Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: how Tech Arenia. Well, it is time for a classic
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff. This episode originally published on April
Speaker 1: fift two thousand fifteen. It is titled how Steganography Works
Speaker 1: and it is not a Dinosaur. I can't remember if
Speaker 1: actually made that joke in this episode. I guess we're
Speaker 1: gonna find out. Let's listen. This is an ancient listener request, folks. So, Peter,
Speaker 1: I apologize that took so long for us to get there,
Speaker 1: but I'm really excited that we get to cover it today.
Speaker 1: Here's what Peter wrote. He said, I recently bought a
Speaker 1: book called Data Hiding that is about steganography. I look
Speaker 1: to see if this is something you have covered, but
Speaker 1: found you had not. I think that this would be
Speaker 1: an extremely interesting topic. You would be able to cover
Speaker 1: the ways in which data can be hidden, as well
Speaker 1: as who uses such techniques like al Qaeda, the n
Speaker 1: s A, malware, authors, hobbyists, et cetera. Yeah, we're going
Speaker 1: to cover steganography, which is not what I originally thought
Speaker 1: it was. I originally thought it was the study of
Speaker 1: Stegosauri stegasaurces. Yeah, I thought it was the study of
Speaker 1: dinosaur calligraphy. So we were both on the wrong track,
Speaker 1: as it turns out. Uh yeah, So what actually is steganography. Well,
Speaker 1: steganography is the art of hiding something within something else.
Speaker 1: It can be simple, like a hidden message in a
Speaker 1: painting or photograph, or it can be something really complicated,
Speaker 1: like an electronic file or message hidden in another file
Speaker 1: or message. Yeah. Yeah, So it's essentially the the art
Speaker 1: of being able to send a message without people even
Speaker 1: knowing that you've done so, right, That's that's the goal
Speaker 1: of steganography. So the parties in steganography are there, are
Speaker 1: you know? This is how we break it down. You've
Speaker 1: got the cinder that's the person who's created the message
Speaker 1: and wants to communicate something. You have the receiver, which
Speaker 1: is the person who the message is intended to go to.
Speaker 1: You have the carrier message, which is the the the
Speaker 1: construct that hides the secret message. So this could be whatever, Like,
Speaker 1: it could be a painting, the boring note about your
Speaker 1: cousin's children, or it could be a soccer ball that
Speaker 1: happens to have a secret assage written on the inside
Speaker 1: of it. It could be that Wilson in Castaway was
Speaker 1: in fact Stagana Graham, which is the other element. So,
Speaker 1: by the way, there are a lot of Greek words
Speaker 1: and Greek names and some Roman names, so Latin as well,
Speaker 1: that's going to be all of those are gonna be
Speaker 1: popping up. There also a couple of other names from
Speaker 1: other cultures. I'm an ignorant American, so my pronunciation is
Speaker 1: going to be awful, and I can barely grasp the
Speaker 1: American language, which I've grown up with all my life,
Speaker 1: so mine will be work. Yeah, So just just letting
Speaker 1: you guys know that ahead of time. So the ski
Speaker 1: staganogram say, I'm never going to get that, otherwise known
Speaker 1: as the secret message. We're just gonna I'm going to
Speaker 1: call it secrets just from now on and then potentially
Speaker 1: third parties. So in other words, people who might come
Speaker 1: into contact with this message. The goal is to make
Speaker 1: sure that those third parties are never aware that there
Speaker 1: is a message there in the first place, and if
Speaker 1: it's done right, they won't be Yeah. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you could have a messenger a go between carry this
Speaker 1: thing from one person to the other and never know
Speaker 1: that there was something hidden in there. Although sometimes it's
Speaker 1: good if they're confident, because you need to get a
Speaker 1: message to the person who needs to decipher it on
Speaker 1: how to decipher it right, right. If the person who
Speaker 1: receives the message isn't aware of the method to find it,
Speaker 1: it doesn't do them a lot of good. So if
Speaker 1: if you have been able to collude with your receiver left,
Speaker 1: if I'm sending a message to Ariel, and Ariel and
Speaker 1: I have decided ahead of time, Hey, if I ever
Speaker 1: need to send you a message, this is how I'm
Speaker 1: going to do it, and this is how you're going
Speaker 1: to see what the message is, then we're okay. But
Speaker 1: if if it's a situation where Ariel and I have
Speaker 1: been separated for a long time and I need to
Speaker 1: send her a message and I needed to be secret,
Speaker 1: I've got to figure out a way to give her
Speaker 1: instructions as to how to retrieve that message. And sometimes
Speaker 1: that involves, you know, paying somebody, like just tell her
Speaker 1: to wash the wax off, and we'll explain what that
Speaker 1: means a little bit later. So there, wash the wax off,
Speaker 1: the Yeah sure, yeah, I mean just in general. So
Speaker 1: we've got the elements here. Those are your basic elements
Speaker 1: to to have Steganography actually makes sense, And now we
Speaker 1: need to talk about the difference between that and a
Speaker 1: related art cryptography, which, yes, cryptography is the art of
Speaker 1: making and solving codes. Uh, but anybody can see that
Speaker 1: it's a code. Right, So if I send a coded
Speaker 1: message to arial, it may be that any third party
Speaker 1: can't see what the message is, but they know I'm
Speaker 1: trying to communicate to her, Yeah, because why else would
Speaker 1: he send me a piece of paper that says music
Speaker 1: of yeh, unless I've just fallen asleep on my keyboard,
Speaker 1: then clearly I'm trying to say something. So and then
Speaker 1: I'm just wasting my time trying to decipher. Right. So,
Speaker 1: cryptography keys in people that something's going on. It lets
Speaker 1: people know there's some sort of communication. And uh. You
Speaker 1: might have a pretty simple type of code, like a
Speaker 1: simple cipher where you know the old classic uh substitution
Speaker 1: cipher where you substitute one letter for another, the simplest
Speaker 1: being let's shift all the letters over by one. So
Speaker 1: and uh, whenever I write the letter B, I really
Speaker 1: mean the letter a. Whenever I write the letter C,
Speaker 1: I really mean the letter be. This is what's called
Speaker 1: a really bad cipher. It's easy to figure out. I
Speaker 1: don't know. When I try to do the cryptograms in
Speaker 1: puzzle books, had such a hard time, And it's the
Speaker 1: same thing. Well, sometimes a substitution cipher can get a
Speaker 1: little more complicated. So for example, when you substitute one
Speaker 1: letter for another, then the next time you substitute a letter,
Speaker 1: you actually shift over again. So in other words, the
Speaker 1: first time you only shift over one letter, the second
Speaker 1: time you shift over two letters, the third time you
Speaker 1: shift over three letters. So if you know the algorithm,
Speaker 1: if you know the pattern, then when you get the message,
Speaker 1: you can reverse that and you know to look for it.
Speaker 1: If you don't know the pattern, then you have to
Speaker 1: spend more time trying to figure out what the pattern is.
Speaker 1: And while that still is a fairly simple example, things
Speaker 1: like the um the Enigma machine in World War Two,
Speaker 1: which was the Germans way of sending coded messages. They
Speaker 1: had this machine that had three different The basic one
Speaker 1: had three different dials that they had set. And then
Speaker 1: I had a typewriter and a bunch of lamps and
Speaker 1: when you pressed down a key of a letter, a
Speaker 1: lamp would light up, indicating a different letter. So let's
Speaker 1: say I typed the letter E to type in Enigma,
Speaker 1: but the letter for in lights up. Then it would
Speaker 1: actually go a certain number of steps, so that the
Speaker 1: next letter I type would be a totally unpredictable letter.
Speaker 1: If I didn't have an Enigma machine of my own. Well,
Speaker 1: that's really good, because if I tried to write a cipher,
Speaker 1: I would totally lose place of where I was if
Speaker 1: I was constantly shifting the letter, and my message would
Speaker 1: be nonsensical, both decrypted and encrypted. Yeah, exactly, that that is.
Speaker 1: That's the reason why the Germans were using a machine
Speaker 1: so that way it could be predictable, but only if
Speaker 1: both parties had the same style of Enigma machine and
Speaker 1: they both knew what the initial settings were, so part
Speaker 1: of the communication would include a a key saying this
Speaker 1: is what you need to set it to. Although technically
Speaker 1: they were all supposed to have a communication telling them
Speaker 1: what settings to use each day, and they were never
Speaker 1: supposed to repeat those settings. Eventually people got lazy, and
Speaker 1: that's how those codes were eventually broken by Alan Turing,
Speaker 1: which you can see in that film, the imitation game,
Speaker 1: the imitation game exactly. So steganography obviously is different from cryptography,
Speaker 1: and that yes, you're still sending secret messages, but the
Speaker 1: message itself, the existence of the message is secret. Anybody,
Speaker 1: any layman looking at the message or the photo or
Speaker 1: the paper won't know it's there, right, So you you
Speaker 1: can still encrypt it. You can still use cryptography. In fact,
Speaker 1: using both together makes a lot of sense. But ultimately
Speaker 1: with steganography, if you've hidden the message well enough and
Speaker 1: people are not if people don't know to look for it,
Speaker 1: it's safe to be in plain text to whomever you're
Speaker 1: sending it to, depending upon what method you use, because
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different ones, right um um.
