00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:46,600
Speaker 1: you can do it digitally too, but we're talking old school.

671
00:38:47,280 --> 00:38:49,720
Speaker 1: So there are ways where you could take a photo

672
00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:51,200
Speaker 1: and then blow it up and blow it up and

673
00:38:51,239 --> 00:38:53,320
Speaker 1: blow it up so that you get like a poster

674
00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:55,799
Speaker 1: size or larger. Well, there are also ways where you

675
00:38:55,800 --> 00:38:57,640
Speaker 1: could shrink it down and shrink it down and shrink

676
00:38:57,640 --> 00:39:00,759
Speaker 1: it down, and uh, I was reading one way that

677
00:39:00,840 --> 00:39:03,279
Speaker 1: cuts so technical that I gave up on the chance

678
00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:06,720
Speaker 1: of trying to even describe it. But ultimately they said

679
00:39:07,520 --> 00:39:12,719
Speaker 1: it was two hundred and ten times smaller than the

680
00:39:12,760 --> 00:39:16,040
Speaker 1: original photograph. And so you could take a picture of

681
00:39:16,080 --> 00:39:19,200
Speaker 1: say a document, top secret document, and then you shrink

682
00:39:19,239 --> 00:39:21,000
Speaker 1: it down to this size so it looks like it's

683
00:39:21,040 --> 00:39:23,400
Speaker 1: a you know, a period. You just cut out a

684
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:26,439
Speaker 1: little piece of the paper, you insert this in and

685
00:39:26,719 --> 00:39:29,320
Speaker 1: to casual glance, it seems like it's just a regular

686
00:39:29,360 --> 00:39:33,840
Speaker 1: sheet of paper with punctuation. But when you are in

687
00:39:33,880 --> 00:39:36,240
Speaker 1: the right hands, which might be the wrong hands, depending

688
00:39:36,239 --> 00:39:39,319
Speaker 1: on what side you're on, then you can find out, um,

689
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:41,960
Speaker 1: what is actually there. This was a process that was

690
00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:46,160
Speaker 1: created by a man named Emmanuel goldberg Um and used

691
00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:50,640
Speaker 1: it for spying, and very popular, particularly amongst Soviet Union

692
00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:53,799
Speaker 1: spies at the time. I would imagine nowadays if you

693
00:39:54,080 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: used micro dots in a digital format, it would be

694
00:39:56,560 --> 00:39:59,000
Speaker 1: a lot harder to detect because you couldn't hold up

695
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:02,359
Speaker 1: the paper and see the something was amiss, Yeah, yeah,

696
00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:08,399
Speaker 1: it was. It's the game has changed significantly, and by

697
00:40:08,400 --> 00:40:10,759
Speaker 1: this time, obviously we're talking about something a lot more

698
00:40:10,800 --> 00:40:17,400
Speaker 1: subtle than a dead rabbit. Yeah. But but sometimes we

699
00:40:17,440 --> 00:40:19,720
Speaker 1: can have things that are just as irritating as maybe

700
00:40:19,719 --> 00:40:22,160
Speaker 1: a dead rabbit would be, such as spam the mickry

701
00:40:22,640 --> 00:40:26,400
Speaker 1: uh disguising messages that you want to send as spam

702
00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:30,400
Speaker 1: emails or nonsensical musings or what not. You do this

703
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:33,600
Speaker 1: by messing up the placement of the punctuation, or the

704
00:40:33,600 --> 00:40:35,799
Speaker 1: type of the fonts, or the grammar of the message.

705
00:40:36,160 --> 00:40:38,960
Speaker 1: As a means to communicating the secret. Yeah, I love this.

706
00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:42,720
Speaker 1: I actually saw an example of this where, uh, someone

707
00:40:42,960 --> 00:40:47,160
Speaker 1: used grammar as the key indicator, and so you would

708
00:40:47,200 --> 00:40:50,360
Speaker 1: read the message and whenever you found a grammatical error,

709
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:52,759
Speaker 1: that was actually an indicator that this is where you

710
00:40:52,760 --> 00:40:56,439
Speaker 1: need to pay attention. Uh, that was kind of interesting. Well,

711
00:40:56,960 --> 00:40:59,239
Speaker 1: you would think it would be easy to decipher, but

712
00:40:59,400 --> 00:41:02,759
Speaker 1: with as much spam email as everybody gets nowadays, you

713
00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:05,000
Speaker 1: don't even think to look, well, right, yeah, you just

714
00:41:05,480 --> 00:41:08,239
Speaker 1: especially if you were to broadcast this, so that it's

715
00:41:08,280 --> 00:41:11,600
Speaker 1: not something that just one person gets, because again, we're

716
00:41:11,640 --> 00:41:14,520
Speaker 1: all used to getting that spam. Most of us would

717
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:16,879
Speaker 1: never even look twice at it. We would just see, oh,

718
00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:21,080
Speaker 1: spam message deleted. So you could actually have security by

719
00:41:21,160 --> 00:41:24,240
Speaker 1: sending it to lots of people, because then it looks

720
00:41:24,280 --> 00:41:27,360
Speaker 1: like it's quote unquote legitimate spam. That seems like a

721
00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:29,680
Speaker 1: weird thing to say, but that's that's where it is.

722
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:34,600
Speaker 1: Now we're getting into the more modern versions where this

723
00:41:34,680 --> 00:41:37,520
Speaker 1: is where we need things like a disk analysis software

724
00:41:37,560 --> 00:41:40,160
Speaker 1: in order to discover it. We have a little bit

725
00:41:40,160 --> 00:41:42,480
Speaker 1: more to say about steganography, but before we get to that,

726
00:41:42,560 --> 00:41:53,799
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. So digital files. Let's talk

727
00:41:53,840 --> 00:41:56,840
Speaker 1: about these in general, and this can refer to pretty

728
00:41:56,880 --> 00:42:00,880
Speaker 1: much any kind of digital file like audio, video, images,

729
00:42:01,360 --> 00:42:04,640
Speaker 1: any of that sort of stuff. So we all know

730
00:42:04,760 --> 00:42:07,919
Speaker 1: digital files are made up ultimately of strings of ones

731
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:11,640
Speaker 1: and zeros. Yeah, so here's the thing. Some of those

732
00:42:11,640 --> 00:42:14,680
Speaker 1: bits are more important than others. Not all bits are equal.

733
00:42:15,400 --> 00:42:18,719
Speaker 1: Some of those bits are not so important. So if

734
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:22,440
Speaker 1: you were to pick the least significant bits or l

735
00:42:22,600 --> 00:42:24,919
Speaker 1: s B s, you can do something called the least

736
00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:29,439
Speaker 1: significant bit insertion, which is where you alter a bit,

737
00:42:30,280 --> 00:42:34,200
Speaker 1: and by altering a series of bits, you can create

738
00:42:34,280 --> 00:42:39,000
Speaker 1: a message. Now, it takes several bits to make just

739
00:42:39,200 --> 00:42:42,440
Speaker 1: one character in the alphabet, so you have to be

740
00:42:42,600 --> 00:42:45,520
Speaker 1: very succinct with your messages because the more of these

741
00:42:45,560 --> 00:42:48,560
Speaker 1: you mess up, the more likely that will it will

742
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:53,880
Speaker 1: be detectable by somebody who's paying really close attention, either

743
00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:58,000
Speaker 1: close attention to your activities or close attention to the file.

