4 ms·

This reminds me that a few years ago (almost two decades?) there was a lot of concern online, almost "moral panic", about the potential of digital steganography

This reminds me that a few years ago (almost two decades?) there was a lot of concern online, almost "moral panic", about the potential of digital steganography to hide information in public image files. Even if this method is not feasible as an attack vector, at the very least it looks like a very practical way to share information that otherwise would be censored or restricted–all the more so if the hidden image data can be encrypted, which may make it impossible to detect. On the other hand, I know nothing about steganography and I'm talking out of my arse, so maybe current steganography methods are much more powerful.

Raphmedia 6y ago
I remember in the early 00's that people would share books and movies by using a simple command that would allow someone to zip an archive into a jpeg. For example, they would put a book's pdf file in an image of its cover. Someone else could then download the image, unzip it and get it's contents. I can easily imagine how someone could use this for nefarious purposes.
callamdelaney 6y ago
very recently someone created a method to encode files and data into videos - this video could then be uploaded to youtube, and distributed / stored permanently there.
- stevewodil 6y ago
  How could that be possible though as YouTube doesn't serve the original video file back to users? It get processed to create different video streams, so this seems pretty crazy
  - callamdelaney 6y ago
    According to the creator, /u/T0X1K01 on reddit: > No, that's what's so cool about it. I explain it in more detail in the video, but basically because the videos are created using 1-bit color images, it makes it easy to retrieve data without having to worry about how YouTube changes the video. There's a video explanation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu_ZIr0q5rU&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu_ZIr0q5rU&feature=youtu.be Source code here: https://github.com/AlfredoSequeida/fvid/ https://github.com/AlfredoSequeida/fvid/ An example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzZDFxM5Coo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzZDFxM5Coo
- SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
  But you won't be able to download it - youtube-dl is not with us anymore.
  - account42 6y ago
    There was a new version released yesterday. [0] [0] http://youtube-dl.org/ http://youtube-dl.org/

Raphmedia 6y ago

I remember in the early 00's that people would share books and movies by using a simple command that would allow someone to zip an archive into a jpeg. For example, they would put a book's pdf file in an image of its cover. Someone else could then download the image, unzip it and get it's contents. I can easily imagine how someone could use this for nefarious purposes.

callamdelaney 6y ago

very recently someone created a method to encode files and data into videos - this video could then be uploaded to youtube, and distributed / stored permanently there.

stevewodil 6y ago
How could that be possible though as YouTube doesn't serve the original video file back to users? It get processed to create different video streams, so this seems pretty crazy
- callamdelaney 6y ago
  According to the creator, /u/T0X1K01 on reddit: > No, that's what's so cool about it. I explain it in more detail in the video, but basically because the videos are created using 1-bit color images, it makes it easy to retrieve data without having to worry about how YouTube changes the video. There's a video explanation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu_ZIr0q5rU&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu_ZIr0q5rU&feature=youtu.be Source code here: https://github.com/AlfredoSequeida/fvid/ https://github.com/AlfredoSequeida/fvid/ An example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzZDFxM5Coo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzZDFxM5Coo
SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
But you won't be able to download it - youtube-dl is not with us anymore.
- account42 6y ago
  There was a new version released yesterday. [0] [0] http://youtube-dl.org/ http://youtube-dl.org/