Speaker 1: A great way to further explain it is to go
Speaker 1: back to the Greek. Cryptography means secret writing and stag
Speaker 1: atography means covered writing. I pause there because I was
Speaker 1: really surprised I said it correctly. Well, every time I
Speaker 1: say it correctly, I will also be surprised. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: So that really that gets down to the heart of it, right,
Speaker 1: And the combination of the two allows you to have
Speaker 1: more secure communication. Now, there's an art to finding hidden
Speaker 1: messages that have been concealed in this way. Yes, it
Speaker 1: is called stag analysis, which I tried to look up
Speaker 1: what the Greek of that meant, and it meant covered
Speaker 1: breaking up, loosening of Yeah, so it's it's all very repetitive.
Speaker 1: It just means you're uncovering the secret message, right. So
Speaker 1: depending upon the type of uh steganogram that has been sent,
Speaker 1: you would use a different method to find the meaning.
Speaker 1: So when we're talking about the modern version of steganography,
Speaker 1: we're really talking about ones and zeros digital information. So
Speaker 1: stag analysis is largely concerned with that because that's that's
Speaker 1: the main way messages are sent these days, is through
Speaker 1: a digital file of some sort that to an outside
Speaker 1: view looks like a normal file. There's nothing that seems
Speaker 1: remarkable about it. But if you were to analyze the
Speaker 1: actual digital information of that file, you would start to
Speaker 1: see patterns that would indicate something hanky is going. Yes,
Speaker 1: and in steak analysis, there are two steps to deciphering
Speaker 1: and the first is detecting it um, which if if
Speaker 1: it is like a handwritten message or something like that,
Speaker 1: and it's very fairly obvious, you can do it without
Speaker 1: any special software. UM. But where it does happen so
Speaker 1: much in the digital age. Um their disk analysis programs
Speaker 1: that will just look at it for you. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: actually run your suspected uh secret message. So it could
Speaker 1: be very simple like a lot of and a lot
Speaker 1: of examples I see are photographs that have been uploaded
Speaker 1: to public forums and the idea being that well, when
Speaker 1: it's in the public eye, no one's paying attention to
Speaker 1: it because it's just something that we see all the time.
Speaker 1: Like if you were to post a picture to Facebook, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of people do. Then because
Speaker 1: that's so common, it doesn't tend to raise suspicion. So
Speaker 1: first of all, someone has to know that there's something
Speaker 1: to look for, right, they have to first be suspicious
Speaker 1: that there's some form of communication going on. Then they
Speaker 1: have to start figuring out, all right, how is this
Speaker 1: communication happening, And then they would have to start targeting
Speaker 1: the various means of that, and one of those might
Speaker 1: be photographs, and they'd say, all right, let's take this
Speaker 1: image that was uploaded to whatever site, and let's run
Speaker 1: it through one of these disk analysis programs and see
Speaker 1: if that comes up with anything that perhaps there's some
Speaker 1: indication that something's out of place, and it might be
Speaker 1: something that you looking at would notice if you knew
Speaker 1: what to look for. Yeah, that's called perceptible noise. So
Speaker 1: sometimes if audio visual files are slightly off, there might
Speaker 1: be perceptible noise in there. So that would just be
Speaker 1: an indicator, right, something saying something's not right now. That
Speaker 1: can happen naturally, like that could just be a problem
Speaker 1: with the file and not not be an indication that
Speaker 1: there's anything super secret going on, or it could be
Speaker 1: an indication that, in fact, some of the bits in
Speaker 1: that file have been altered in order to send a
Speaker 1: secret message. And in in the best case of stegnography,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have weird noises or distorted pixels for people
Speaker 1: to see. Yeah, it would just be so subtle that
Speaker 1: you would never pick up on it. And uh and
Speaker 1: that's the reason why you need these disc analysis programs,
Speaker 1: so they can look for things that are below the
Speaker 1: perceptive level of human beings. Uh. So again we often
Speaker 1: see the two working together makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about the history of steganography,
Speaker 1: because there are some gloriously awful and bloody stories just
Speaker 1: just reading about them. Yeah, So first, we gotta go
Speaker 1: to ancient Greece, which makes sense. We're talking, you know,
Speaker 1: we're using Greek words, so it makes sense that that
Speaker 1: a lot of the early cases involved Greek stories, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking a lot about Herodotus. I can
Speaker 1: only do it because I listened to the pronunciation and
Speaker 1: I wrote down a phonetic translation in our notes. That
Speaker 1: is not a joke. Herodotus was a Greek historian in
Speaker 1: the fifth century b c. And wrote a lot about
Speaker 1: Greek history and the history of the surrounding areas of Greece,
Speaker 1: And in fact, his writings were called the Histories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and or at least we have to we have to
Speaker 1: take some of this with a grain of salt, because
Speaker 1: legend got mixed up with history quite a bit. So
Speaker 1: in fact, there are some modern accountings that suggest that
Speaker 1: some of the familial connections he makes in his stories
Speaker 1: were not necessarily accurate. So um one of the big ones,
Speaker 1: in fact, the first one I have to talk about,
Speaker 1: is one of those where the story talks about a
Speaker 1: general named Harpagus who sent a staganagram to Cyrus, was
Speaker 1: a king who was going to become the king of
Speaker 1: kings of Persia, Son of Persia, not the Prince of Persia.
Speaker 1: Now that's a video game, which is fun, but not
Speaker 1: not something we actually need to reference here. The story, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the story is far bloodier in fact, which is odd
Speaker 1: to think of, depending on which version of Prince of
Speaker 1: Persia you played and how badly you played it. But
Speaker 1: Cyrus was going to be the king of kings of Persia.
Speaker 1: So Persia was divided up into several kingdoms, and then
Speaker 1: you had a sort of an over king who saw
Speaker 1: over everybody, kind of like King Arthur in in English
Speaker 1: lore Um. So cyrus Um was the grandson, according to Herodotus,
Speaker 1: to another king of kings, Ostiagas, and so Harpagus actually
Speaker 1: worked for Ostiagas. So Ostiogus is this king of kings,
Speaker 1: and he has a dream, and in his dream, his
Speaker 1: daughter gives birth to a son, and that son grows
Speaker 1: up to depose osti Agus. So first he ends up
Speaker 1: marrying his daughter off to a kind of milk toast
Speaker 1: kind of guy, someone that he thinks is, oh well,
Speaker 1: this guy is harmless, so any child they have is
Speaker 1: not going to be a threat to me Um. And
Speaker 1: they have a son named IRUs. According to Herodotus. Again.
Speaker 1: Other modern accounts suggests that Cyrus and Ostiagas were not
Speaker 1: grandfather and grandson. Yeah, they might have been related, but
Speaker 1: not like grandfather and grandson, particularly since Cyrus ended up
Speaker 1: marrying um a daughter a Herodotus, which would have made
Speaker 1: he would have married his own aunt, which was not
Speaker 1: common in those times. So I mean possible, but not common.
Speaker 1: So anyway, in the story, Cyrus is the grandson, and
Speaker 1: Ostiagas decides Harpagus needs to go out and kill Cyrus. Okay. Harpagas, though,
Speaker 1: does not really relish the thought of spilling royal blood.
Speaker 1: So he takes Cyrus and he gives Cyrus to a
Speaker 1: shepherd and says, look after this kid, uh and raise
Speaker 1: him as your own, and I will report back that
Speaker 1: Cyrus is dead. Seems like a really decent guy, at
Speaker 1: least at that point, so he goes back. He reports
Speaker 1: that Cyrus has died, and Ostiagus says YEA. Ten years later,
Speaker 1: Ostiagus finds out Cyrus is actually alive, so he punishes
Speaker 1: Harpagus in kind of a Shakespearean awful way, and that
Speaker 1: in the story osti Agus gets Harpagus, his son kills
Speaker 1: him chops him up, cooks him, serves them to Harpagas
Speaker 1: as a banquet Harpegas and then tells Harpegus, hey, by
Speaker 1: the way, I hope you like your son, because that's
Speaker 1: what you're eating. Harpegus supposedly then gathered up the remains
Speaker 1: and gave his son a burial. He was being obedient
Speaker 1: to the king outwardly, but inwardly had decided that he
Speaker 1: had had enough and he wanted revenge, so he wanted
Speaker 1: to report to Cyrus. He He ended up working very
Speaker 1: hard to get other leaders of Persia to turn against
Speaker 1: Ostiagus and wait for just the right time to give
Speaker 1: Cyrus the signal that now is the time to attack.