744
00:42:58,640 --> 00:43:01,279
Speaker 1: So if you do it well, and you and you're

745
00:43:01,440 --> 00:43:05,000
Speaker 1: very careful with it, most people are never gonna notice.

746
00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 1: And this is what we talk about when someone posts

747
00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:10,440
Speaker 1: an image to a public forum and there's a hidden

748
00:43:10,440 --> 00:43:16,480
Speaker 1: message in those bits. Uh Yeah, And generally speaking, you

749
00:43:16,480 --> 00:43:18,600
Speaker 1: want to go. If you're making one of these, you

750
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:21,480
Speaker 1: want to go with a lossless format as opposed to

751
00:43:21,600 --> 00:43:26,120
Speaker 1: lossy compressed versions, because technically you would normally create this

752
00:43:26,120 --> 00:43:30,120
Speaker 1: this message in the lossless fine style and put it

753
00:43:30,160 --> 00:43:32,680
Speaker 1: in there and then allow it to be compressed. So

754
00:43:32,840 --> 00:43:35,600
Speaker 1: if it's a lossless format that then is compressed, you

755
00:43:35,600 --> 00:43:39,839
Speaker 1: don't lose any information that way. Uh. These compression algorithms

756
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:42,600
Speaker 1: are very good at keeping the original information in tact,

757
00:43:42,680 --> 00:43:44,239
Speaker 1: so that way you know your message is not going

758
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:48,480
Speaker 1: to get altered lossy formats. The way lossy formats work

759
00:43:48,560 --> 00:43:51,600
Speaker 1: is they look for information that doesn't seem important and

760
00:43:51,600 --> 00:43:53,759
Speaker 1: then they drop it, and that's one of the ways

761
00:43:53,760 --> 00:43:56,640
Speaker 1: they compressed the file size. So if you put a

762
00:43:56,719 --> 00:43:59,160
Speaker 1: secret message in a file that's then going to be

763
00:43:59,200 --> 00:44:02,200
Speaker 1: compressed in this way, your secret message could be part

764
00:44:02,239 --> 00:44:04,680
Speaker 1: of the stuff that gets dropped or altered and then

765
00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:07,399
Speaker 1: you can't communicate. So if you do want to post

766
00:44:07,480 --> 00:44:09,520
Speaker 1: a picture with a secret message on Facebook, you should

767
00:44:09,560 --> 00:44:11,640
Speaker 1: use a gift instead of a j pick right, unless

768
00:44:11,719 --> 00:44:15,040
Speaker 1: you insist on pronouncing it Jeff, in which case I

769
00:44:15,040 --> 00:44:16,640
Speaker 1: don't even want to talk to you. Did I say

770
00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:19,799
Speaker 1: you said gifts? Thank goodness. See that's the way I

771
00:44:19,840 --> 00:44:22,439
Speaker 1: pronounce it too. I don't because it if you put

772
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:23,960
Speaker 1: a T at the end of that, it's a gift

773
00:44:24,840 --> 00:44:27,960
Speaker 1: and G stands for graphic. That's a good sound, not

774
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:31,560
Speaker 1: a Jiuh, don't get me. But that's again not the

775
00:44:31,600 --> 00:44:34,640
Speaker 1: only type of digital information that could be altered, right, yeah,

776
00:44:34,680 --> 00:44:37,040
Speaker 1: I mean you can also alter the audio files. I

777
00:44:37,080 --> 00:44:39,759
Speaker 1: think we talked about this already. By yeah, I mean

778
00:44:40,239 --> 00:44:43,040
Speaker 1: not just not just digital audio, like not just m

779
00:44:43,120 --> 00:44:47,720
Speaker 1: P three but even void calls, voice over Internet protocol calls. Yeah,

780
00:44:47,800 --> 00:44:51,400
Speaker 1: you could. And there's also water market. Yes, there is

781
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:55,640
Speaker 1: digital water marking, which is used to protect intellectual property

782
00:44:55,760 --> 00:44:59,080
Speaker 1: and by embedding information like the creator and the copyright

783
00:44:59,080 --> 00:45:02,520
Speaker 1: and et cetera into the file. Um. And that way,

784
00:45:02,560 --> 00:45:05,120
Speaker 1: if people try to claim it as their own, they

785
00:45:05,120 --> 00:45:07,399
Speaker 1: could say, nope, here's my water mark. See it's got

786
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:10,040
Speaker 1: all my little information in there. Sure. Um. They also

787
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:13,640
Speaker 1: use digital water water marking in a method called fingerprinting,

788
00:45:13,920 --> 00:45:17,880
Speaker 1: where they put a different, unique water mark on each

789
00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:21,200
Speaker 1: copy of the document or information they send out. And

790
00:45:21,320 --> 00:45:23,480
Speaker 1: that way, if someone tries to copy it or send

791
00:45:23,480 --> 00:45:25,960
Speaker 1: it out themselves to people who shouldn't get it, they

792
00:45:25,960 --> 00:45:28,959
Speaker 1: can say, oh, all of these have that unique water mark,

793
00:45:29,520 --> 00:45:32,440
Speaker 1: so we know who sent it. Bobby's in trouble because

794
00:45:32,560 --> 00:45:34,960
Speaker 1: this is the version that we sent to Bobby, and

795
00:45:35,000 --> 00:45:38,440
Speaker 1: everyone else got a different uh digital watermarks, so we

796
00:45:38,560 --> 00:45:41,359
Speaker 1: narrowed it down. We know who is at fault, or

797
00:45:41,400 --> 00:45:44,960
Speaker 1: we know who was compromised. Their security might have been compromised.

798
00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:49,560
Speaker 1: That's really cool. Uh yeah, then we've got subliminal channels,

799
00:45:49,600 --> 00:45:52,120
Speaker 1: which is not probably what you think it is. It

800
00:45:52,880 --> 00:45:56,759
Speaker 1: isn't like messages secretly in movies or playing my music

801
00:45:56,760 --> 00:45:58,880
Speaker 1: back where there's nothing like that. No, it's not like

802
00:45:58,960 --> 00:46:02,120
Speaker 1: John is dead, missing Miss Simmons, none of that. Uh. Now,

803
00:46:02,120 --> 00:46:06,560
Speaker 1: this is something that was proposed in by a mathematician

804
00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:13,280
Speaker 1: and cryptographer named Gustavus J. Simmons Uh and Simmons poet

805
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:17,800
Speaker 1: proposed something called the prisoners problem, and it's a thought experiment.

806
00:46:17,800 --> 00:46:20,160
Speaker 1: This is the way the thought experiment works. You've got

807
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:24,640
Speaker 1: two accomplices who are captured during the while they're trying

808
00:46:24,640 --> 00:46:28,960
Speaker 1: to commit a crime. Okay, Bob and Jen Narcott. Usually

809
00:46:28,960 --> 00:46:30,960
Speaker 1: it's Bob and Alice actually, so we got half of

810
00:46:31,000 --> 00:46:34,719
Speaker 1: them already. But Bob and Jennaricott. Uh, and there put

811
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:37,760
Speaker 1: into the same jail, but Bob is put in one cell.

