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This brought me back to college and me learning about steganography. I wonder how many images are floating around with secret messages in them! Also reminds me

by nunez 4y ago

This brought me back to college and me learning about steganography. I wonder how many images are floating around with secret messages in them! Also reminds me of people who immortalized themselves by putting their initials or a favorite phrase in the header of a file format that got popular (like Mike did at Microsoft for .exe's; every exe header starts with MZ, which is really friggin cool) Or the "Don't Steal MacOS.kext" that was used to prevent Hackintoshes from booting if it was messed with

greenhorn123 4y ago
Hackintoshes did not necessarily steal MacOS, you could buy legit copies of MacOS.
- jaywalk 4y ago
  You could purchase a DVD containing MacOS, but calling them "legit" (as far as installing on a Hackintosh) is a stretch. You're paying for the physical disc, not a license to the OS. The only way to get a license to use MacOS is to purchase a Mac.
  - Cockbrand 4y ago
    To elaborate on this: Apple's license only permits installing Max OS X/OS X/macOS on "Apple branded" computers, so it's technically illegal to install it on Hackintoshes, no matter whether you bought the OS or not.
    - tadfisher 4y ago
      You could replace the innards of a PowerMac or whatnot with a modern system, and it would still be "Apple-branded".
- actually_a_dog 4y ago
  You still can: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/D6106Z/A/os-x-lion https://www.apple.com/shop/product/D6106Z/A/os-x-lion Even if they stop selling it on the App Store, you can still buy a fully licensed copy of OSX buy picking up an older Mac Mini.
- secondcoming 4y ago
  I have a Snow Leopard CD somewhere
- BoxOfRain 4y ago
  It's just occurred to me that Apple's move away from the x86 platform has pretty much signed the death warrant of the Hackintosh.
  - nunez 4y ago
    The Hackintosh has been de facto dead for years, yeah. It's going to be worse now that they are moving to their super proprietary ARM stack
medstrom 4y ago
To clarify why that's supposed to be cool, "MZ" are the initials of Mark Zbikowski, one of the leading developers of MS-DOS.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
RektBoy 4y ago
Good old days, when people shared their files through Steam artworks pictures (png)
ivanche 4y ago
Somewhere I’ve heard that you could replace MZ with ZM and exe will continue to work. Never tried it though.
- baisq 4y ago
  I just tried it and it does not work, at least on Windows 10.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
    I just tried it under DOSBox, and it works.
secondcoming 4y ago
This isn't steganography though, it's a string compiled into an executable. It's not hidden.
gpvos 4y ago
Or "Help, I'm being held prisoner in a software factory!" in an invisible part of a dialog template.
npsomaratna 4y ago
On a tangent re: immortality: reminds me of the names you'd see in splash screens of various products. After one too many years of seeing “Seetharaman Narayanan” in the Photoshop splash screen, I just had to look him up. https://www.ironicsans.com/2006/09/interview_seetharaman_narayanan.html https://www.ironicsans.com/2006/09/interview_seetharaman_nar...
- stavros 4y ago
  I read the first sentence of your comment and I immediately thought of Photoshop. Good idea to have that splash screen, huh.
sdmike1 4y ago
I was REing my insulin pump's uploader at one point, and found that it would always send the phrase "all's well that ends well" to the server as part of the handshake
honkdaddy 4y ago
Ahhh DSMOS.kext - that's a throwback! > The extension contains a kernel function called page_transform() that performs AES decryption of "apple-protected" programs. A system lacking a proper key will not be able to run the Apple-restricted binaries, which include Dock, Finder, loginwindow, SystemUIServer, mds, ATSServer, backupd, fontd, translate, or translated.
phaedrus 4y ago
I worked with someone, who previously worked at a hard drive manufacturer, whose initials are coincidentally valid hexadecimal digits. He told me a story how as a low-level firmware programmer, he was in the position to immortalize his initials as the two digit (one byte) magic number that starts some sort of internal control block used by that company's hard drives. Of course, he didn't tell them it was chosen because it was his initials...
lloeki 4y ago
Not a person immortalised but lp0 on fire[0] has made me chuckle for two decades. And it made it to this day: > The "on fire" message remains in the Linux source code as of version 5.14-rc6 Tangent: I actually experienced this message multiple times over the aforementioned timeframe. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lp0_on_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lp0_on_fire

by nunez 4y ago

greenhorn123 4y ago

Hackintoshes did not necessarily steal MacOS, you could buy legit copies of MacOS.