Speaker 1: So he needed to send a message to Cyrus saying
Speaker 1: we're ready to go when you are. But asti August
Speaker 1: had guards all along the way. So how does he
Speaker 1: send a message. He gets a bunny bunny hair. Actually, no,
Speaker 1: they're not nearly as cute as bunny rabbits, and this
Speaker 1: hair was not nearly as cute because it was did Yeah,
Speaker 1: they they have a guy kill a hair. They cut
Speaker 1: the hair open, they insert the secret message into the
Speaker 1: hair's stomach, so the hair back up and a messenger
Speaker 1: disguised as a huntsman brings the hair to Cyrus and says,
Speaker 1: you should cut open this bunny rabbit and get what
Speaker 1: the delicious things inside are. And so Cyrus cuts open
Speaker 1: the stitches, gets the message, sees that it's time to attack,
Speaker 1: and that is how, according to Herodotus, Cyrus goes and
Speaker 1: joins a revolution and overthrows Ostia Augus and then Cyrus
Speaker 1: becomes the king. So there's a long way to go
Speaker 1: for that story, but it's important to know all the
Speaker 1: elements to explain why Harpagus was trying to send a
Speaker 1: coded message in the first place, or hidden message. I'm
Speaker 1: so glad we have better ways to send hidden messages
Speaker 1: than in the stomachs of rabbits. Now, okay, this is
Speaker 1: Jonathan from the future. I've got a hidden message in
Speaker 1: this image file that says we need to take a
Speaker 1: quick break, but we'll be right back. So um, here's
Speaker 1: another one. This is another popular story from Herodotus. This
Speaker 1: one involves a tyrant named Histius, which sounds like you're
Speaker 1: strangling a snake. Yeah. Histius who was the ruler of
Speaker 1: mild Us, and this guy was really useful to the
Speaker 1: king of Persia. The King of Persia loved Histius and
Speaker 1: decided to invite him back to become a royal advisor. Well,
Speaker 1: that sounds it is pretty good to me. Well at first,
Speaker 1: Histories thoughts so too. But then eventually he thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to go back to being a tyrant of Maltest. Tyrant,
Speaker 1: by the way, does not necessarily mean evil ruler, but
Speaker 1: it did mean like having total authority over a region. Um,
Speaker 1: so he said, he thought, I want to go back
Speaker 1: to doing what I was doing before. But it would
Speaker 1: be treason for me to deny the king? So how
Speaker 1: do I get around this? And he comes up with
Speaker 1: an even more treason this way to get around it.
Speaker 1: He decides that the best way to get back to
Speaker 1: doing what he was doing before would be to stage
Speaker 1: a revolution back home. Uh, and then tell the king, Hey,
Speaker 1: I need to go back there and squash this revolution
Speaker 1: before it gets out of hand, because telling the king
Speaker 1: no is so much less worse than lying to the
Speaker 1: king and tell him. So, he decides he needs to
Speaker 1: send this instruction to his nephew, who was in charge
Speaker 1: of maldis Agris. And so how does he send the message, Well,
Speaker 1: he gets a slave which the Greeks had back then,
Speaker 1: and tattoos. He shaves the slave's head, tattoos the message
Speaker 1: on the slave's scalp, then allows the slaves hair to
Speaker 1: grow back, then sends the slave to Aristagoras with the
Speaker 1: instruction to tell Aristagoras, Hey, you need to shave me
Speaker 1: and read my head. So that's exactly what happens. Aristagoras
Speaker 1: reads the message, starts a revolution against the Persians. Then
Speaker 1: Histius tells the king, Hey, this is gonna be a problem,
Speaker 1: so just send me back and I will go and
Speaker 1: squish this right away, and we'll solve this before it
Speaker 1: turns into a big problem. And of course they can
Speaker 1: go a loyal advisor. Sure. Yeah, So Histius heads on
Speaker 1: his way back. However, there were some folks who were
Speaker 1: a little suspicious of Histius and his convenient revolution, and
Speaker 1: so eventually Histaius goes on the run because people are
Speaker 1: actually after or him thinking that you know, he's he's
Speaker 1: committed treason. Yeah, he has done that thing, and so
Speaker 1: he ends up getting exiled and eventually to an island.
Speaker 1: He becomes a pirate for a while, and then he's
Speaker 1: eventually captured by one of the king of Persia's subjects.
Speaker 1: Who knows that if he sends his tis back to
Speaker 1: the king, the king will pardon him, So he just
Speaker 1: goes ahead and execute his t is right then and there,
Speaker 1: since the head of his is to the king saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I caught him and killed him for you. And the
Speaker 1: king actually supposedly gave the head of his tis an
Speaker 1: honorable burial because he never suspected anything was up. He
Speaker 1: didn't believe his is could have committed any kind of
Speaker 1: treason against him. So uh, dumb or nice? Not a
Speaker 1: lot of nice stories in ancient Greece. Uh, And then
Speaker 1: you've got another one, another herodotist story, another herodotus story.
Speaker 1: I was out to mention it, and then I realized
Speaker 1: that I couldn't actually say his name. There was an
Speaker 1: exiled Greek named named Demeritus, and uh. He needed to
Speaker 1: warn the king of Sparta, Leonidas that kings er Ses
Speaker 1: the first was going to attack them. So he took
Speaker 1: writing tablets, which were wood tablets covered in wax and
Speaker 1: you would scratch a message into the wax, and instead
Speaker 1: he took off all the wax and scratched message into
Speaker 1: the wood, and then recovered the tablets and wax so
Speaker 1: that they looked like they were blanked tablets, and he
Speaker 1: sent those to the king to warn him. Uh. But
Speaker 1: proposedly no one knew why they were getting these blank tablets.
Speaker 1: They didn't necessarily know there was a message. Why are
Speaker 1: we getting just we got plenty of tablets and no
Speaker 1: one writes anything of use here in Sparta anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: supposedly the queen, Queen Gorgo figured out what it was, said,
Speaker 1: you got you need to take the wax off. I
Speaker 1: but there's a message under there and there were um
Speaker 1: but it didn't help them because the Spartans were brutally
Speaker 1: defeat it. Uh. And if the story sounds familiar to you,
Speaker 1: it's because it is the story three the comic movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah story, that's essentially that's the tale the three hundred
Speaker 1: Spartans who who tried to hold a pass and managed
Speaker 1: to delay xer c S so that the invasion of
Speaker 1: Greece ultimately would fail. But the Spartans were completely wiped out,
Speaker 1: or at least the the three hundred were completely wiped
Speaker 1: out as a result. Moving forward to Roman times, Tacitus
Speaker 1: invented a way to use a predecessor of dice to
Speaker 1: hide messages. So these these dice like things which I
Speaker 1: can't remember the name now. It's like an estralla alley
Speaker 1: or something like that. But I know I've totally mangled that,
Speaker 1: so I apologize. But they had little holes drilled in them,
Speaker 1: and you could string them together, and in this case, uh,
Speaker 1: Tacitus was using them to string them together in specific
Speaker 1: orders to relay different type some messages. But if anyone
Speaker 1: were stopped with them, they just looked like it was
Speaker 1: a toy. It didn't look like it was anything of significance,
Speaker 1: although they might play with it and mess up the message.
Speaker 1: That Yeah, if you were to break the thread so
Speaker 1: that they were no longer threaded together in the proper way,
Speaker 1: then the message would be lost. Uh. This, by the way,
Speaker 1: it would end up having a specific name a semigram,
Speaker 1: because it is being used as a non text based message.
Speaker 1: So you don't you don't translate it into texts so
Speaker 1: much as you say, this series of symbols means this
Speaker 1: particular thing. Uh. You also have a guy named Johannes
Speaker 1: Trithmius in the Middle Ages, in the sixteenth century actually,
Speaker 1: who wrote a book titled Steganograph Stega Nagraphia yes, which
Speaker 1: was a stagram in and of itself, this I did
Speaker 1: not know, which is pretty cool. Yeah. It outwardly it
Speaker 1: seemed to be a series of writings on magic, but
Speaker 1: in secret it contained a message on the treatise of Steganography.
Speaker 1: That's now that's really cool that you're like, Okay, you've
Speaker 1: gotta be smart enough to know that this is a
Speaker 1: book about secret messages, because it itself is a secret message.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, really interesting, and then we can skip ahead.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously these have been used repeatedly in multiple ways.