812
00:46:38,120 --> 00:46:40,200
Speaker 1: Jen has put on a cell on the opposite end

813
00:46:40,200 --> 00:46:41,759
Speaker 1: of the jail, so there's no way for them to

814
00:46:41,760 --> 00:46:47,040
Speaker 1: communicate directly. The warden is told, hey, these two want

815
00:46:47,040 --> 00:46:49,480
Speaker 1: to be able to talk. What how do we do that?

816
00:46:49,800 --> 00:46:52,600
Speaker 1: And the warden says, all right, here's the deal. You

817
00:46:52,719 --> 00:46:55,200
Speaker 1: will be allowed to communicate to each other, but I

818
00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:58,279
Speaker 1: get to see everything you send to one another. So

819
00:46:58,360 --> 00:47:01,759
Speaker 1: that way, if there's any messages about trying to break

820
00:47:01,760 --> 00:47:03,640
Speaker 1: out of jail, I'm going to get it immediately and

821
00:47:03,640 --> 00:47:05,960
Speaker 1: you're gonna be stopped. That's a nice warden, because I'd

822
00:47:05,960 --> 00:47:07,359
Speaker 1: just be like, you guys can't talk to each other,

823
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:10,200
Speaker 1: deal with it. It gets nicer actually because Bob and

824
00:47:10,280 --> 00:47:13,320
Speaker 1: Jen say, all right, but we want to make sure

825
00:47:13,719 --> 00:47:18,040
Speaker 1: that our messages are genuinely coming from the other person.

826
00:47:18,680 --> 00:47:20,839
Speaker 1: And we want, in other words, we want to make

827
00:47:20,840 --> 00:47:24,120
Speaker 1: sure that you, Mr Warden, aren't going in and messing

828
00:47:24,200 --> 00:47:26,759
Speaker 1: up our messages. So we want to be able to

829
00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:30,560
Speaker 1: authenticate that our messages come from each other. So we

830
00:47:30,600 --> 00:47:32,400
Speaker 1: have to we want to be able to come up

831
00:47:32,440 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 1: with a way to say it's essentially a signature to

832
00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:38,800
Speaker 1: say yes, this actually came from Bob, or yes this

833
00:47:38,920 --> 00:47:42,600
Speaker 1: actually came from Jen, and the warden says, well, all right,

834
00:47:42,840 --> 00:47:45,359
Speaker 1: if you if you agree to my terms, I agree

835
00:47:45,400 --> 00:47:48,720
Speaker 1: to your terms. We can all do this. What Simmons

836
00:47:48,760 --> 00:47:51,360
Speaker 1: said was, if you're willing to give up a little

837
00:47:51,400 --> 00:47:55,440
Speaker 1: of that authentication security, you could take some of the

838
00:47:55,520 --> 00:48:00,399
Speaker 1: authentication message. Let's say that it's one fifth as long

839
00:48:00,520 --> 00:48:04,279
Speaker 1: as your actual message. Still would be really long for authentication,

840
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:08,160
Speaker 1: but let's say so let's say that then you change

841
00:48:08,200 --> 00:48:11,200
Speaker 1: some of that authentication which normally would look like it's random,

842
00:48:11,400 --> 00:48:14,840
Speaker 1: like it's supposed to look random, so that way, uh,

843
00:48:14,880 --> 00:48:17,719
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's not if it's predetermined in a

844
00:48:17,760 --> 00:48:20,319
Speaker 1: way that everyone knows about, like if everyone knows the

845
00:48:20,400 --> 00:48:25,280
Speaker 1: key and the algorithm, then there's no authentication there. Uh.

846
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:28,280
Speaker 1: But instead of it actually being random, it just looks random,

847
00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:31,960
Speaker 1: and you've actually changed some of the authentication message so

848
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:34,560
Speaker 1: that that's where the secret messages. It's not within the

849
00:48:34,600 --> 00:48:38,560
Speaker 1: body of the actual message, it's in the authentication. Uh.

850
00:48:38,640 --> 00:48:41,279
Speaker 1: Now that was just a thought experiment, but turned out

851
00:48:41,280 --> 00:48:44,400
Speaker 1: that that's actually the way. A lot of this is

852
00:48:44,719 --> 00:48:48,319
Speaker 1: a lot of uh, steganography happens today too, is that

853
00:48:48,400 --> 00:48:50,799
Speaker 1: it ends up being in the authentication kind of like

854
00:48:50,840 --> 00:48:53,920
Speaker 1: the digital water mark, rather than in the message itself.

855
00:48:54,160 --> 00:48:57,320
Speaker 1: And that is an example another example of how steganography

856
00:48:57,360 --> 00:49:00,920
Speaker 1: and cryptography work together. Yeah, but is authentication is all

857
00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:05,439
Speaker 1: about cryptography, so it's it's manipulating the two. So let's

858
00:49:05,440 --> 00:49:09,480
Speaker 1: talk about people who actually use this stuff. Not a

859
00:49:09,480 --> 00:49:13,640
Speaker 1: big surprise. Yeah, that's a that's a big one. In fact, again,

860
00:49:13,680 --> 00:49:17,000
Speaker 1: at the Spy Museum, I saw example after example of

861
00:49:17,040 --> 00:49:18,680
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. If you've never been to the

862
00:49:18,680 --> 00:49:20,720
Speaker 1: Spy Museum, by the way, if you ever go to Washington,

863
00:49:20,800 --> 00:49:25,240
Speaker 1: d C. I recommend it. Um. I recommend going early

864
00:49:26,040 --> 00:49:28,560
Speaker 1: because it's a very it's it's a museum that fills

865
00:49:28,640 --> 00:49:33,400
Speaker 1: up with kids, and kids are great, despite what I

866
00:49:33,440 --> 00:49:37,239
Speaker 1: say about them, but they do make it difficult to

867
00:49:37,280 --> 00:49:40,480
Speaker 1: maneuver through the museum and see everything. It sounds like

868
00:49:40,600 --> 00:49:42,520
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff in the Spy Museum might

869
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:46,440
Speaker 1: be pretty technical for a kid. Yeah, it can definitely

870
00:49:46,440 --> 00:49:48,320
Speaker 1: go over a kid's head. There's a lot of reading

871
00:49:48,360 --> 00:49:51,560
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of descriptions that explain what

872
00:49:51,800 --> 00:49:55,160
Speaker 1: the various devices and pictures and everything, what they mean

873
00:49:55,200 --> 00:49:58,560
Speaker 1: and there's some very interesting videos, but for kids they'd

874
00:49:58,560 --> 00:50:01,320
Speaker 1: be really boring. Oh it's one of those things where

875
00:50:01,440 --> 00:50:05,080
Speaker 1: like the idea of spies is really super sexy and

876
00:50:05,280 --> 00:50:08,399
Speaker 1: exciting and oh, James Bond, kids are gonna have fun.