jaywalk 4y ago
You could purchase a DVD containing MacOS, but calling them "legit" (as far as installing on a Hackintosh) is a stretch. You're paying for the physical disc, not a license to the OS. The only way to get a license to use MacOS is to purchase a Mac.
- Cockbrand 4y ago
  To elaborate on this: Apple's license only permits installing Max OS X/OS X/macOS on "Apple branded" computers, so it's technically illegal to install it on Hackintoshes, no matter whether you bought the OS or not.
  - tadfisher 4y ago
    You could replace the innards of a PowerMac or whatnot with a modern system, and it would still be "Apple-branded".
actually_a_dog 4y ago
You still can: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/D6106Z/A/os-x-lion https://www.apple.com/shop/product/D6106Z/A/os-x-lion Even if they stop selling it on the App Store, you can still buy a fully licensed copy of OSX buy picking up an older Mac Mini.
secondcoming 4y ago
I have a Snow Leopard CD somewhere
BoxOfRain 4y ago
It's just occurred to me that Apple's move away from the x86 platform has pretty much signed the death warrant of the Hackintosh.
- nunez 4y ago
  The Hackintosh has been de facto dead for years, yeah. It's going to be worse now that they are moving to their super proprietary ARM stack

medstrom 4y ago

To clarify why that's supposed to be cool, "MZ" are the initials of Mark Zbikowski, one of the leading developers of MS-DOS.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

RektBoy 4y ago

Good old days, when people shared their files through Steam artworks pictures (png)

ivanche 4y ago

Somewhere I’ve heard that you could replace MZ with ZM and exe will continue to work. Never tried it though.

baisq 4y ago
I just tried it and it does not work, at least on Windows 10.
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  I just tried it under DOSBox, and it works.

secondcoming 4y ago

This isn't steganography though, it's a string compiled into an executable. It's not hidden.

gpvos 4y ago

Or "Help, I'm being held prisoner in a software factory!" in an invisible part of a dialog template.

npsomaratna 4y ago

On a tangent re: immortality: reminds me of the names you'd see in splash screens of various products. After one too many years of seeing “Seetharaman Narayanan” in the Photoshop splash screen, I just had to look him up. https://www.ironicsans.com/2006/09/interview_seetharaman_narayanan.html https://www.ironicsans.com/2006/09/interview_seetharaman_nar...

stavros 4y ago
I read the first sentence of your comment and I immediately thought of Photoshop. Good idea to have that splash screen, huh.

sdmike1 4y ago

I was REing my insulin pump's uploader at one point, and found that it would always send the phrase "all's well that ends well" to the server as part of the handshake

honkdaddy 4y ago

Ahhh DSMOS.kext - that's a throwback! > The extension contains a kernel function called page_transform() that performs AES decryption of "apple-protected" programs. A system lacking a proper key will not be able to run the Apple-restricted binaries, which include Dock, Finder, loginwindow, SystemUIServer, mds, ATSServer, backupd, fontd, translate, or translated.

phaedrus 4y ago

I worked with someone, who previously worked at a hard drive manufacturer, whose initials are coincidentally valid hexadecimal digits. He told me a story how as a low-level firmware programmer, he was in the position to immortalize his initials as the two digit (one byte) magic number that starts some sort of internal control block used by that company's hard drives. Of course, he didn't tell them it was chosen because it was his initials...

lloeki 4y ago

Not a person immortalised but lp0 on fire[0] has made me chuckle for two decades. And it made it to this day: > The "on fire" message remains in the Linux source code as of version 5.14-rc6 Tangent: I actually experienced this message multiple times over the aforementioned timeframe. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lp0_on_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lp0_on_fire