Speaker 1: There's another great example that during World War One, the
Speaker 1: German embassy in the United States sent a message to
Speaker 1: Berlin that used what's called a null cipher. Null ciphers
Speaker 1: are not very secure at all because once you know
Speaker 1: that there's a possibility, it's very easy to find them.
Speaker 1: But basically it's when you take the first letter of
Speaker 1: each word in a message and that spells out a
Speaker 1: new message. So here's an example that's often cited. I
Speaker 1: don't know that this was ever actually sent as a message,
Speaker 1: but it's always used as an example. Here's the the
Speaker 1: full message, which was or the carrier message, if you will.
Speaker 1: It was President's embargo ruling should have immediate notice. Graves
Speaker 1: situation affecting international law, statement for shadows ruin of many neutrals,
Speaker 1: yellow journals, unifying national excitement immensely. See, they really had
Speaker 1: me until the yellow journals. Like I was following that message,
Speaker 1: I knew what they were trying to send. Well, they
Speaker 1: could have been talking about yellow journalism, but that's a
Speaker 1: different thing anyway, and you wouldn't know why a German
Speaker 1: embassy would write about it. But at any rate, the
Speaker 1: secret message, if you take those first letters, says Pershing
Speaker 1: sales from n y New York, June first or June I,
Speaker 1: upper case I. So Pershing was the U. S General
Speaker 1: who led American the American expeditionary forces in World War One.
Speaker 1: So this would be a message from German, the German
Speaker 1: embassy to Germany saying, Hey, this American general is sailing
Speaker 1: out of New York on this date. Expect him to
Speaker 1: be in the in the European theater within several weeks.
Speaker 1: That kind of thing. Uh. And now we'll talk about
Speaker 1: some of the types of steganography, because there's a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of because really, any way that you can hide
Speaker 1: a message inside something is technically steganography. So these are
Speaker 1: just some examples. Really, it's not an exhaustive list because
Speaker 1: that would be impossible. For instance, uh, there's the old
Speaker 1: Greek ways we talked about um in in history of
Speaker 1: hiding something inside or under something. Great example is in
Speaker 1: the Second World War, the British Secret Service hid escape
Speaker 1: kit pieces in monopoly games and sent them to the
Speaker 1: prisoners of war in Germany along with Red Cross supplies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you could you get these deliveries if you're a
Speaker 1: prisoner of war, and you know, the Germans would say,
Speaker 1: all right, well this is just humanitarian aid or whatever,
Speaker 1: and as long as it keeps the prisoners mollified, then
Speaker 1: we'll go ahead and give them to them, not realizing
Speaker 1: that they were supplying the prisoners with the very tools
Speaker 1: the prisoners might be able to use to break free,
Speaker 1: which is pretty interesting. And by when the prisoners break free,
Speaker 1: did they have egg on their face? So the semigrams
Speaker 1: I talked about earlier, the dice that are threatened together,
Speaker 1: that's just one example that could be in lots of
Speaker 1: different versions, like iconography or signs or photographs, or even
Speaker 1: like the placement of items on a desk. So let's
Speaker 1: say I've got I could have a webcam set up
Speaker 1: on my desk, for example, so that people who log
Speaker 1: into the web could see me, you know, theoretically just
Speaker 1: working at work like that's all I'm doing. But maybe
Speaker 1: depending upon where my coffee cup is, or depending upon
Speaker 1: where a certain stack of papers happened to be, that
Speaker 1: might be an actual message itself. So Ariel looking at
Speaker 1: the webcam might say, oh, well, Jonathan's gonna go to
Speaker 1: Manual's Tavern today because I see where the combination of
Speaker 1: stuff is. I don't know why I would secretly be
Speaker 1: telling you that, because all of your fans trying to
Speaker 1: follow you. Yeah, that's it. I'm surrounded by the thronging fans.
Speaker 1: Who And Manual's Tavern is such a low profile place, right.
Speaker 1: Uh that's by the way, if you're not from Atlanta
Speaker 1: or never been here, Manual's Tavern is a very popular
Speaker 1: spot for artists and and playwrights and political fans and
Speaker 1: sports figures. Political figures. Yeah, President Obama came here recently,
Speaker 1: and it's just kind of it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: like I think of it like cheers. Yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: like cheers with chickens. On the roof. Yeah, yeah, there
Speaker 1: are chickens on the roof. That that's not it's not
Speaker 1: a joke. They use their eggs for breakfast, they do.
Speaker 1: Another example would be the car done grill. It sounds
Speaker 1: like a good restaurant. It does, doesn't it. It's a
Speaker 1: classic example. I was first proposed in the fifteenth century.
Speaker 1: So here's how it works. You've probably seen this. So
Speaker 1: you take a sheet of clean paper or in the
Speaker 1: case of the Middle Ages, parchment, and you set that down.
Speaker 1: You take a second sheet and you cut little holes
Speaker 1: in that sheet and strategic places. You lay the second
Speaker 1: sheet on top of the first sheet, and then you
Speaker 1: write in your secret message in those holes, using the
Speaker 1: holes as kind of like almost like a stencil. And
Speaker 1: so it's only bits and pieces. Sometimes sometimes it might
Speaker 1: be a word. Sometimes it might just be a single letter.
Speaker 1: But you do that throughout, using the holes as your
Speaker 1: guide to write the secret message. Then you take your
Speaker 1: stencil off and you write in the You fill in
Speaker 1: the rest of the space with a boring message. That
Speaker 1: means you know very little in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 1: So only someone who would have a part a comparable stencil,
Speaker 1: so something that they have a sheet of paper that
Speaker 1: has the same general holes cut out of it. They
Speaker 1: could lay that on top of the full message and
Speaker 1: read the secret message that's underneath. I actually tried to
Speaker 1: make a card and grill a while back back when
Speaker 1: I was in school and do a secret message like that.
Speaker 1: It is harder than I imagined it would be because
Speaker 1: once you put your secret message in, you then have
Speaker 1: to make sure the rest of your message lines up right.
Speaker 1: You have to make it make enough sense, like how
Speaker 1: do you plan out the rest of your message so
Speaker 1: that you can do this unless you are to create
Speaker 1: a message from the very beginning, and then you create
Speaker 1: a grill that fits on top of your existing message
Speaker 1: that shows what which words are the most important, and
Speaker 1: then you send it. But then you've got to figure out, well,
Speaker 1: how do I get how do I get the grill?
Speaker 1: How do I get the the stencil to the person
Speaker 1: I need to send it to? Because if I send both,
Speaker 1: then clearly the jig is up, you know, So it
Speaker 1: is a little tricky. I love this next one You've got. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this next one. I had to double check it because
Speaker 1: I didn't think it was possibly real. But people would
Speaker 1: knit Morris code into garments and then send those garments
Speaker 1: on the couriers for people to decipher. And you think
Speaker 1: it was just like a knit line of Yeah, just
Speaker 1: a pattern, just a pattern, yea on clothing. I think
Speaker 1: that's super cool. I want to start doing that when
Speaker 1: I have kids, I'm gonna knit Morse code into all
Speaker 1: their clothes. They'll be fantastic things like things like do
Speaker 1: your chores if this child is found. Well, that's a
Speaker 1: I like that you expect eyes to come across your
Speaker 1: children because I can't think of anyone else who typically
Speaker 1: uses Morse code on a frequent basis. Uh. I like
Speaker 1: the next one too, which is also pretty cool, the
Speaker 1: idea that just through through formatting a document, you can
Speaker 1: create a secret message. Yeah, you can add an extra space,
Speaker 1: which most people don't notice. I do a lot of
Speaker 1: editing at my job, and so I often see extra
Speaker 1: spaces at before after a period, or before a certain word,
Speaker 1: like before a hyphen or after a hyphen. But you
Speaker 1: can add those extra spaces before the important words in
Speaker 1: any word that you find that has an extra space before.
Speaker 1: That's part of your cipher. Nice. I've also seen where
Speaker 1: you could do things like subtly change the font, yes,
Speaker 1: like really subtle, like courier to courier new which is
Speaker 1: and a casual glance it looks the same, but if
Speaker 1: you're paying attention, you can tell the difference, and thus
Speaker 1: you put the important words in the different font. And
Speaker 1: as long as the messages, like as long as your
Speaker 1: carrier message is long enough and your secret message is
Speaker 1: short enough, people are probably not going to pick up
Speaker 1: on it. You can also vaguely change the skew as well.