877
00:50:09,160 --> 00:50:12,319
Speaker 1: But ultimately, I think you need to be like a

878
00:50:12,360 --> 00:50:16,239
Speaker 1: teenager or older. Maybe maybe not necessarily a teenager, but

879
00:50:16,280 --> 00:50:18,839
Speaker 1: like eleven or twelve to really kind of start thinking, oh,

880
00:50:19,040 --> 00:50:21,279
Speaker 1: this is kind of cool. Younger, I think it gets

881
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:23,879
Speaker 1: lost on you. Although they have some cool interactive stuff too,

882
00:50:23,920 --> 00:50:26,600
Speaker 1: but you don't get to play with like shoeguns or anything.

883
00:50:26,680 --> 00:50:28,719
Speaker 1: Now that you don't get to play with shoeguns, but

884
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:31,759
Speaker 1: you do get to assume a secret identity. They give

885
00:50:31,760 --> 00:50:34,000
Speaker 1: you a secret identity and you have to remember certain

886
00:50:34,040 --> 00:50:37,160
Speaker 1: facts about yourself so that if you're ever stopped and questioned,

887
00:50:37,800 --> 00:50:40,680
Speaker 1: you can answer with your cover. So if you forget

888
00:50:40,719 --> 00:50:48,200
Speaker 1: your cover, you're caught that So, so here's an example

889
00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:51,560
Speaker 1: of spies who use steganography. In two thousand nine and

890
00:50:51,600 --> 00:50:55,920
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, the FBI arrested ten covert Russian sleeper

891
00:50:56,000 --> 00:51:01,200
Speaker 1: agents who had been communicating in multiple ways, including stecken bography. Uh,

892
00:51:01,239 --> 00:51:03,719
Speaker 1: they'd be posting those photos that I was talking about,

893
00:51:03,719 --> 00:51:05,279
Speaker 1: the same sort of thing. They would post photos to

894
00:51:05,320 --> 00:51:09,239
Speaker 1: public forums, which in fact included the secret messages that

895
00:51:09,320 --> 00:51:12,240
Speaker 1: could be picked up if you ran them through analysis.

896
00:51:12,760 --> 00:51:14,600
Speaker 1: But you know, if you use that software, you can

897
00:51:14,640 --> 00:51:16,640
Speaker 1: pick them up, but otherwise you probably wouldn't notice. They

898
00:51:16,640 --> 00:51:19,719
Speaker 1: also used other things like in this blink and they

899
00:51:19,719 --> 00:51:24,160
Speaker 1: would do secret bag swaps, like classic spy stuff like

900
00:51:24,560 --> 00:51:27,320
Speaker 1: we'll meet in the trade station, I will give you bag,

901
00:51:27,520 --> 00:51:30,680
Speaker 1: you would walk away. They got discovered because of the

902
00:51:30,680 --> 00:51:33,839
Speaker 1: photos they were posting, right well, they that and the

903
00:51:33,880 --> 00:51:36,680
Speaker 1: fact that all right, so the photos you had to

904
00:51:36,760 --> 00:51:40,560
Speaker 1: run them through a particular piece of software to decode

905
00:51:40,560 --> 00:51:43,799
Speaker 1: what the message was, to pull out the letters that

906
00:51:43,800 --> 00:51:46,319
Speaker 1: were hidden inside these photos, right Because one of the

907
00:51:46,360 --> 00:51:50,239
Speaker 1: problems with with binary code is we humans, we don't

908
00:51:50,280 --> 00:51:53,280
Speaker 1: read it so well. So that's why we need software

909
00:51:53,280 --> 00:51:55,520
Speaker 1: to be able to pull that stuff and say, all right,

910
00:51:55,680 --> 00:51:58,520
Speaker 1: here are the bits that are important, here's what translates into.

911
00:51:59,200 --> 00:52:02,160
Speaker 1: So one of the things they needed was security to

912
00:52:02,239 --> 00:52:07,720
Speaker 1: make sure people couldn't access the software that would decode everything.

913
00:52:08,360 --> 00:52:11,359
Speaker 1: So they had a password that all of them had

914
00:52:11,400 --> 00:52:13,840
Speaker 1: to share. It was the same password they would type

915
00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:17,760
Speaker 1: in to the software to allow them to decrypt something.

916
00:52:18,360 --> 00:52:21,000
Speaker 1: And it was a twenty seven character long passwords. So

917
00:52:21,040 --> 00:52:26,120
Speaker 1: that's pretty secure except someone wrote it down, so the

918
00:52:26,120 --> 00:52:29,280
Speaker 1: FBI gets hold of the written password. By the way, folks,

919
00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:31,440
Speaker 1: if you write your password down and someone finds it,

920
00:52:31,680 --> 00:52:34,239
Speaker 1: guess what, You're not being secure. I don't care how

921
00:52:34,320 --> 00:52:36,959
Speaker 1: long your password is or how many upper and lower

922
00:52:37,000 --> 00:52:39,880
Speaker 1: case letters you throw in there. Uh. So, the FBI

923
00:52:39,960 --> 00:52:43,440
Speaker 1: found the password, they were able to intercept messages, they

924
00:52:43,440 --> 00:52:46,040
Speaker 1: were able to round up these ten sleeper agents, and

925
00:52:46,239 --> 00:52:51,400
Speaker 1: ultimately they were exchanged in a prisoner swap with Russia. UH.

926
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:55,480
Speaker 1: Russia had four prisoners, three of whom had been accused

927
00:52:55,480 --> 00:52:59,279
Speaker 1: of high treason, all of whom were Russian citizens, but

928
00:52:59,400 --> 00:53:01,920
Speaker 1: they had all been colluding in some way or another

929
00:53:02,040 --> 00:53:04,600
Speaker 1: or been accused of colluding with the United States or

930
00:53:04,600 --> 00:53:07,560
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom. So these four were swapped out for

931
00:53:07,600 --> 00:53:09,520
Speaker 1: the ten that were found in America. And it was

932
00:53:09,560 --> 00:53:14,920
Speaker 1: all done kind of quietly because there were still, I

933
00:53:14,920 --> 00:53:18,600
Speaker 1: mean there still are today uh tensions between the United

934
00:53:18,600 --> 00:53:23,560
Speaker 1: States and Russia, and no one wanted to make that worse. Yeah, man,

935
00:53:23,719 --> 00:53:27,160
Speaker 1: could you imagine being one of the ten agents? And

936
00:53:27,239 --> 00:53:30,319
Speaker 1: you're worth not even being half a person. Well, and

937
00:53:30,800 --> 00:53:32,680
Speaker 1: not only that, but those ten people who went back

938
00:53:32,719 --> 00:53:36,239
Speaker 1: to Russia, they were not technically put in prison, but

939
00:53:36,280 --> 00:53:40,040
Speaker 1: they were detained for weeks for debrifing. So things did

940
00:53:40,120 --> 00:53:43,680
Speaker 1: not go well for them, not for all of them

941
00:53:43,680 --> 00:53:45,920
Speaker 1: anywhere now, especially probably not for the one who wrote

942
00:53:45,960 --> 00:53:49,880
Speaker 1: down the past words. So then we have examples in

