[107696] in Cypherpunks
Idea: steganographic spam
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jukka E Isosaari)
Thu Jan 21 13:07:00 1999
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1999 19:46:34 +0200 (EET)
From: Jukka E Isosaari <jei@zor.hut.fi>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: <19990121060002.11808.qmail@nym.alias.net>
Reply-To: Jukka E Isosaari <jei@zor.hut.fi>
..
Steganography is the art of making messages slip by unnoticed, as
distinct from cryptography, which is the art of making messages
unintelligible. With computers, this is done by taking a mass of
digitized analog data and altering insignificant bits, or by using
different ways of encoding or packing the same data.
..
Instead of disguising messages in text (assuming that's the only
available format) as errors, would it not be neat if you could send
steganographic messages disguised as spam to your friends? That would
give a much better information density, better cover and plausible
denial. They would most likely be totally ignored by anyone looking
for signs of use of cryptograpy. And most spam is already
unintelligible to begin with. :-)
Or is this the reason why this list is getting so much of it these
days? Hmmmm.... :)
++ J