Speaker 1: That that one's a little bit more noticeable, right, right,
Speaker 1: So it's you know, some of these again can get
Speaker 1: pretty risky if your secret message is pretty long. This
Speaker 1: is true in general, right, The longer your carrier message,
Speaker 1: the more secure the secret is going to be, assuming
Speaker 1: that the secret is not itself very long. If I have, like,
Speaker 1: if I'm trying to hide a secret message in a tweet,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be hard because they only have a hundred
Speaker 1: forty characters to start with. Yeah, and then if I'm
Speaker 1: trying to hide a message in that, then it has
Speaker 1: to be a pretty small message. Otherwise it's just gonna
Speaker 1: look like a tweet. It would probably have to be
Speaker 1: a cryptogram, yeah, where individual letters mean full things. Or right,
Speaker 1: or or like just a regular code where someone has
Speaker 1: a codebook and they know that when I use this
Speaker 1: word that that means something else. Yeah, in that case,
Speaker 1: that would that would be more of a code and
Speaker 1: ah than than a secret message in this sense. But
Speaker 1: there are the ones too. There's also an invisible ink,
Speaker 1: which is a thing. People have actually used it for
Speaker 1: reals and also it's usually called sympathetic inc in the biz.
Speaker 1: Because you would have a regular message written out in
Speaker 1: normal inc that would have, you know, very boring, you know,
Speaker 1: no reason to raise suspicion. You would write the actual
Speaker 1: secret message and invisible ink kind of between the lines,
Speaker 1: and then the person who receives it would have to
Speaker 1: treat it. However they need to treat it, usually like
Speaker 1: adding a little heat or maybe adding a certain chemical
Speaker 1: to bring out the invisible ink so that you can
Speaker 1: make it legible, and then you would be able to
Speaker 1: read the secret stuff. And another way to hide messages
Speaker 1: would be through photography. Yeah, like the Pueblo incident, which
Speaker 1: as far as stagonography goes, is kind of like a
Speaker 1: semigram where uh crew of the USS Pueblo was captured
Speaker 1: by North Korea right before the Vietnam War. They were
Speaker 1: an electronic intelligent ship and they were forced to take
Speaker 1: propaganda photos, and in those propaganda photos, they all rested
Speaker 1: with their hands on their faces or their shoulders in
Speaker 1: a very nonchalant way, and it was actually a code
Speaker 1: for the US to decipher. That's pretty incredible. It really
Speaker 1: is so similar to what I was describing with the webcam,
Speaker 1: the idea of just having this this foresight that you
Speaker 1: know clearly you thought ahead, so that the person who
Speaker 1: sees it knows what the meaning is behind whatever you're
Speaker 1: whatever the images. Yes, and there there there are more
Speaker 1: complicated versions of that. For instance, there you can systematically
Speaker 1: change pixel colors to correspond with letters in the alphabet
Speaker 1: and then only change like the first pixel every square
Speaker 1: centimeter or millimeter in photo or every so many lines,
Speaker 1: and people can get the message that way. That. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's definitely really very subtle, especially you know if you're
Speaker 1: using things like black and white photos, where you can
Speaker 1: you can change those things and they're not called out
Speaker 1: as much, because you could make it like a square
Speaker 1: that was going to be very dark a much lighter gray,
Speaker 1: and if you know what to look for, then you
Speaker 1: could see the pattern but otherwise you might just think, oh,
Speaker 1: this is just poor developing or whatever. It's it's the
Speaker 1: it's a graininess of the photo. Um. You could use
Speaker 1: an existing piece of text, like a newspaper. This was
Speaker 1: used during the Cold War all the time, where uh
Speaker 1: you would use like a pen to put tiny holes
Speaker 1: above important letters, and then so you would grab the
Speaker 1: newspaper hold it up so you can see where the
Speaker 1: holes were, and that would give you the letters to
Speaker 1: spell out or sometimes a full word to spell out
Speaker 1: whatever the secret message was. UM. Or you might use
Speaker 1: a dot with invisible ink if you wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure people like could pick up the newspaper and hold
Speaker 1: it up and not see light coming through at strategic locations.
Speaker 1: But then of course you would have to treat the
Speaker 1: newspaper to whatever it was that you know, would bring
Speaker 1: the invisible inc ounts are really important and steagatography like
Speaker 1: they're used in many way. Yeah, yeah, there's I actually
Speaker 1: got to see examples of this because I went to
Speaker 1: the Spy Museum which is in Washington, d C. And
Speaker 1: they had examples of micro dots. And micro dots are
Speaker 1: kind of think of it like micro film. It's tiny
Speaker 1: little bits of film that look like a period. That's
Speaker 1: how small they are. And unless you were to hold
Speaker 1: it up and see that it was in fact film
Speaker 1: and not just a solid blob of ink, you would
Speaker 1: never have suspected of being anything other than a punctuation mark.
Speaker 1: And it can hold an incredible amount of information because
Speaker 1: you know they're There are ways to enlarge photos. We're
Speaker 1: talking about the old film style, right. This doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you can do it digitally too, but we're talking old school.
Speaker 1: So there are ways where you could take a photo
Speaker 1: and then blow it up and blow it up and
Speaker 1: blow it up so that you get like a poster
Speaker 1: size or larger. Well, there are also ways where you
Speaker 1: could shrink it down and shrink it down and shrink
Speaker 1: it down, and uh, I was reading one way that
Speaker 1: cuts so technical that I gave up on the chance
Speaker 1: of trying to even describe it. But ultimately they said
Speaker 1: it was two hundred and ten times smaller than the
Speaker 1: original photograph. And so you could take a picture of
Speaker 1: say a document, top secret document, and then you shrink
Speaker 1: it down to this size so it looks like it's
Speaker 1: a you know, a period. You just cut out a
Speaker 1: little piece of the paper, you insert this in and
Speaker 1: to casual glance, it seems like it's just a regular
Speaker 1: sheet of paper with punctuation. But when you are in
Speaker 1: the right hands, which might be the wrong hands, depending
Speaker 1: on what side you're on, then you can find out, um,
Speaker 1: what is actually there. This was a process that was
Speaker 1: created by a man named Emmanuel goldberg Um and used
Speaker 1: it for spying, and very popular, particularly amongst Soviet Union
Speaker 1: spies at the time. I would imagine nowadays if you
Speaker 1: used micro dots in a digital format, it would be
Speaker 1: a lot harder to detect because you couldn't hold up
Speaker 1: the paper and see the something was amiss, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It's the game has changed significantly, and by
Speaker 1: this time, obviously we're talking about something a lot more
Speaker 1: subtle than a dead rabbit. Yeah. But but sometimes we
Speaker 1: can have things that are just as irritating as maybe
Speaker 1: a dead rabbit would be, such as spam the mickry
Speaker 1: uh disguising messages that you want to send as spam
Speaker 1: emails or nonsensical musings or what not. You do this
Speaker 1: by messing up the placement of the punctuation, or the
Speaker 1: type of the fonts, or the grammar of the message.
Speaker 1: As a means to communicating the secret. Yeah, I love this.
Speaker 1: I actually saw an example of this where, uh, someone
Speaker 1: used grammar as the key indicator, and so you would
Speaker 1: read the message and whenever you found a grammatical error,
Speaker 1: that was actually an indicator that this is where you
Speaker 1: need to pay attention. Uh, that was kind of interesting. Well,
Speaker 1: you would think it would be easy to decipher, but
Speaker 1: with as much spam email as everybody gets nowadays, you
Speaker 1: don't even think to look, well, right, yeah, you just
Speaker 1: especially if you were to broadcast this, so that it's
Speaker 1: not something that just one person gets, because again, we're
Speaker 1: all used to getting that spam. Most of us would
Speaker 1: never even look twice at it. We would just see, oh,
Speaker 1: spam message deleted. So you could actually have security by
Speaker 1: sending it to lots of people, because then it looks
Speaker 1: like it's quote unquote legitimate spam. That seems like a
Speaker 1: weird thing to say, but that's that's where it is.
Speaker 1: Now we're getting into the more modern versions where this
Speaker 1: is where we need things like a disk analysis software
Speaker 1: in order to discover it. We have a little bit
Speaker 1: more to say about steganography, but before we get to that,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. So digital files. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about these in general, and this can refer to pretty
Speaker 1: much any kind of digital file like audio, video, images,
Speaker 1: any of that sort of stuff. So we all know
Speaker 1: digital files are made up ultimately of strings of ones
Speaker 1: and zeros. Yeah, so here's the thing. Some of those
Speaker 1: bits are more important than others. Not all bits are equal.