943
00:53:49,960 --> 00:53:54,280
Speaker 1: military and government. Now, governments traditionally aren't crazy about steganography

944
00:53:54,360 --> 00:53:57,160
Speaker 1: software getting out into the wild because they don't want

945
00:53:57,160 --> 00:54:00,680
Speaker 1: people to be able to use it. Yeah, especially uh

946
00:54:00,840 --> 00:54:04,240
Speaker 1: foreign countries. They're actually have been laws put in place

947
00:54:04,280 --> 00:54:08,719
Speaker 1: to keep us from sending strong encryption software. Yeah. There

948
00:54:08,840 --> 00:54:11,279
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of debate in government about whether

949
00:54:11,400 --> 00:54:15,560
Speaker 1: or not it should be legal to export encryption software,

950
00:54:16,080 --> 00:54:18,520
Speaker 1: and there's been a lot of argument on either case,

951
00:54:18,680 --> 00:54:24,320
Speaker 1: and only that the government wasn't crazy about having public

952
00:54:24,480 --> 00:54:27,680
Speaker 1: arguments about this, or having arguments on the public record,

953
00:54:27,760 --> 00:54:30,200
Speaker 1: because that would mean people would find out that such

954
00:54:30,239 --> 00:54:33,680
Speaker 1: a thing even existed, and they were worried that even

955
00:54:33,719 --> 00:54:37,840
Speaker 1: people finding out that such software was possible would create

956
00:54:38,440 --> 00:54:43,640
Speaker 1: more incidents of people using it. So there was probably yeah,

957
00:54:43,760 --> 00:54:45,360
Speaker 1: but but it was it was a sort of a

958
00:54:45,360 --> 00:54:47,200
Speaker 1: catch twenty two. You know, they were like, well, we

959
00:54:47,239 --> 00:54:49,160
Speaker 1: need to talk about this, but we can't talk about

960
00:54:49,200 --> 00:54:51,080
Speaker 1: it because if people know we talked about it, they'll

961
00:54:51,080 --> 00:54:54,759
Speaker 1: know that it exists. Um. I have a quote from

962
00:54:55,800 --> 00:54:59,600
Speaker 1: meeting about how to handle this that said a substantial

963
00:54:59,600 --> 00:55:02,800
Speaker 1: amount of material is not appropriate for a public meeting.

964
00:55:02,920 --> 00:55:05,160
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I'm talking about, Like, we we can't

965
00:55:05,600 --> 00:55:08,120
Speaker 1: debate this because if it's on the public record, it

966
00:55:08,120 --> 00:55:14,520
Speaker 1: will cause problems. Um. Now, despite that, there ultimately there

967
00:55:14,520 --> 00:55:19,480
Speaker 1: would be uh allowances for exporting uh this encryption software

968
00:55:19,560 --> 00:55:22,520
Speaker 1: because business doesn't have to do business um, and we

969
00:55:22,560 --> 00:55:25,600
Speaker 1: want our businesses to be secure. Yeah. So then we

970
00:55:25,640 --> 00:55:29,799
Speaker 1: have terrorists who also have used steganography. The there was

971
00:55:29,960 --> 00:55:33,640
Speaker 1: there were reports after the nine eleven attacks that al

972
00:55:33,719 --> 00:55:37,160
Speaker 1: Qaeda had been using steganography techniques to communicate. They were

973
00:55:37,160 --> 00:55:41,200
Speaker 1: actually supposedly using pornography. They were hiding their messages there

974
00:55:41,200 --> 00:55:43,680
Speaker 1: because who would think to look for secret messages in

975
00:55:43,719 --> 00:55:48,560
Speaker 1: that very very much so. And also they were thought

976
00:55:48,600 --> 00:55:50,799
Speaker 1: to be less likely to have used them because it

977
00:55:50,840 --> 00:55:55,799
Speaker 1: goes against their very world view. But that's what made

978
00:55:55,800 --> 00:55:57,840
Speaker 1: it a perfect place to hide a message, and people

979
00:55:57,840 --> 00:56:02,279
Speaker 1: were worried that maybe they got the the tools from US,

980
00:56:02,360 --> 00:56:05,200
Speaker 1: right yeah. They were worried that they got the encryption

981
00:56:05,239 --> 00:56:08,799
Speaker 1: tools from those same companies that had argued that they

982
00:56:08,840 --> 00:56:12,480
Speaker 1: should be allowed to export their products, and in fact,

983
00:56:12,480 --> 00:56:16,400
Speaker 1: it created a lot of soul searching on the parts

984
00:56:16,400 --> 00:56:19,400
Speaker 1: of those people. They said, well, are we responsible? And

985
00:56:19,480 --> 00:56:23,279
Speaker 1: ultimately they came up with the conclusion that even if

986
00:56:23,320 --> 00:56:25,480
Speaker 1: a ban had been put in place, even if they

987
00:56:25,480 --> 00:56:28,319
Speaker 1: had never been allowed to sell their products, someone else

988
00:56:28,360 --> 00:56:30,560
Speaker 1: would have come up with the same thing because there

989
00:56:30,719 --> 00:56:33,600
Speaker 1: was a need. And so once you identify a need,

990
00:56:33,840 --> 00:56:36,520
Speaker 1: someone's going to come up with a solution. And there

991
00:56:36,520 --> 00:56:39,120
Speaker 1: are people who send stuff they shouldn't send all the time,

992
00:56:39,280 --> 00:56:43,440
Speaker 1: just just the challenging authority aspect of it. They're like, oh,

993
00:56:43,520 --> 00:56:45,560
Speaker 1: we shouldn't be using this or giving it to other people,

994
00:56:45,680 --> 00:56:48,959
Speaker 1: so we're going to write right yeah, there's the whole

995
00:56:49,040 --> 00:56:52,239
Speaker 1: argument of information wants to be free. And with that

996
00:56:52,320 --> 00:56:54,480
Speaker 1: you would say that, well, if you're the harder you

997
00:56:54,520 --> 00:56:57,279
Speaker 1: try to keep information away from people, the harder people

998
00:56:57,280 --> 00:56:59,640
Speaker 1: will try to make sure they get that information. But

999
00:57:00,400 --> 00:57:05,040
Speaker 1: having encryption software go out to foreign places and being

1000
00:57:05,040 --> 00:57:08,200
Speaker 1: developed in in other places than the US means that

1001
00:57:08,239 --> 00:57:12,440
Speaker 1: we have drive to create better encryption, right and decryption

1002
00:57:12,560 --> 00:57:17,120
Speaker 1: and decryption. Yeah, so it actually it pushes it pushes

1003
00:57:17,160 --> 00:57:20,200
Speaker 1: the art forward. And this is something we also see

1004
00:57:20,200 --> 00:57:23,960
Speaker 1: an artificial intelligence, where we see as one part of

1005
00:57:24,000 --> 00:57:28,640
Speaker 1: security gets better, uh than people find new ways to

1006
00:57:28,760 --> 00:57:31,560
Speaker 1: make that security vulnerable, and then the security gets better.

1007
00:57:32,080 --> 00:57:39,320
Speaker 1: And while individual attacks are terrible or individual like vulnerabilities

1008
00:57:39,320 --> 00:57:43,240
Speaker 1: are terrible, the overall story is that stuff gets better

1009
00:57:43,280 --> 00:57:46,680
Speaker 1: over time. But that's you know, that's a hard view

1010
00:57:46,720 --> 00:57:49,840
Speaker 1: to take, depending upon the particulars in this case, a

1011
00:57:49,920 --> 00:57:53,720
Speaker 1: very hard one to take. Also, writers and journalists have

1012
00:57:53,840 --> 00:57:58,000
Speaker 1: used steganography sometimes just to entertain. Like there's this guy

1013
00:57:58,720 --> 00:58:03,760
Speaker 1: h Brown, Charlie No, Dan, Yeah, he wrote, he wrote

1014
00:58:03,800 --> 00:58:06,480
Speaker 1: a couple of books like Angels and Demons and Da

1015
00:58:06,560 --> 00:58:10,360
Speaker 1: Vinci Code. It's almost said Da Vinci's Notebook. That's totally

1016
00:58:10,360 --> 00:58:15,080
Speaker 1: different but really good. Yeah, some we're familiar with their

1017
00:58:15,080 --> 00:58:18,480
Speaker 1: work there, but it's not the SAME's. They might have

1018
00:58:18,560 --> 00:58:21,120
Speaker 1: messages in their music. Well I'm sure there are. There

1019
00:58:21,120 --> 00:58:23,960
Speaker 1: are some, probably some very important messages and things like

1020
00:58:24,640 --> 00:58:28,240
Speaker 1: the Magic Castle in the Sky so entitle of the song.

1021
00:58:28,680 --> 00:58:32,000
Speaker 1: But yeah, so Dan Brown of course very famous for

1022
00:58:32,040 --> 00:58:35,520
Speaker 1: writing these books and there were lots of examples of steganography,

1023
00:58:35,600 --> 00:58:40,800
Speaker 1: In fact, key plot points revolving around uh steganography and

1024
00:58:40,880 --> 00:58:44,680
Speaker 1: various kinds of religious iconography and other elements too. I

1025
00:58:44,720 --> 00:58:46,640
Speaker 1: remember in Angels and Demons. I think it was Angels

1026
00:58:46,640 --> 00:58:50,200
Speaker 1: and Demons where I got irritated by one of them

1027
00:58:50,240 --> 00:58:53,720
Speaker 1: because it was a brand like a as in something

1028
00:58:53,720 --> 00:58:58,439
Speaker 1: you would brand an animal with heat up and right, uh,

1029
00:58:58,480 --> 00:59:03,920
Speaker 1: and if it's spelled out Illuminati. And then you discovered

1030
00:59:03,920 --> 00:59:06,600
Speaker 1: that if you turned it degree so in other words,

1031
00:59:06,600 --> 00:59:09,240
Speaker 1: if you turned it upside down, it's still spelled Illuminati.

1032
00:59:09,640 --> 00:59:11,920
Speaker 1: And then the suggestion was because it was because the

1033
00:59:11,960 --> 00:59:15,480
Speaker 1: way the font was designed and the way the way

1034
00:59:15,520 --> 00:59:19,280
Speaker 1: it was was that only someone with the secret Illuminati

1035
00:59:19,320 --> 00:59:22,320
Speaker 1: knowledge could ever make this thing. And I thought, that's

1036
00:59:22,960 --> 00:59:26,640
Speaker 1: obviously crap, because you made it, Dan Brown, in order

1037
00:59:26,640 --> 00:59:30,080
Speaker 1: for this to happen. So I don't know how you

1038
00:59:30,120 --> 00:59:32,760
Speaker 1: could suggest that only one human being would or only

1039
00:59:32,800 --> 00:59:34,920
Speaker 1: one group of human beings would be clever enough to

1040
00:59:34,960 --> 00:59:39,840
Speaker 1: do this. That's demonstrably false. But anyway it was meant for, Yeah,

1041
00:59:39,880 --> 00:59:43,680
Speaker 1: it's meant to be a good story. Also, artists obviously

1042
00:59:43,880 --> 00:59:47,439
Speaker 1: very important in stagonography, particularly in the old ways where

1043
00:59:47,520 --> 00:59:50,320
Speaker 1: you had to hide a message within something, you know,

1044
00:59:50,640 --> 00:59:52,760
Speaker 1: and sometimes it was just done for entertainment. Sometimes it

1045
00:59:52,800 --> 00:59:56,400
Speaker 1: was done for specific purposes to hide things. UM. I

1046
00:59:56,440 --> 00:59:58,960
Speaker 1: had heard that Da Vinci hit a lot of secret

1047
00:59:58,960 --> 01:00:01,320
Speaker 1: messages in his artwork. Yeah, we hear, we hear that

1048
01:00:01,360 --> 01:00:05,080
Speaker 1: from da Vinci himself sometimes. Ariel and I have both

1049
01:00:05,080 --> 01:00:07,640
Speaker 1: worked for the Georgia Renaissance Festival, and another a mutual

1050
01:00:07,680 --> 01:00:11,680
Speaker 1: friend of ours, plays a young da Vinci very well. Yeah,

1051
01:00:11,920 --> 01:00:14,000
Speaker 1: so if you ask him about his secret messages, he

1052
01:00:14,040 --> 01:00:18,000
Speaker 1: has hilarious responses for that. But the the what you're

1053
01:00:18,040 --> 01:00:20,080
Speaker 1: alluding to, of course, I mean, there are a lot

1054
01:00:20,080 --> 01:00:24,600
Speaker 1: of theories I shouldn't say, hypotheses about secret messages hidden

1055
01:00:24,600 --> 01:00:27,080
Speaker 1: in things like the Last Supper, which is one of

1056
01:00:27,080 --> 01:00:30,440
Speaker 1: the most famous paintings Da Vinci ever produced. Um, And

1057
01:00:30,480 --> 01:00:33,680
Speaker 1: of course, uh, the da Vinci Code ended up talking

1058
01:00:33,680 --> 01:00:38,040
Speaker 1: a lot about that, obviously. Uh. One of the hypotheses

1059
01:00:38,080 --> 01:00:41,040
Speaker 1: I saw, which was interesting was put forward by an

1060
01:00:41,280 --> 01:00:46,400
Speaker 1: uh I T guy in information uh information technology professional

1061
01:00:46,760 --> 01:00:52,720
Speaker 1: who had created a mirror image of the Last Supper,

1062
01:00:52,760 --> 01:00:55,960
Speaker 1: so essentially took like imagine you have Photoshop and you

1063
01:00:56,120 --> 01:00:58,840
Speaker 1: copy the image, but then you flip it, so now

1064
01:00:58,880 --> 01:01:01,680
Speaker 1: it's it's inverted the other way, and then you make

1065
01:01:01,760 --> 01:01:04,560
Speaker 1: it translucent, and then you lay it back down on

1066
01:01:04,600 --> 01:01:06,960
Speaker 1: top of the original image. So now you've got this

1067
01:01:07,160 --> 01:01:09,720
Speaker 1: doubled image on top of one another. And then said,