Speaker 1: Some of those bits are not so important. So if
Speaker 1: you were to pick the least significant bits or l
Speaker 1: s B s, you can do something called the least
Speaker 1: significant bit insertion, which is where you alter a bit,
Speaker 1: and by altering a series of bits, you can create
Speaker 1: a message. Now, it takes several bits to make just
Speaker 1: one character in the alphabet, so you have to be
Speaker 1: very succinct with your messages because the more of these
Speaker 1: you mess up, the more likely that will it will
Speaker 1: be detectable by somebody who's paying really close attention, either
Speaker 1: close attention to your activities or close attention to the file.
Speaker 1: So if you do it well, and you and you're
Speaker 1: very careful with it, most people are never gonna notice.
Speaker 1: And this is what we talk about when someone posts
Speaker 1: an image to a public forum and there's a hidden
Speaker 1: message in those bits. Uh Yeah, And generally speaking, you
Speaker 1: want to go. If you're making one of these, you
Speaker 1: want to go with a lossless format as opposed to
Speaker 1: lossy compressed versions, because technically you would normally create this
Speaker 1: this message in the lossless fine style and put it
Speaker 1: in there and then allow it to be compressed. So
Speaker 1: if it's a lossless format that then is compressed, you
Speaker 1: don't lose any information that way. Uh. These compression algorithms
Speaker 1: are very good at keeping the original information in tact,
Speaker 1: so that way you know your message is not going
Speaker 1: to get altered lossy formats. The way lossy formats work
Speaker 1: is they look for information that doesn't seem important and
Speaker 1: then they drop it, and that's one of the ways
Speaker 1: they compressed the file size. So if you put a
Speaker 1: secret message in a file that's then going to be
Speaker 1: compressed in this way, your secret message could be part
Speaker 1: of the stuff that gets dropped or altered and then
Speaker 1: you can't communicate. So if you do want to post
Speaker 1: a picture with a secret message on Facebook, you should
Speaker 1: use a gift instead of a j pick right, unless
Speaker 1: you insist on pronouncing it Jeff, in which case I
Speaker 1: don't even want to talk to you. Did I say
Speaker 1: you said gifts? Thank goodness. See that's the way I
Speaker 1: pronounce it too. I don't because it if you put
Speaker 1: a T at the end of that, it's a gift
Speaker 1: and G stands for graphic. That's a good sound, not
Speaker 1: a Jiuh, don't get me. But that's again not the
Speaker 1: only type of digital information that could be altered, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you can also alter the audio files. I
Speaker 1: think we talked about this already. By yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: not just not just digital audio, like not just m
Speaker 1: P three but even void calls, voice over Internet protocol calls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could. And there's also water market. Yes, there is
Speaker 1: digital water marking, which is used to protect intellectual property
Speaker 1: and by embedding information like the creator and the copyright
Speaker 1: and et cetera into the file. Um. And that way,
Speaker 1: if people try to claim it as their own, they
Speaker 1: could say, nope, here's my water mark. See it's got
Speaker 1: all my little information in there. Sure. Um. They also
Speaker 1: use digital water water marking in a method called fingerprinting,
Speaker 1: where they put a different, unique water mark on each
Speaker 1: copy of the document or information they send out. And
Speaker 1: that way, if someone tries to copy it or send
Speaker 1: it out themselves to people who shouldn't get it, they
Speaker 1: can say, oh, all of these have that unique water mark,
Speaker 1: so we know who sent it. Bobby's in trouble because
Speaker 1: this is the version that we sent to Bobby, and
Speaker 1: everyone else got a different uh digital watermarks, so we
Speaker 1: narrowed it down. We know who is at fault, or
Speaker 1: we know who was compromised. Their security might have been compromised.
Speaker 1: That's really cool. Uh yeah, then we've got subliminal channels,
Speaker 1: which is not probably what you think it is. It
Speaker 1: isn't like messages secretly in movies or playing my music
Speaker 1: back where there's nothing like that. No, it's not like
Speaker 1: John is dead, missing Miss Simmons, none of that. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: this is something that was proposed in by a mathematician
Speaker 1: and cryptographer named Gustavus J. Simmons Uh and Simmons poet
Speaker 1: proposed something called the prisoners problem, and it's a thought experiment.
Speaker 1: This is the way the thought experiment works. You've got
Speaker 1: two accomplices who are captured during the while they're trying
Speaker 1: to commit a crime. Okay, Bob and Jen Narcott. Usually
Speaker 1: it's Bob and Alice actually, so we got half of
Speaker 1: them already. But Bob and Jennaricott. Uh, and there put
Speaker 1: into the same jail, but Bob is put in one cell.
Speaker 1: Jen has put on a cell on the opposite end
Speaker 1: of the jail, so there's no way for them to
Speaker 1: communicate directly. The warden is told, hey, these two want
Speaker 1: to be able to talk. What how do we do that?
Speaker 1: And the warden says, all right, here's the deal. You
Speaker 1: will be allowed to communicate to each other, but I
Speaker 1: get to see everything you send to one another. So
Speaker 1: that way, if there's any messages about trying to break
Speaker 1: out of jail, I'm going to get it immediately and
Speaker 1: you're gonna be stopped. That's a nice warden, because I'd
Speaker 1: just be like, you guys can't talk to each other,
Speaker 1: deal with it. It gets nicer actually because Bob and
Speaker 1: Jen say, all right, but we want to make sure
Speaker 1: that our messages are genuinely coming from the other person.
Speaker 1: And we want, in other words, we want to make
Speaker 1: sure that you, Mr Warden, aren't going in and messing
Speaker 1: up our messages. So we want to be able to
Speaker 1: authenticate that our messages come from each other. So we
Speaker 1: have to we want to be able to come up
Speaker 1: with a way to say it's essentially a signature to
Speaker 1: say yes, this actually came from Bob, or yes this
Speaker 1: actually came from Jen, and the warden says, well, all right,
Speaker 1: if you if you agree to my terms, I agree
Speaker 1: to your terms. We can all do this. What Simmons
Speaker 1: said was, if you're willing to give up a little
Speaker 1: of that authentication security, you could take some of the
Speaker 1: authentication message. Let's say that it's one fifth as long
Speaker 1: as your actual message. Still would be really long for authentication,
Speaker 1: but let's say so let's say that then you change
Speaker 1: some of that authentication which normally would look like it's random,
Speaker 1: like it's supposed to look random, so that way, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's not if it's predetermined in a
Speaker 1: way that everyone knows about, like if everyone knows the
Speaker 1: key and the algorithm, then there's no authentication there. Uh.
Speaker 1: But instead of it actually being random, it just looks random,
Speaker 1: and you've actually changed some of the authentication message so
Speaker 1: that that's where the secret messages. It's not within the
Speaker 1: body of the actual message, it's in the authentication. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now that was just a thought experiment, but turned out
Speaker 1: that that's actually the way. A lot of this is
Speaker 1: a lot of uh, steganography happens today too, is that
Speaker 1: it ends up being in the authentication kind of like
Speaker 1: the digital water mark, rather than in the message itself.
Speaker 1: And that is an example another example of how steganography
Speaker 1: and cryptography work together. Yeah, but is authentication is all
Speaker 1: about cryptography, so it's it's manipulating the two. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about people who actually use this stuff. Not a
Speaker 1: big surprise. Yeah, that's a that's a big one. In fact, again,
Speaker 1: at the Spy Museum, I saw example after example of
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. If you've never been to the
Speaker 1: Spy Museum, by the way, if you ever go to Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. I recommend it. Um. I recommend going early
Speaker 1: because it's a very it's it's a museum that fills
Speaker 1: up with kids, and kids are great, despite what I
Speaker 1: say about them, but they do make it difficult to
Speaker 1: maneuver through the museum and see everything. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff in the Spy Museum might
Speaker 1: be pretty technical for a kid. Yeah, it can definitely
Speaker 1: go over a kid's head. There's a lot of reading
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of descriptions that explain what
Speaker 1: the various devices and pictures and everything, what they mean
Speaker 1: and there's some very interesting videos, but for kids they'd
Speaker 1: be really boring. Oh it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: like the idea of spies is really super sexy and
Speaker 1: exciting and oh, James Bond, kids are gonna have fun.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, I think you need to be like a
Speaker 1: teenager or older. Maybe maybe not necessarily a teenager, but
Speaker 1: like eleven or twelve to really kind of start thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: this is kind of cool. Younger, I think it gets
Speaker 1: lost on you. Although they have some cool interactive stuff too,
Speaker 1: but you don't get to play with like shoeguns or anything.