1068
01:01:09,920 --> 01:01:12,120
Speaker 1: look at all the interesting things that pop up when

1069
01:01:12,160 --> 01:01:15,440
Speaker 1: you do this. There were figures on either side that

1070
01:01:15,560 --> 01:01:19,560
Speaker 1: were said to look like knights templar. There was in

1071
01:01:19,640 --> 01:01:22,280
Speaker 1: the center in front of Jesus there appeared to be

1072
01:01:22,320 --> 01:01:27,080
Speaker 1: a chalice like perhaps it's the Holy Grail and this

1073
01:01:27,160 --> 01:01:28,760
Speaker 1: kind of thing, and that there appeared to be a

1074
01:01:28,800 --> 01:01:32,360
Speaker 1: figure standing behind Jesus holding a baby. H a lot

1075
01:01:32,400 --> 01:01:35,520
Speaker 1: of other elements that were supposedly brought to light. But

1076
01:01:35,840 --> 01:01:39,000
Speaker 1: that raises the question one, how could da Vinci have

1077
01:01:39,080 --> 01:01:42,920
Speaker 1: done this himself? Now, he was known for mirror writing,

1078
01:01:43,160 --> 01:01:44,919
Speaker 1: where he could write with both hands, and he could

1079
01:01:44,960 --> 01:01:47,440
Speaker 1: right right to left and left to right simultaneous. He

1080
01:01:47,440 --> 01:01:49,600
Speaker 1: would have had to have painted two pictures left to

1081
01:01:49,680 --> 01:01:51,280
Speaker 1: right and right to left at the same time and

1082
01:01:51,320 --> 01:01:53,600
Speaker 1: lay them over each other. He would have to paint

1083
01:01:53,600 --> 01:01:58,280
Speaker 1: two identical pictures. Yeah, and who would ever find out

1084
01:01:58,320 --> 01:02:01,760
Speaker 1: about this? I mean, there's no way to to see

1085
01:02:01,840 --> 01:02:05,240
Speaker 1: the message The whole point of steganography is to communicate

1086
01:02:05,280 --> 01:02:08,520
Speaker 1: to someone. If no one knows that there's a message

1087
01:02:08,560 --> 01:02:11,080
Speaker 1: there and no one knows how to get that message,

1088
01:02:11,120 --> 01:02:15,200
Speaker 1: you're not communicating, you're just shouting, you are I mean,

1089
01:02:15,880 --> 01:02:18,080
Speaker 1: he could have put that message in there just too

1090
01:02:19,000 --> 01:02:20,520
Speaker 1: or not put a message in there, but put something

1091
01:02:20,560 --> 01:02:22,720
Speaker 1: in there to seem like a message, just to mess

1092
01:02:22,760 --> 01:02:26,200
Speaker 1: with people. That's possible. But yeah, most art historians kind

1093
01:02:26,200 --> 01:02:30,120
Speaker 1: of dismissed these various hypotheses. Doesn't mean that they're all false.

1094
01:02:30,200 --> 01:02:31,880
Speaker 1: It may mean, you know, there may have been things

1095
01:02:31,920 --> 01:02:35,720
Speaker 1: that da Vinci threw into some uh, either as sketches

1096
01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:39,640
Speaker 1: or his paintings or whatever, that were either just amusements

1097
01:02:39,880 --> 01:02:42,760
Speaker 1: or you know, they weren't intended to be anything secret.

1098
01:02:42,840 --> 01:02:45,520
Speaker 1: It was just something that he incorporated into the design.

1099
01:02:45,600 --> 01:02:50,000
Speaker 1: It's possible, and then, you know, depending upon the guy,

1100
01:02:50,560 --> 01:02:52,920
Speaker 1: probable da Vinci was it was a bit of an

1101
01:02:52,920 --> 01:02:57,960
Speaker 1: eccentric isn't there an article about this on Yes? The

1102
01:02:58,080 --> 01:03:02,920
Speaker 1: article is is, uh, how the da Vinci code doesn't work?

1103
01:03:03,440 --> 01:03:05,479
Speaker 1: So if you want to know more about that, Yeah,

1104
01:03:05,520 --> 01:03:08,520
Speaker 1: there's also an article about are there hidden messages in

1105
01:03:08,600 --> 01:03:10,840
Speaker 1: the Last Supper? We have articles on both of those things,

1106
01:03:10,880 --> 01:03:12,800
Speaker 1: so you should definitely check those out at how stuff

1107
01:03:12,800 --> 01:03:15,960
Speaker 1: works dot com. Uh. Then there are other examples, like

1108
01:03:16,040 --> 01:03:19,120
Speaker 1: one of my favorites is Mad magazines fold in, which

1109
01:03:19,200 --> 01:03:24,560
Speaker 1: was created by the writer and artist Al Jaffee, who

1110
01:03:24,960 --> 01:03:29,800
Speaker 1: created originally in nine four. It's been in practically every

1111
01:03:29,840 --> 01:03:33,320
Speaker 1: Mad magazine since then. And if you've never seen a

1112
01:03:33,360 --> 01:03:36,080
Speaker 1: fold in on Mad Magazine, then and I'm talking about

1113
01:03:36,080 --> 01:03:40,600
Speaker 1: the actual magazine, not the television series, not Mad TV,

1114
01:03:40,920 --> 01:03:42,680
Speaker 1: and not a digital copy of the night No, no,

1115
01:03:42,760 --> 01:03:45,200
Speaker 1: you need the you need the physical one. It is

1116
01:03:45,360 --> 01:03:47,920
Speaker 1: the the inside back cover is the fold in, and

1117
01:03:47,960 --> 01:03:50,720
Speaker 1: it has two points, and you're supposed to fold one

1118
01:03:50,760 --> 01:03:54,200
Speaker 1: point over to the second point, and it creates a

1119
01:03:54,240 --> 01:03:56,880
Speaker 1: new image. So when you look at it, normally it's

1120
01:03:56,920 --> 01:04:00,040
Speaker 1: one image, and it's the setup for a joke, and

1121
01:04:00,040 --> 01:04:03,000
Speaker 1: you do the fold then it's the punchline to that joke,

1122
01:04:03,520 --> 01:04:06,880
Speaker 1: and usually it's it's a twist on whatever. The big pictures.

1123
01:04:06,920 --> 01:04:08,920
Speaker 1: And actually, Jeff, he said, if I didn't have to

1124
01:04:09,000 --> 01:04:11,520
Speaker 1: worry about the big picture as opposed to a little picture,

1125
01:04:11,560 --> 01:04:13,760
Speaker 1: I could turn out like twelve of these a day.

1126
01:04:13,800 --> 01:04:16,160
Speaker 1: But getting them to work together takes a lot more

1127
01:04:16,160 --> 01:04:19,600
Speaker 1: planning and the way he did it. He drew them

1128
01:04:19,600 --> 01:04:22,880
Speaker 1: all by hand on a surface that did not fold,

1129
01:04:23,600 --> 01:04:26,880
Speaker 1: so it had to look right when it was folded,

1130
01:04:26,920 --> 01:04:30,400
Speaker 1: but he while he was drawing it, I couldn't fold

1131
01:04:30,480 --> 01:04:32,880
Speaker 1: it to make sure it was working. After after I

1132
01:04:32,960 --> 01:04:36,480
Speaker 1: encountered my first folding in a Mad magazine, I actually

1133
01:04:36,480 --> 01:04:39,000
Speaker 1: went into a Where's Waldo book and tried to do

1134
01:04:39,040 --> 01:04:42,520
Speaker 1: it in there and didn't work. No, No, I didn't

1135
01:04:42,520 --> 01:04:46,200
Speaker 1: find Waldo any faster. No, I didn't find any secret punchline.

1136
01:04:47,440 --> 01:04:50,320
Speaker 1: That's a little disappointed. He did, however, ruin the Where's Waldo? Books?

1137
01:04:50,360 --> 01:04:55,800
Speaker 1: So there's that. Uh. Another Man Magazine contributor, Sergio Ariganez,

1138
01:04:56,040 --> 01:04:59,480
Speaker 1: he used to draw a comic book called Grew the Wanderer,

1139
01:05:00,080 --> 01:05:02,479
Speaker 1: which was about it's very cartoony. If you've ever seen

1140
01:05:02,480 --> 01:05:05,000
Speaker 1: Sergio Ragan as his art style, you know it's cartoony.

1141
01:05:05,400 --> 01:05:09,560
Speaker 1: And it was about a buffoonish barbarian character, very dim

1142
01:05:09,560 --> 01:05:14,680
Speaker 1: witted character named Grew g r o O and very silly.

1143
01:05:14,720 --> 01:05:18,200
Speaker 1: But he would hide a message in every comic book.

1144
01:05:18,760 --> 01:05:22,720
Speaker 1: Uh usually said this is the secret message, or something like,

1145
01:05:22,840 --> 01:05:25,439
Speaker 1: good job, you found the secret message. But it would

1146
01:05:25,440 --> 01:05:28,400
Speaker 1: always be incorporated into the artwork in some way, like

1147
01:05:28,400 --> 01:05:30,560
Speaker 1: in some cases it would be written into the scroll

1148
01:05:30,600 --> 01:05:34,400
Speaker 1: work on a really elaborate uh fret board for a

1149
01:05:34,440 --> 01:05:37,320
Speaker 1: loop something like that, so you would have to really

1150
01:05:37,360 --> 01:05:40,040
Speaker 1: look for it. And again, if you didn't know there

1151
01:05:40,080 --> 01:05:43,600
Speaker 1: was a message there, you probably never would have seen it. Yeah,

1152
01:05:43,640 --> 01:05:45,440
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of comics have done that

1153
01:05:45,520 --> 01:05:47,360
Speaker 1: here and there. If you look really closely, you can

1154
01:05:47,360 --> 01:05:49,320
Speaker 1: find I know there are some comics who hide their

1155
01:05:49,440 --> 01:05:53,440
Speaker 1: name in pictures and the artwork as well, but there

1156
01:05:53,440 --> 01:05:56,840
Speaker 1: are other people who use them too, like system administrators

1157
01:05:57,200 --> 01:06:00,560
Speaker 1: UM just to make encryption extra secure, like talked about

1158
01:06:00,560 --> 01:06:04,960
Speaker 1: before with authentication codes UM, and then like people who

1159
01:06:05,040 --> 01:06:08,080
Speaker 1: just want to protect their intellectual property. You can even

1160
01:06:08,120 --> 01:06:10,080
Speaker 1: do it for your own personal journal. If if you

1161
01:06:10,160 --> 01:06:11,960
Speaker 1: write in a diary and you don't want anybody to

1162
01:06:11,960 --> 01:06:15,040
Speaker 1: read it, you can read what you really want to say.

1163
01:06:15,160 --> 01:06:17,200
Speaker 1: You can hide it in there, right, So the stuff

1164
01:06:17,240 --> 01:06:19,919
Speaker 1: that you write could be, you know whatever, but the

1165
01:06:19,960 --> 01:06:23,520
Speaker 1: actual meaning, the things that you truly want to preserve

1166
01:06:23,800 --> 01:06:27,680
Speaker 1: for yourself, you could hide away from from people prying eyes.

1167
01:06:28,280 --> 01:06:30,800
Speaker 1: So if you you know, if you if you're tired

1168
01:06:30,840 --> 01:06:34,840
Speaker 1: of losing that little key to your lockable journal. I

1169
01:06:34,880 --> 01:06:36,600
Speaker 1: know I gave up years ago. I have no idea

1170
01:06:36,640 --> 01:06:41,120
Speaker 1: what's in that book anymore? Um, probably best left unknown. Probably,

1171
01:06:41,480 --> 01:06:43,479
Speaker 1: you know, my past is a shady one at best.

1172
01:06:43,920 --> 01:06:46,959
Speaker 1: So that kind of wraps up this discussion about steganography,

1173
01:06:47,200 --> 01:06:49,720
Speaker 1: what it is, who uses it, you know, what goes

1174
01:06:49,760 --> 01:06:52,920
Speaker 1: into it. It is a fascinating field. I mean again,

1175
01:06:53,280 --> 01:06:56,200
Speaker 1: the idea of creating a way to communicate without anyone

1176
01:06:56,280 --> 01:07:00,880
Speaker 1: ever being aware that it was an intention no communication

1177
01:07:01,680 --> 01:07:04,680
Speaker 1: is I mean, it's kind of kind of awesome, it

1178
01:07:04,920 --> 01:07:07,160
Speaker 1: really is. And the numerous ways that people have come

1179
01:07:07,240 --> 01:07:10,480
Speaker 1: up with to do steganography is it's just mind blowing.

1180
01:07:10,560 --> 01:07:13,920
Speaker 1: I'm not nearly that creative, no, I well, mostly I

1181
01:07:13,960 --> 01:07:16,240
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of secret messages to send to people,

1182
01:07:16,280 --> 01:07:17,880
Speaker 1: so I don't have a whole lot of occasion to

1183
01:07:17,920 --> 01:07:21,240
Speaker 1: think on it. But yeah, it really does show people's

1184
01:07:21,400 --> 01:07:23,680
Speaker 1: ingenuity to come up with new ways to hide things.

1185
01:07:24,960 --> 01:07:27,480
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that classic episode of tech stuff

1186
01:07:27,520 --> 01:07:31,000
Speaker 1: back from If you have suggestions for topics I should

1187
01:07:31,040 --> 01:07:34,280
Speaker 1: tackle in future episodes, or maybe you want to follow

1188
01:07:34,360 --> 01:07:36,480
Speaker 1: up to something that you've heard in a classic episode,

1189
01:07:36,560 --> 01:07:38,480
Speaker 1: let me know best way to do that is to

1190
01:07:38,520 --> 01:07:40,800
Speaker 1: reach out on Twitter. The handle for the show is

1191
01:07:40,880 --> 01:07:45,439
Speaker 1: text Stuff HSW and not talk to you again really soon.

1192
01:07:50,720 --> 01:07:53,760
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more

1193
01:07:53,840 --> 01:07:57,240
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,

1194
01:07:57,360 --> 01:08:00,520
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your faith were chums.