Speaker 1: Now that you don't get to play with shoeguns, but
Speaker 1: you do get to assume a secret identity. They give
Speaker 1: you a secret identity and you have to remember certain
Speaker 1: facts about yourself so that if you're ever stopped and questioned,
Speaker 1: you can answer with your cover. So if you forget
Speaker 1: your cover, you're caught that So, so here's an example
Speaker 1: of spies who use steganography. In two thousand nine and
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, the FBI arrested ten covert Russian sleeper
Speaker 1: agents who had been communicating in multiple ways, including stecken bography. Uh,
Speaker 1: they'd be posting those photos that I was talking about,
Speaker 1: the same sort of thing. They would post photos to
Speaker 1: public forums, which in fact included the secret messages that
Speaker 1: could be picked up if you ran them through analysis.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you use that software, you can
Speaker 1: pick them up, but otherwise you probably wouldn't notice. They
Speaker 1: also used other things like in this blink and they
Speaker 1: would do secret bag swaps, like classic spy stuff like
Speaker 1: we'll meet in the trade station, I will give you bag,
Speaker 1: you would walk away. They got discovered because of the
Speaker 1: photos they were posting, right well, they that and the
Speaker 1: fact that all right, so the photos you had to
Speaker 1: run them through a particular piece of software to decode
Speaker 1: what the message was, to pull out the letters that
Speaker 1: were hidden inside these photos, right Because one of the
Speaker 1: problems with with binary code is we humans, we don't
Speaker 1: read it so well. So that's why we need software
Speaker 1: to be able to pull that stuff and say, all right,
Speaker 1: here are the bits that are important, here's what translates into.
Speaker 1: So one of the things they needed was security to
Speaker 1: make sure people couldn't access the software that would decode everything.
Speaker 1: So they had a password that all of them had
Speaker 1: to share. It was the same password they would type
Speaker 1: in to the software to allow them to decrypt something.
Speaker 1: And it was a twenty seven character long passwords. So
Speaker 1: that's pretty secure except someone wrote it down, so the
Speaker 1: FBI gets hold of the written password. By the way, folks,
Speaker 1: if you write your password down and someone finds it,
Speaker 1: guess what, You're not being secure. I don't care how
Speaker 1: long your password is or how many upper and lower
Speaker 1: case letters you throw in there. Uh. So, the FBI
Speaker 1: found the password, they were able to intercept messages, they
Speaker 1: were able to round up these ten sleeper agents, and
Speaker 1: ultimately they were exchanged in a prisoner swap with Russia. UH.
Speaker 1: Russia had four prisoners, three of whom had been accused
Speaker 1: of high treason, all of whom were Russian citizens, but
Speaker 1: they had all been colluding in some way or another
Speaker 1: or been accused of colluding with the United States or
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom. So these four were swapped out for
Speaker 1: the ten that were found in America. And it was
Speaker 1: all done kind of quietly because there were still, I
Speaker 1: mean there still are today uh tensions between the United
Speaker 1: States and Russia, and no one wanted to make that worse. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: could you imagine being one of the ten agents? And
Speaker 1: you're worth not even being half a person. Well, and
Speaker 1: not only that, but those ten people who went back
Speaker 1: to Russia, they were not technically put in prison, but
Speaker 1: they were detained for weeks for debrifing. So things did
Speaker 1: not go well for them, not for all of them
Speaker 1: anywhere now, especially probably not for the one who wrote
Speaker 1: down the past words. So then we have examples in
Speaker 1: military and government. Now, governments traditionally aren't crazy about steganography
Speaker 1: software getting out into the wild because they don't want
Speaker 1: people to be able to use it. Yeah, especially uh
Speaker 1: foreign countries. They're actually have been laws put in place
Speaker 1: to keep us from sending strong encryption software. Yeah. There
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of debate in government about whether
Speaker 1: or not it should be legal to export encryption software,
Speaker 1: and there's been a lot of argument on either case,
Speaker 1: and only that the government wasn't crazy about having public
Speaker 1: arguments about this, or having arguments on the public record,
Speaker 1: because that would mean people would find out that such
Speaker 1: a thing even existed, and they were worried that even
Speaker 1: people finding out that such software was possible would create
Speaker 1: more incidents of people using it. So there was probably yeah,
Speaker 1: but but it was it was a sort of a
Speaker 1: catch twenty two. You know, they were like, well, we
Speaker 1: need to talk about this, but we can't talk about
Speaker 1: it because if people know we talked about it, they'll
Speaker 1: know that it exists. Um. I have a quote from
Speaker 1: meeting about how to handle this that said a substantial
Speaker 1: amount of material is not appropriate for a public meeting.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I'm talking about, Like, we we can't
Speaker 1: debate this because if it's on the public record, it
Speaker 1: will cause problems. Um. Now, despite that, there ultimately there
Speaker 1: would be uh allowances for exporting uh this encryption software
Speaker 1: because business doesn't have to do business um, and we
Speaker 1: want our businesses to be secure. Yeah. So then we
Speaker 1: have terrorists who also have used steganography. The there was
Speaker 1: there were reports after the nine eleven attacks that al
Speaker 1: Qaeda had been using steganography techniques to communicate. They were
Speaker 1: actually supposedly using pornography. They were hiding their messages there
Speaker 1: because who would think to look for secret messages in
Speaker 1: that very very much so. And also they were thought
Speaker 1: to be less likely to have used them because it
Speaker 1: goes against their very world view. But that's what made
Speaker 1: it a perfect place to hide a message, and people
Speaker 1: were worried that maybe they got the the tools from US,
Speaker 1: right yeah. They were worried that they got the encryption
Speaker 1: tools from those same companies that had argued that they
Speaker 1: should be allowed to export their products, and in fact,
Speaker 1: it created a lot of soul searching on the parts
Speaker 1: of those people. They said, well, are we responsible? And
Speaker 1: ultimately they came up with the conclusion that even if
Speaker 1: a ban had been put in place, even if they
Speaker 1: had never been allowed to sell their products, someone else
Speaker 1: would have come up with the same thing because there
Speaker 1: was a need. And so once you identify a need,
Speaker 1: someone's going to come up with a solution. And there
Speaker 1: are people who send stuff they shouldn't send all the time,
Speaker 1: just just the challenging authority aspect of it. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't be using this or giving it to other people,
Speaker 1: so we're going to write right yeah, there's the whole
Speaker 1: argument of information wants to be free. And with that
Speaker 1: you would say that, well, if you're the harder you
Speaker 1: try to keep information away from people, the harder people
Speaker 1: will try to make sure they get that information. But
Speaker 1: having encryption software go out to foreign places and being
Speaker 1: developed in in other places than the US means that
Speaker 1: we have drive to create better encryption, right and decryption
Speaker 1: and decryption. Yeah, so it actually it pushes it pushes
Speaker 1: the art forward. And this is something we also see
Speaker 1: an artificial intelligence, where we see as one part of
Speaker 1: security gets better, uh than people find new ways to
Speaker 1: make that security vulnerable, and then the security gets better.
Speaker 1: And while individual attacks are terrible or individual like vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: are terrible, the overall story is that stuff gets better
Speaker 1: over time. But that's you know, that's a hard view
Speaker 1: to take, depending upon the particulars in this case, a
Speaker 1: very hard one to take. Also, writers and journalists have
Speaker 1: used steganography sometimes just to entertain. Like there's this guy
Speaker 1: h Brown, Charlie No, Dan, Yeah, he wrote, he wrote
Speaker 1: a couple of books like Angels and Demons and Da
Speaker 1: Vinci Code. It's almost said Da Vinci's Notebook. That's totally
Speaker 1: different but really good. Yeah, some we're familiar with their
Speaker 1: work there, but it's not the SAME's. They might have
Speaker 1: messages in their music. Well I'm sure there are. There
Speaker 1: are some, probably some very important messages and things like
Speaker 1: the Magic Castle in the Sky so entitle of the song.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so Dan Brown of course very famous for
Speaker 1: writing these books and there were lots of examples of steganography,
Speaker 1: In fact, key plot points revolving around uh steganography and
Speaker 1: various kinds of religious iconography and other elements too. I
Speaker 1: remember in Angels and Demons. I think it was Angels
Speaker 1: and Demons where I got irritated by one of them
Speaker 1: because it was a brand like a as in something
Speaker 1: you would brand an animal with heat up and right, uh,
Speaker 1: and if it's spelled out Illuminati. And then you discovered
Speaker 1: that if you turned it degree so in other words,
Speaker 1: if you turned it upside down, it's still spelled Illuminati.
Speaker 1: And then the suggestion was because it was because the
Speaker 1: way the font was designed and the way the way
Speaker 1: it was was that only someone with the secret Illuminati
Speaker 1: knowledge could ever make this thing. And I thought, that's
Speaker 1: obviously crap, because you made it, Dan Brown, in order
Speaker 1: for this to happen. So I don't know how you
Speaker 1: could suggest that only one human being would or only
Speaker 1: one group of human beings would be clever enough to
Speaker 1: do this. That's demonstrably false. But anyway it was meant for, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's meant to be a good story. Also, artists obviously
Speaker 1: very important in stagonography, particularly in the old ways where
Speaker 1: you had to hide a message within something, you know,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it was just done for entertainment. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: was done for specific purposes to hide things. UM. I
Speaker 1: had heard that Da Vinci hit a lot of secret
Speaker 1: messages in his artwork. Yeah, we hear, we hear that
Speaker 1: from da Vinci himself sometimes. Ariel and I have both
Speaker 1: worked for the Georgia Renaissance Festival, and another a mutual
Speaker 1: friend of ours, plays a young da Vinci very well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so if you ask him about his secret messages, he
Speaker 1: has hilarious responses for that. But the the what you're
Speaker 1: alluding to, of course, I mean, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of theories I shouldn't say, hypotheses about secret messages hidden
Speaker 1: in things like the Last Supper, which is one of
Speaker 1: the most famous paintings Da Vinci ever produced. Um, And
Speaker 1: of course, uh, the da Vinci Code ended up talking
Speaker 1: a lot about that, obviously. Uh. One of the hypotheses
Speaker 1: I saw, which was interesting was put forward by an
Speaker 1: uh I T guy in information uh information technology professional
Speaker 1: who had created a mirror image of the Last Supper,
Speaker 1: so essentially took like imagine you have Photoshop and you
Speaker 1: copy the image, but then you flip it, so now
Speaker 1: it's it's inverted the other way, and then you make
Speaker 1: it translucent, and then you lay it back down on
Speaker 1: top of the original image. So now you've got this
Speaker 1: doubled image on top of one another. And then said,
Speaker 1: look at all the interesting things that pop up when
Speaker 1: you do this. There were figures on either side that
Speaker 1: were said to look like knights templar. There was in
Speaker 1: the center in front of Jesus there appeared to be
Speaker 1: a chalice like perhaps it's the Holy Grail and this
Speaker 1: kind of thing, and that there appeared to be a
Speaker 1: figure standing behind Jesus holding a baby. H a lot
Speaker 1: of other elements that were supposedly brought to light. But
Speaker 1: that raises the question one, how could da Vinci have
Speaker 1: done this himself? Now, he was known for mirror writing,
Speaker 1: where he could write with both hands, and he could
Speaker 1: right right to left and left to right simultaneous. He
Speaker 1: would have had to have painted two pictures left to
Speaker 1: right and right to left at the same time and
Speaker 1: lay them over each other. He would have to paint
Speaker 1: two identical pictures. Yeah, and who would ever find out
Speaker 1: about this? I mean, there's no way to to see
Speaker 1: the message The whole point of steganography is to communicate
Speaker 1: to someone. If no one knows that there's a message
Speaker 1: there and no one knows how to get that message,
Speaker 1: you're not communicating, you're just shouting, you are I mean,
Speaker 1: he could have put that message in there just too
Speaker 1: or not put a message in there, but put something
Speaker 1: in there to seem like a message, just to mess
Speaker 1: with people. That's possible. But yeah, most art historians kind
Speaker 1: of dismissed these various hypotheses. Doesn't mean that they're all false.
Speaker 1: It may mean, you know, there may have been things
Speaker 1: that da Vinci threw into some uh, either as sketches
Speaker 1: or his paintings or whatever, that were either just amusements
Speaker 1: or you know, they weren't intended to be anything secret.
Speaker 1: It was just something that he incorporated into the design.
Speaker 1: It's possible, and then, you know, depending upon the guy,
Speaker 1: probable da Vinci was it was a bit of an
Speaker 1: eccentric isn't there an article about this on Yes? The
Speaker 1: article is is, uh, how the da Vinci code doesn't work?
Speaker 1: So if you want to know more about that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's also an article about are there hidden messages in
Speaker 1: the Last Supper? We have articles on both of those things,
Speaker 1: so you should definitely check those out at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Uh. Then there are other examples, like
Speaker 1: one of my favorites is Mad magazines fold in, which
Speaker 1: was created by the writer and artist Al Jaffee, who
Speaker 1: created originally in nine four. It's been in practically every
Speaker 1: Mad magazine since then. And if you've never seen a
Speaker 1: fold in on Mad Magazine, then and I'm talking about
Speaker 1: the actual magazine, not the television series, not Mad TV,
Speaker 1: and not a digital copy of the night No, no,
Speaker 1: you need the you need the physical one. It is
Speaker 1: the the inside back cover is the fold in, and
Speaker 1: it has two points, and you're supposed to fold one
Speaker 1: point over to the second point, and it creates a
Speaker 1: new image. So when you look at it, normally it's
Speaker 1: one image, and it's the setup for a joke, and
Speaker 1: you do the fold then it's the punchline to that joke,
Speaker 1: and usually it's it's a twist on whatever. The big pictures.
Speaker 1: And actually, Jeff, he said, if I didn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about the big picture as opposed to a little picture,
Speaker 1: I could turn out like twelve of these a day.
Speaker 1: But getting them to work together takes a lot more
Speaker 1: planning and the way he did it. He drew them
Speaker 1: all by hand on a surface that did not fold,
Speaker 1: so it had to look right when it was folded,
Speaker 1: but he while he was drawing it, I couldn't fold
Speaker 1: it to make sure it was working. After after I
Speaker 1: encountered my first folding in a Mad magazine, I actually
Speaker 1: went into a Where's Waldo book and tried to do
Speaker 1: it in there and didn't work. No, No, I didn't
Speaker 1: find Waldo any faster. No, I didn't find any secret punchline.
Speaker 1: That's a little disappointed. He did, however, ruin the Where's Waldo? Books?
Speaker 1: So there's that. Uh. Another Man Magazine contributor, Sergio Ariganez,
Speaker 1: he used to draw a comic book called Grew the Wanderer,
Speaker 1: which was about it's very cartoony. If you've ever seen
Speaker 1: Sergio Ragan as his art style, you know it's cartoony.
Speaker 1: And it was about a buffoonish barbarian character, very dim
Speaker 1: witted character named Grew g r o O and very silly.
Speaker 1: But he would hide a message in every comic book.
Speaker 1: Uh usually said this is the secret message, or something like,
Speaker 1: good job, you found the secret message. But it would
Speaker 1: always be incorporated into the artwork in some way, like
Speaker 1: in some cases it would be written into the scroll
Speaker 1: work on a really elaborate uh fret board for a
Speaker 1: loop something like that, so you would have to really
Speaker 1: look for it. And again, if you didn't know there
Speaker 1: was a message there, you probably never would have seen it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of comics have done that
Speaker 1: here and there. If you look really closely, you can
Speaker 1: find I know there are some comics who hide their
Speaker 1: name in pictures and the artwork as well, but there
Speaker 1: are other people who use them too, like system administrators
Speaker 1: UM just to make encryption extra secure, like talked about
Speaker 1: before with authentication codes UM, and then like people who
Speaker 1: just want to protect their intellectual property. You can even
Speaker 1: do it for your own personal journal. If if you
Speaker 1: write in a diary and you don't want anybody to
Speaker 1: read it, you can read what you really want to say.
Speaker 1: You can hide it in there, right, So the stuff
Speaker 1: that you write could be, you know whatever, but the
Speaker 1: actual meaning, the things that you truly want to preserve
Speaker 1: for yourself, you could hide away from from people prying eyes.
Speaker 1: So if you you know, if you if you're tired
Speaker 1: of losing that little key to your lockable journal. I
Speaker 1: know I gave up years ago. I have no idea
Speaker 1: what's in that book anymore? Um, probably best left unknown. Probably,
Speaker 1: you know, my past is a shady one at best.
Speaker 1: So that kind of wraps up this discussion about steganography,
Speaker 1: what it is, who uses it, you know, what goes
Speaker 1: into it. It is a fascinating field. I mean again,
Speaker 1: the idea of creating a way to communicate without anyone
Speaker 1: ever being aware that it was an intention no communication
Speaker 1: is I mean, it's kind of kind of awesome, it
Speaker 1: really is. And the numerous ways that people have come
Speaker 1: up with to do steganography is it's just mind blowing.
Speaker 1: I'm not nearly that creative, no, I well, mostly I
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of secret messages to send to people,
Speaker 1: so I don't have a whole lot of occasion to
Speaker 1: think on it. But yeah, it really does show people's
Speaker 1: ingenuity to come up with new ways to hide things.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that classic episode of tech stuff
Speaker 1: back from If you have suggestions for topics I should
Speaker 1: tackle in future episodes, or maybe you want to follow
Speaker 1: up to something that you've heard in a classic episode,
Speaker 1: let me know best way to do that is to
Speaker 1: reach out on Twitter. The handle for the show is
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